The Tamesis
February 27, 2026
Seoul – Production company IP Box Media 1 said on Wednesday that the film tentatively titled “Martial Law 12.3” will be the first narrative feature film set against the backdrop of the brief martial law imposed by former President Yoon Seok-yeol on December 3, 2024. The cast has been locked in and filming will begin in the first half of this year.
Written and directed by Park Kyung-soo, the film is subtitled “PM 10:24,” a nod to the moment Yoon appeared in a televised speech to announce martial law. The production company said it brought together the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that led to the decree.
Gong Hyung-jin’s last screen work was 2022’s “Secret,” in which he played the protagonist of a former attorney general who later becomes president and wields emergency powers. The character is a thinly veiled stand-in for Yoon, himself a career prosecutor who won the presidency in 2022.
The main actors include Li Jialing and Li Shangxun.
On the evening of December 3, 2024, Yin declared martial law in a late-night television speech, accusing the opposition of being “anti-national forces” aligned with North Korea. Yin claimed that the military was sent to the National Assembly and the National Election Commission to monitor fraudulent elections.
Large crowds gathered outside the National Assembly as lawmakers broke through police barricades and scaled fences to reach the parliament chamber. A total of 190 lawmakers, including members of Yoon’s party, voted unanimously within hours to overturn the decree.
About two weeks later, following an impeachment vote in parliament, the Constitutional Court unanimously decided on April 4, 2025 that Yoon Eun-joon was officially removed from the presidency. On February 19, he was arrested, tried, convicted of rebellion, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The martial law crisis spawned several documentaries and politically charged works, but Martial Law 12.3 marks the first feature-length film with a proper narrative based on the event.
The closest precedent in fiction is “The Pact,” a dramatization of former first lady Kim Keon Hee’s rise to power that sold more than 800,000 tickets in June despite a limited theatrical release.
