An image shows people in South Korea out on the streets to protest against the declaration of martial law.
This isn’t correct. The image was actually taken during a protest calling for the South Korean president Yoon Suk-Yeol’s resignation on 30 November, three days before he announced martial law.
A photo is being shared on social media with captions implying it shows a protest in South Korea after the declaration of martial law.
The picture, which shows a large crowd of people protesting, spread widely on Facebook on 3 December with the caption: “People of South Korea are now on streets to protest against the declaration of martial law.”
But the image was not taken after the South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol announced he was imposing martial law in the country at around 11pm Korean Standard Time (2pm GMT) on 3 December—although following this statement thousands of people protested outside the National Assembly (the country’s parliament) overnight.
But the photo being shared is actually of a rally calling for President Yoon’s resignation in Seoul, which took place on 30 November—three days before he announced martial law.
Lawmakers defied police and military cordons to enter the parliament and vote down the order in the early hours of 4 December, leading to the president confirming he would lift martial law just hours after imposing it.
We have previously debunked other miscaptioned pictures and videos of protests, including a 2022 demonstration in Iran claimed to be recent and a video which was falsely claimed to show Lebanese citizens celebrating the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Misinformation can spread quickly online during rapidly developing global events, and it’s important to consider whether what you are seeing is accurate before sharing posts on social media.
We have created guides to identifying misleading images and videos to help you better navigate content online.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because the photo was taken at a protest calling for the resignation of the South Korean president, days before he announced the imposition of martial law.
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