Acting President Choi Sang-mok reiterated that he was initially unaware of the contents of a note he received December 3, the day President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law.

On Thursday, during the third hearing of an investigation into insurrection allegations against members of the Yoon Suk Yeol government, Choi told the National Assembly’s special committee in charge of the probe that he never read the note during the Cabinet meeting December 3. 

Instead, he said, he gave it to the vice minister of strategy and finance.

The note is said to contain orders to secure government contingency funds and to allocate a budget for a “national emergency legislative body.”

Choi said he read the note around 1:50 a.m. on December 4 after a meeting of senior finance ministry officials and only then realized it was related to the martial law situation.

When asked why he didn’t read the note immediately after receiving it, he said martial law was “an unimaginable, surreal situation” and that he was “too focused” on monitoring the foreign exchange market.