Crowds of people wrapped up against the bitter January cold clutch signs emblazoned with the slogan \u201cStop the Steal,\u201d wave US flags, and don red MAGA-like hats. <\/p>\n
But this scene is 11,000 kilometers (7,000 miles) away from Washington, DC, in the South Korean capital Seoul, where throngs of die-hard conservative supporters of the suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol have gathered outside his home to protect the embattled leader from arrest. <\/p>\n
Yoon successfully resisted an attempt to detain him on Friday after an hours-long standoff with authorities over his dramatic but short-lived declaration of martial law in December that plunged the country into political chaos. <\/p>\n
South Korean lawmakers voted to impeach Yoon last month, including some from within his own party. The conservative president remains in office, but with little to no real power. His political fate will be decided by the country\u2019s constitutional court, likely in the spring, which will determine if he will be formally removed from the presidency or reinstated in office. <\/p>\n
In the meantime, corruption investigators are determined to execute the arrest warrant on charges of insurrection and abuse of power. A sitting South Korean president has never faced criminal charges before, but the man at the center of the martial law maelstrom \u2014 who is himself a former prosecutor \u2014 says he will \u201cfight until the end.\u201d <\/p>\n
Yoon, widely seen as a conservative firebrand and staunch US ally tough on China and North Korea, has urged his supporters to do the same. <\/p>\n
As they hold vigil, Yoon\u2019s supporters wave American flags alongside the South Korean Taegeukgi, its national flag. Red \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d-inspired hats are selling for about $5.50 at pro-Yoon rallies, the words \u201cagainst the unlawful impeachment\u201d stitched in white lettering in Korean. <\/p>\n
And chants of \u201cStop the steal!\u201d can be heard reverberating outside Yoon\u2019s residence, the slogan popularized by US President-elect Donald Trump and his supporters to question the results of the 2020 US election. <\/p>\n
For Yoon\u2019s conservative supporters who have the adopted the slogans and iconography associated with the MAGA movement, they see similarities between South Korea\u2019s current political crisis and the US, where twice-impeached Trump is set to take office for a second term on January 20. <\/p>\n
The US is South Korea\u2019s most important ally, an alliance that has gone back decades. <\/p>\n
South Korean conservatism, which includes Yoon\u2019s ruling People Power Party, holds strong bonds with the American conservative and evangelical movements. And Yoon\u2019s followers have claimed the April 2024 national election, which the opposition won in a landslide, was stolen from them. <\/p>\n
They now believe a president may be stolen from them, too, despite a lack of evidence. <\/p>\n
In his speech declaring martial law, Yoon labeled the opposition\u2019s actions \u201cclear anti-state behavior aimed at inciting rebellion,\u201d referenced \u201cthreats posed by North Korea\u2019s communist forces,\u201d and vowed to \u201celiminate anti-state elements.\u201d <\/p>\n
His words echoed right-wing conspiracy theories that have been spread widely online by South Korean YouTube commentators and activists. <\/p>\n
But they also mirrored rhetoric used by Trump against his opponents, with references to an \u201cenemy from within\u201d and the \u201cradical left.\u201d <\/p>\n
In the US, \u201cStop the Steal\u201d emerged as a battle cry for Trump and his allies to trumpet groundless claims that President Joe Biden was trying to steal the 2020 election. After Trump\u2019s loss, his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to thwart Congress\u2019 certification of Biden\u2019s win. Trump and his high-profile allies have espoused myriad claims of election fraud, none of which were verified or upheld in court. <\/p>\n
That story rhymes in South Korea. <\/p>\n
President Yoon\u2019s conservative party lost the country\u2019s April 2024 general election in a landslide, when all 300 seats in South Korea\u2019s National Assembly were on the ballot. <\/p>\n
Yoon suggested election fraud after his failed martial law declaration, alleging in a speech on December 12 that South Korea\u2019s election computer systems were compromised by North Korean hackers. <\/p>\n
The allegations have never been substantiated by national election authorities, or the country\u2019s judiciary. South Koreans all vote with paper ballots, and hard copies of their votes are preserved. <\/p>\n
On the night he declared martial law, Yoon sent about 300 troops to the National Election Commission (NEC) offices. Security footage shows troops entering the building, with one solider appearing to take a photo of election servers. Later, former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun said troops were deployed there to look into the suspected election fraud. <\/p>\n
\u201cYoon\u2019s claims are exaggerated and not true,\u201d the NEC said after Yoon\u2019s suggestion of North Korean election interference. \u201cNo evidence of outside intrusion into the election system was found. The security system was enhanced prior to the April elections.\u201d <\/p>\n
Many of Yoon\u2019s supporters believe, without evidence, the president is being removed from office because he was investigating what he called election fraud. <\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the vantage point of Yoon\u2019s supporters, it\u2019s tempting to draw an analogy \u2013 even if it falls short of an exact apples-to-apples comparison \u2013 between him being driven from power now, in the middle of what was supposed to be his single term in office, and Trump losing power after the 2020 election,\u201d said Hans Schattle, professor of political science at Yonsei University in Seoul. <\/p>\n
Schattle adds that Yoon acted outside the limits of the constitution when he declared martial law and should be held legally accountable. The analogy his supporters are making to the \u201cStop the Steal\u201d fabrication is \u201cunsettling,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe \u2018Stop the Steal\u2019 signs also represent an effort by the extreme right-wing in South Korea to make a connection with Trump (whom the South Korean government will soon be negotiating with once he returns to the US presidency) and defend their beleaguered president,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Analysts say the \u201cStop the Steal\u201d slogan is a new phenomenon in South Korea, but the American flag has long been spotted at right-wing political rallies. <\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s conservative electorate widely views the United States as a bastion of freedom, democracy, anti-communism, and the home of a strong evangelical Christian community. <\/p>\n
The political right has also \u201clong emphasized\u201d the importance of the American alliance, the crucial US assistance during the Korean War in the 1950s and continued military and security allyship, according to Byungwon Woo, professor of international relations at Yonsei University. <\/p>\n
The right, he said, has \u201caccused the political left of souring the alliance and instead, approaching closer to China, being friendly to North Korea.\u201d <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a feeling that was shared among Yoon\u2019s supporters outside his residence on Friday. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe other side, the left, they\u2019re communists,\u201d said one Seoul resident in his 60s. \u201cWe\u2019re not all right-wing. We\u2019re normal people who don\u2019t want communism from the left.\u201d <\/p>\n
A leading voice of the evangelical right is Rev. Jun Kwang-hoon, who took the stage at a rally on Friday to defend Yoon\u2019s martial law declaration. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf President Yoon hadn\u2019t declared martial law, the country would already be in the hands of North Korea!\u201d he shouted. <\/p>\n
Christians who fled to the South to escape oppression under the communist regime held strong anti-communist views intertwined with a strong pro-American stance. <\/p>\n
Jun, a Presbyterian pastor and former leader of the Christian right-wing Liberty Unification Party, has taken a central role at pro-Yoon rallies. The party campaigns on anti-communism, opposition to LGBTQ rights, and strong support for the US. <\/p>\n
Jun and his followers share Yoon\u2019s claim the 2024 election was rigged by North Korean hackers, and he frames his cause as a sacred war against \u201cevil communism.\u201d <\/p>\n
Political scientist Schattle says Yoon may be projecting an image to his supporters that \u201che and his people are the only ones protecting South Korea from a never-ending North Korean threat and that keeping Yoon in power therefore saves South Korean democracy.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also worth noting that Yoon\u2019s foreign policy since he took office as president in 2022 has been driven by forging closer ties with the United States and Japan,\u201d he said, the latter being \u201cespecially controversial in South Korea.\u201d <\/p>\n
Some Yoon supporters outside his residence hope Trump will hear their concerns and even come to his rescue. <\/p>\n
\u201cI hope that Trump will take office soon and raise his voice against the rigged elections in our country plus around the world so as to help President Yoon to return (to power) swiftly,\u201d Pyeong In-su, 71, told Reuters. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Crowds of people wrapped up against the bitter January cold clutch signs emblazoned with the slogan \u201cStop the Steal,\u201d wave US flags, and don red MAGA-like hats. But this scene is 11,000 kilometers (7,000 miles)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2330,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}