South Korean President Yoon's martial law declaration raises questions over his political future

What happened yesterday cannot be understood with your normal common sense,

she told NBC News

A troubling trend in many democracies is that polarization and extreme measures to address deadlock are increasingly testing trust in international alliances,

he added

My initial reaction was shock and disbelief that such a thing would happen in the middle of the night, especially when most people would already be at home sleeping,

she said

We huddled together and tried to make sense of what was happening, and it was clear that my fellow lawmakers were in shock,

he said

Such an incident has happened before, and because the people, especially the older generation, know about the importance of curbing it in its budding stages, they managed to take control of the situation before things got out of hand,

she said

He sounded like a politician under siege, making a desperate move against mounting scandals, institutional obstruction and calls for impeachment, all of which are now likely to intensify,

he said

China has asked its nationals in the South Korea to take extra safety precautions. We hope the South Korea will take effective measures to protect the safety and security of Chinese nationals and institutions in South Korea,

Lin added

Daily life has not been impacted, everything seems normal around me, but many people are going to supermarkets to buy stuff due to the concern caused by the martial law,

Li noted

There’s a growing sentiment that the president himself has become the greatest risk to the Republic of Korea and that things cannot continue as they are,

Park said

Both his own ruling party and the opposition party want to hold him accountable. For the first time, in a highly polarized country, both sides of the aisle agree that Yoon’s choice in declaring martial law was the wrong move,

Duyeon Kim, the analyst, said

His advisers should have tried to dissuade him not to do it, and they likely did so. But I think that didn’t work, and Yoon just pressed ahead with his plan,

said Hong Sung Gul, a public administration professor at Seoul’s Kookmin University

Conservatives and even moderates would agree with Yoon’s criticism and his assessment of progressive lawmakers, but his choice of methods in the 21st century is being seen as the wrong move, miscalculation, and even political suicide,

said Duyeon Kim, a senior analyst at the Center for a New American Security in Washington

In these crucial times, especially with Donald Trump returning to office and the variety of difficult geopolitical challenges facing the region at the moment, political instability in South Korea is something that neither the United States nor Japan would want,

said Park Won Gon, a professor at Seoul’s Ewha Womans University in Seoul

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

It's important for me to be here to show that we are against what Yoon tried to do,

Hwang said

We are a strong democracy...But Korean people want to be safe — President Yoon must resign or be impeached,

Yang Bu-nam, a Democratic Party politician, told the BBC

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

The streets look normal, people here are certainly bewildered,

John Nilsson-Wright, an associate professor at the University of Cambridge, told BBC World Service from Seoul

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,

said the 19-year-old student, who wished to be identified only by his surname

After such a storm last night, it was hard to get back to reality,

she added, recalling the previous night