On Tuesday night, the leader of South Korea’s main opposition The People’s Power Party, Han Dong-hoon, called on lawmakers and the public to gather outside the National Assembly building – the main parliament – in Seoul.
Protesters chanted “no to martial law” and “strike down dictatorship” as the sounds of sirens from dozens of assembled police patrol cars and riot police buses occasionally rang out.
Clashes between police and protesters were reported in the early hours of Wednesday.
But some people were left mystified by the move.
“The streets look normal, people here are certainly bewildered,” John Nilsson-Wright, an associate professor at the University of Cambridge, told the World Service from Seoul.
“It looked like this was simply politics of a normal sort.”