President Yoon Suk Yeol claimed that the impeachment motion against him is not meant to defend the Constitution, but is part of a political attempt to bring down the president who has been elected through direct voting.

At the second hearing of Yoon's impeachment trial on Thursday, Cho Dae-hyun, one of the lawyers on his defense team, said the opposition-majority parliament unlawfully passed the impeachment motion, accusing the president of leading an insurrection.

Cho laid out four reasons why the request for the impeachment trial is inappropriate, such as a claim that putting the motion to a second plenary vote after it fell short of passage with attendance under the quorum of two-thirds of the 300-member Assembly goes against the Constitution.

The legal counsel took issue with the Assembly team's decision to remove insurrection charges as one of the reasons for the impeachment, stressing that if the motion did not include the charges, it would not have passed parliament with 204 votes in favor.

Cho claimed that the constitutionality of the December 3 martial law declaration is not a subject of judicial judgment, and that the Assembly abused its impeachment authority as the short-lived martial law had already been lifted when it put the motion to a vote.