Does an image showing a convoy of military vehicles driving through a city at night depict the situation in South Korea when martial law was declared on December 3, 2024? No, that's not true: The photo is from January 25, 2024, and it shows a nighttime South Korean army mobile training exercise. There is also a YouTube video from January 25, 2024, showing the convoy.
The photo surfaced in a post (archived here) on X on December 3, 2024. The post was captioned:
🚨🇰🇷
MARTIAL LAW DECLARED IN SOUTH KOREA
President Yoon Suk Yeol has announced Emergency Martial Law, with convoys of tanks and helicopters spotted across the capital, Seoul.
What are your thoughts on this development?
A thread 🧵
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Dec 04 15:11:58 2024 UTC)
A reverse image search with Google Lens (archived here) returned many copies of the now-viral image that had been posted in the hours after the martial-law declaration -- but buried in the results were copies of the image dating back to late January 2024. One article on seoul.co.kr (archived here) published on January 27, 2024, showed the image with a caption that included a link to a YouTube video posted by KFN News:
The 1st Guard Brigade of the Capital Defense Command of the Army conducted a mobile training exercise using the K808 wheeled armored vehicle (Baekho) in the downtown area of Seoul on the morning of the 25th. 2024.1.25 Defense Public Relations Agency data (https://youtu.be/O1qMa641zvU)
The video (embedded below) was posted on January 25, 2024.
The post appeared in the hours after martial law was declared by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on December 3, 2024. The martial law status was short-lived, and Yoon lifted the order on December 4, 2024, after a unanimous vote by Korea's parliament. In this AP News article (archived here), there is Associated Press footage of a crowd surrounding a military vehicle (pictured below). There were police and military personnel, several helicopters and protests overnight in Seoul. But the convoy photo in the X post that is the focus of this fact check is unrelated to this.
(Source: apnews.com screenshot taken on Wed Dec 04 15:52:58 2024 UTC)
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims involving martial law can be found here.
