Image source: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images (via New York Times)

As most of the 50 million South Koreans are about to begin their Wednesday (it being nearly 7am in Seoul), the world has watched its President essentially throw the largest tantrum of the past four decades. With a chilling reminder that historical trauma runs within our veins (something we as a nation reckoned when Han Kang won the Nobel Lit), ready to go into an adrenaline overdrive in a split second (or to be precise, 2.5 hours). 

“Martial Law” (계엄령). A single word. Three syllables. Enough to set on paralysis and a primary fear I didn’t know I had in me. Flashbacks of how students being tortured by National Security. Images of military tanks and smokescreens. All things my generation – born in the 90s – had assumed were part of our history but just out of reach to be really real. “Stuff from textbooks”. 

People like me – the diaspora – fretted and cried and yelled, watching three to four different livestreams from public and private broadcasters. Calling our family and realising they’d gone to sleep. Texting our friends, who were still awake – or were on our timezone.

A strange blend of primal fear and a nonchalant “This can’t be real” was setting in.

A part of me was saying and typing the words “This cannot escalate any further. This is illegal. This has no constitutional ground. We are a democracy, one of only three full democracies in Asia”.

Another part of me was still replaying the images of civilians being shot by martial law soldiers, reckless young students and journalists being beaten with batons, and a curfew patrol, which my parents would run from (and sometimes get caught by). Because there is no reasoning with the military – You only know this if your recent history has shown you how true this holds.

A third part of me was angry, watching political aides barricade the National Assembly to stop the military (as we call them, 계엄군 (martial law military) from entering the building in such an everyday fashion. Doing like they’d done it before, so the 190 Assembly members still inside the Halls could begin a session and overrule the martial law declared by President Yoon Seok-yeol.

One friend in Seoul managed to call her parents as they were about to go to sleep. Her father sounded worried, she said, her family being from Gwangju, where the last Martial Law was declared in 1980 – and we all know what happened then.

But my friends and younger family – in their early to mid-twenties – had other priorities.

Trading ETFs over Fear

The friend whose father was worried told me “I’m going to sleep. I have my accounting certificate exam tomorrow. They’re not gonna postpone that”. 

“That [the martial law] isn’t really the problem, noona! I’m busy monitoring my crypto!” said my cousin, who just bought his first car (I’m guessing, with said crypto money). 

Another friend wrote: “I managed to move my assets to my USD account just on time as the won hit 1,400, and look, it’s at 1,410 now”. Yet another updated us: “at 1,422 now!” (It soon jumped to 1,434)

One friend of mine said “I’m going to stop writing [on Kakao] because we could be getting censored”.

Another friend said “If they take me in for my fucking messages, I’ll fucking kill myself there, who the fuck do they think they are, censoring us when 2025 is in front of our fucking nose?!”. (Yes, my former journalist friend really said the f- word 4 times in a single sentence). 

I remember a similar crisis in 2013, when North Korea shot missiles at us in the South. I was working with a journo at the NRK, who interviewed my friend on whether she was worried. (There’s a photo of said friend exiting a G-Dragon concert). She, as any other Korean, said it was business as usual, “using Sunday to go to a concert, thinking little of North Korea’s threat of war.”

Life happens. People still need to make money, wake up, go to work. 

But we will make sure that history does not repeat itself. In just two hours, an emergency National Assembly session will be held, where due diligence and the Constitution will follow procedure. 

• P.S. If as a non-Korean, you want to understand what this term “martial law” means to us, I’d recommend you pick up a copy of Han Kang’s Human Acts, which talks about the 1980 Gwangju Massacre, when the last Martial Law was declared.