SEOUL -- With her sight seriously impaired since childhood, Kim Yea-ji has overcome obstacles all her life, becoming a concert pianist, an activist and then a lawmaker. Late into the night of Dec. 3, she came up against a hurdle she desperately wanted to climb, but couldn't -- the 2.7-meter perimeter wall at South Korea's National Assembly.
Like nearly 200 of her lawmaker peers, Kim had rushed to the assembly to try to pass an emergency bill to force the lifting of martial law, abruptly declared by President Yoon Suk Yeol in a TV address around 10:30 that evening. Yoon had cited what he said was the need to protect the country's democracy from "anti-state forces" linked to North Korea.
