What happened the night Yoon declared martial law?published at 07:39 GMT
Jake Kwon
Seoul correspondent
I made a beeline for the National Assembly.
The only way to cancel martial law is for 150 lawmakers to gather and vote against it. And they were en route, just like us, speeding through Seoul close to midnight.
One lawmaker told me over the phone that fully armed soldiers were already in the assembly building.
MPs and their aides already inside were using chairs, tables and whatever they could find to barricade the building to keep the soldiers out, he said.
Another was out of breath when he answered my call. Police blocked him from entering the grounds, so he had to get protesting citizens to boost him over the fence. He was now sprinting to the hall.
I arrived to chaos – sirens, police, an angry crowd chanting, “Down with the autocrat, no, no martial law”.
There were hundreds of protesters of all ages. It was freezing but the crowd only got bigger. It was hard to believe this crowd was illegal, according to the martial law Yoon had declared.
A little after 1am, there was a loud cheer. “We won! We won!”. The 190 lawmakers who had made it inside unanimously voted to strike down martial law.
It would take another three hours for Yoon to back down.
An old man watching from afar told me he remembered life under military rule. It was a terrible time, he said, and he had to come out because that could not happen again.
Image source, Getty Images
