This is the Guardian.
Today.
What on earth is going on in South Korea?
On the evening of 3rd December, journalist and filmmaker Hae Ryun Kang was at home in Seoul getting ready to go to sleep when she turned on the TV.
I was in bed already in my pajamas at 10:30 in the evening.
And President Yoon Suk Yeol came on national television to announce that he was putting the country under a state of martial law.
He said that he was doing that because he wants to protect South Korean democracy from quote, anti state, pro North Korean forces.
And to supplement his claims, he cited the main liberal opposition party's various antics to hinder his own budget bills and other political activities.
At first I thought, what the beep is going on?
I think this was a similar reaction all across the country, where everyone was exchanging frantic text messages with each other.
People who were about to leave the country for a business trip the next day wondered if they could do that.
You know, people who were drinking out at bars in Seoul wondered if they had to go home immediately.
Is there a curfew?
All of a sudden there was so much confusion everywhere.
No answers.
It was a big deal.
South Korea hadn't been placed under martial law for 45 years back when it was still under a military dictatorship.
The move brought back painful memories and created the nation's biggest constitutional crisis since the 1980s.
What Yoon triggered is a very deep seated collective trauma that's actually not that old.
My parents and my grandparents generation lived through 16 different states of martial law and they lived through the dictatorship era.