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A massive crowd gathers outside the National Assembly in Seoul’s Yeouido on Dec. 3, 2025, to mark the first anniversary of the martial law crisis. (Kim Hye-yun/Hankyoreh)

 
On Dec. 3, 2024, thousands of Koreans descended upon the National Assembly and into the line of possible fire, knowing that they could be headed to their deaths.
 
Without these people, who stopped armed soldiers with nothing more than their bodies, South Korea’s democracy and the country as we know it would have been toppled by the insurrectionists. All Koreans are indebted to these brave folk.
 
A month later, in January, when everyone watched with bated breath the arrest of Yoon Suk-yeol and the subsequent trials of him and his conspirators in the insurrection, a group of people quietly began to create a people’s history of how Koreans felt and what they witnessed on the fateful December night.
 
“The Night of Insurrection, Recorded by the People” is a compilation of testimonies from 313 of the roughly 9,000 to 10,000 ordinary Koreans who filled the streets in front of the National Assembly on Dec. 3. The book was created by asking and recording why people went to the National Assembly, what spurred them to action, whose they fought for, and what they wanted to see from the society that they went all out to protect.
 
“That f*cking asshole!” People abandoned their late-night snacks, their English homework, their workouts, their karaoke spree to jump onto the nearest taxi, bus or subway to get to the National Assembly. The memories of the brutal Gwangju massacre in May 1980 by martial law forces flashed past everyone’s eyes. Some grasped the driving wheel with unsteady, trembling hands. Each new turn of the page brings a new heartbreaking testimony.
 
One taxi driver, who was waiting to get a request to go to Yeouido, cried as they apologized for “leaving young people with a country in this state.” Many taxi drivers refused to take payment, dropping people off fare free. People who had been anxious while traveling to the National Assembly subway station, terrified that they would be alone, felt relieved by the fact that they were surrounded by strangers in stuffed subway cars all headed into the same unknown. Imagine how you would have seen the barricades preventing soldiers and police officers from entering the National Assembly, formed by ordinary citizens, as you stood on the escalator taking you outside the station.
 
The book also sheds new light on and questions the narrative that a passive response from the police and military at the time helped bring that night of terror to an end, so predominant as to have been mentioned in the Constitutional Court’s decision upholding Yoon’s impeachment and removing him from office. 

In the book, many attest that, save for a small minority, the police officers who had formed a cordon around the National Assembly that night were aggressive in keeping the line, and that the hesitance shown by the martial law forces may not have been the same without ordinary people there showing up in force to resist them. 

Their stories go to show that we cannot paper over the issue with compromises when it comes to the ongoing trials of those involved in the insurrection and social responses to the crisis.

By rushing to the National Assembly that night, people did more than save Korea as we knew it before the insurrection. They brought their fight that night to those who have been “living in states of pseudo-martial law” in their daily lives. We should all be thankful for the extraordinary courage of these ordinary people.

“The Night of Insurrection, Recorded by the People,” edited by Kang Moon Min-seo, Song Seo-yeon, Cho Yong-hwan. Published by The Truth Foundation.

By Kim Nam-il, staff reporter

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