It was a sleepless night for some. “At first I was excited at the thought of not going to school today,” 15-year-old Kwon Hoo told the BBC in Seoul on Wednesday. “But then overwhelmingly the sense of fear settled in, that kept me up all night.”
“No words can express how afraid I am that things might turn out like North Korea for our people,” a South Korean who did not want to be named told BBC OS.
Meanwhile, word was spreading that special forces had been deployed to the assembly building. Helicopters were heard overhead as they circled the skies before landing on the parliament’s roof.
Reporters jostled in the crowd outside the gates, clicking away with their cameras.
As concerns grew that the government might restrict the media, journalists in Seoul stayed in touch with one another, exchanging advice on how to stay safe.
Ahn Gwi-ryeong, the 35-year-old spokesperson for the opposition Democratic Party found herself facing down soldiers at gunpoint. A video of the moment, where she is tugging at the barrel of a soldier’s rifle, has since gone viral.
“I wasn’t thinking about anything intellectual or rational, I was just like, ‘We have to stop this, if we don’t stop this, there’s nothing else,’’ she told the BBC.
“To be honest, I was a bit scared at first when I first saw the martial law troops. I thought, ‘Is this something that can happen in 21st century Korea, especially in the National Assembly?”
“After such a storm last night, it was hard to get back to reality,” she added, recalling the previous night. “I felt like I was witnessing the regression of history.”
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