Republic of Korea, 2024 — military coup attempt
Event Summary
On 3 December 2024 President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea abruptly declared martial law in a late night televised address, in a stunning self coup that sought to seize control from the opposition led National Assembly but was overturned within about six hours, plunging the country into its gravest constitutional crisis since democratization. Yoon, a conservative former prosecutor whose administration had been crippled by dismal approval ratings and gridlock with the opposition Democratic Party, which controlled the legislature, accused his opponents of anti state activities and collaboration with North Korea and declared emergency martial law, suspending political activity and press freedom and dispatching elite troops to seize the National Assembly. But the maneuver collapsed almost immediately: lawmakers, including members of Yoon's own party, rushed to the assembly, and despite soldiers' attempts to block them, 190 legislators convened and voted unanimously to lift martial law, which the constitution required Yoon to obey.
In the early hours of 4 December he backed down and rescinded the decree. The National Assembly impeached Yoon on 14 December, suspending him; the Constitutional Court upheld his removal in April 2025, and he was later arrested, indicted, and convicted of insurrection, becoming the first South Korean president imprisoned for such an act.
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Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
How It Unfolded
Hand-coded by Coup Atlas from the sources on this page, using a fixed list of tactics. Only events we have read through carry this coding, so most records do not have it yet.
- Led by
- Palace / elite
- How long it took
- Under a day — resolved within 24 hours
- Declaration of martial law or curfew
- Attack on or seizure of the legislature
- Troop movements in the capital or key cities
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
73212032024
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: President Yoon Suk Yeol's December 2024 martial-law self-coup was reversed by the National Assembly within hours and he was later removed.
Baseline coding: Coup attempt failed to remove the incumbent. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
Asia Times
Foreign Policy
Reuters
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →