Last year, a political blockbuster gripped South Korea with a dramatization of a painful memory from its authoritarian past, when the assassination of President Park Chung-hee in 1979 led to a military coup and plunged the country into the iron grip of martial law.

South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol faced parliamentary moves to impeach him after he sent heavily armed forces into Seoul's streets with his baffling and sudden declaration of martial law that harkened to the country’s past dictatorships.