At 10:28 p.m. on December 3rd, 2024, in Seoul, the President of South Korea Yoon Suk Yeol declares the martial law. It is a self-coup carried out in an attempt to break through a political crisis. A decree banning all political activities and public assemblies is announced, and martial law troops move toward the National Assembly to seize control. Meanwhile, citizens rush to the National Assembly to block the troops, while lawmakers break through police’s barricades at the main gate, climb over the walls to attend the session that lifts the martial law. Large numbers of elite troops are deployed by helicopter and armored vehicles, launching a sudden assault on the National Assembly building. People begin to block the troops’ advance, instinctively invoking the memory of the Gwangju Democratic Uprising 45 years earlier—one of the deepest traumas in South Korea’s history.

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