The National Assembly voted to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol on Saturday, after the first motion had failed a week prior when it was denied a quorum in a mass boycott by the ruling party.

The Assembly's turnaround was driven by a rising minority within the People Power Party that chose to turn against Yoon over the past week.

In the past week, more clues into the night of martial law emerged one by one. Key commanders, testifying before the Assembly, said they received orders to arrest politicians and break into the parliamentary chamber. The president on Thursday gave another address to the nation defending his decision as a warning to his political opponents.

Before Saturday’s vote, at least seven People Power Party lawmakers -- Reps. Ahn Cheol-soo, Cho Kyung-tae, Han Ji-ah, Kim Yea-ji, Kim Sang-wook, Jin Jong-oh and Kim Jae-sup -- had publicly said they would vote in favor of impeaching Yoon. They are lawmakers known to be closely aligned with Han Dong-hoon, the party's chair who has said impeachment was now “the only way left.”

When the ruling party lawmakers gathered Thursday to elect a new floor leader to replace Rep. Choo Kyung-ho, Yoon’s former finance minister who stepped down in the aftermath of the martial law debacle, the dismay was palpable.

Four-time Rep. Kim Tae-ho, who called for the party to “part from” Yoon as he launched his bid for floor leadership, earned 34 votes -- which suggested about one-third of the 108-seat party shared his view.

Kim said what had been revealed of Yoon’s martial law plans so far left him “shaken with fear and disbelief.” “As a member of the ruling party, I am deeply ashamed. I apologize to the South Korean people,” he said, before getting down on his knees.

“The time has come for our party to part from the president,” he said, in an apparent plea to his colleagues to impeach the president.

Now the People Power Party is closer to having another of its presidents impeached and removed, just eight years since former President Park Geun-hye was removed from office over a corruption scandal.

To little avail, some senior People Power Party lawmakers tried to stop history from repeating itself, as attested by the party line adhering until the very last minute of its official stance of blocking Yoon’s impeachment bill.

Whether Yoon will be discharged from the duties of his office is up to the Constitutional Court, which has 180 days to decide.

In the meantime, questions remain for Han, a political novice who has been struggling to maintain a hold on the People Power Party in a power struggle against the party’s mainstream. The pro-Han faction of the party are mostly first-time lawmakers, as opposed to new Floor Leader Rep. Kweon Seong-dong, who is joined by some of the main power players of the Yoon-era People Power Party.

Cho, who was the first in his party to openly support impeaching Yoon, told reporters that he did not think Han would shrink as party leader.

“If the passage of the impeachment bill today is any testament, Chair Han’s calls for following the voice of the people seemed to have resonated with more of our party,” he said.

The vote count on Saturday showed that at least 12 from the People Power Party voted to impeach Yoon.

Han’s leadership is challenged by the increasingly divisive pro-Yoon faction, still capable of holding sway over the party, fronted by Kweon. If four or more of the party’s supreme council, of which the pro-Yoon lawmakers comprise the majority, step down, Han would automatically be replaced by an interim chair.

Whoever takes control of the People Power Party next will have to weather through an even more contentious Assembly. With the president suspended from his powers, the bargaining power of the People Power Party -- already outnumbered by the Democratic Party of Korea -- is predicted to be further weakened against the opposition.