By Mike Valerio, Yoonjung Seo, Gawon Bae and Helen Regan, CNN
Seoul, South Korea (CNN) — Crowds of people wrapped up against the bitter January cold clutch signs emblazoned with the slogan “Stop the Steal,” wave US flags, and don red MAGA-like hats.
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.
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.
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’s constitutional court, likely in the spring, which will determine if he will be formally removed from the presidency or reinstated in office.
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 — who is himself a former prosecutor — says he will “fight until the end.”
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.
As they hold vigil, Yoon’s supporters wave American flags alongside the South Korean Taegeukgi, its national flag. Red “Make America Great Again”-inspired hats are selling for about $5.50 at pro-Yoon rallies, the words “against the unlawful impeachment” stitched in white lettering in Korean.
And chants of “Stop the steal!” can be heard reverberating outside Yoon’s residence, the slogan popularized by US President-elect Donald Trump and his supporters to question the results of the 2020 US election.
For Yoon’s conservative supporters who have the adopted the slogans and iconography associated with the MAGA movement, they see similarities between South Korea’s current political crisis and the US, where twice-impeached Trump is set to take office for a second term on January 20.
The US is South Korea’s most important ally, an alliance that has gone back decades.
South Korean conservatism, which includes Yoon’s ruling People Power Party, holds strong bonds with the American conservative and evangelical movements. And Yoon’s followers have claimed the April 2024 national election, which the opposition won in a landslide, was stolen from them.
They now believe a president may be stolen from them, too, despite a lack of evidence.
“I’m here for democracy. The election was rigged and we need to defend our country,” one Yoon supporter told CNN from outside the presidential residence Friday.
A slogan rooted in conspiracies
In his speech declaring martial law, Yoon labelled the opposition’s actions “clear anti-state behavior aimed at inciting rebellion,” referenced “threats posed by North Korea’s communist forces,” and vowed to “eliminate anti-state elements.”
His words echoed right wing conspiracy theories that have spread widely online by South Korean YouTube commentators and activists.
But they also mirrored rhetoric used by Trump against his opponents, with references to an “enemy from within” and the “radical left.”
In the US, “Stop the Steal” 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’s loss, his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to thwart Congress’ certification of Biden’s win. Trump and his high-profile allies have espoused myriad claims of election fraud, none of which were verified or upheld in court.
That story rhymes in South Korea.
President Yoon’s conservative party lost the country’s April 2024 general election in a landslide, when all 300 members of South Korea’s National Assembly were on the ballot.
Yoon suggested election fraud after his failed martial law declaration, alleging in a speech on December 12 that South Korea’s election computer systems were compromised by North Korean hackers.
The allegations have never been substantiated by national election authorities, or the country’s judiciary. South Koreans all vote with paper ballots, and hard copies of their votes are preserved.
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.
“Yoon’s claims are exaggerated and not true,” the NEC said after Yoon’s suggestion of North Korean election interference. “No evidence of outside intrusion into the election system was found. The security system was enhanced prior to the April elections.”
Many of Yoon’s supporters believe, without evidence, the president is being removed from office because he was investigating what he called election fraud.
“From the vantage point of Yoon’s supporters, it’s tempting to draw an analogy – even if it falls short of an exact apples-to-apples comparison – 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,” said Hans Schattle, professor of political science at Yonsei University in Seoul.
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 “Stop the Steal” fabrication is “unsettling,” he said.
“The ‘Stop the Steal’ 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,” he said.
A strong US alliance
Analysts say the “Stop the Steal” slogan is a new phenomenon in South Korea, but the American flag has long been spotted at right-wing political rallies.
South Korea’s conservative electorate widely views the United States as a bastion of freedom, democracy, anti-communism, and the home of a strong evangelical Christian community.
The political right has also “long emphasized” 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 Seoul’s Yonsei University.
The right, he said, has “accused the political left of souring the alliance and instead, approaching closer to China, being friendly to North Korea.”
It’s a feeling that was shared among Yoon’s supporters outside his residence on Friday.
“The other side, the left, they’re communists,” said one Seoul resident in his 60s. “We’re not all right-wing. We’re normal people who don’t want communism from the left.”
A leading voice of the evangelical right is Rev. Jun Kwang-hoon, who took the stage at a rally on Friday to defend Yoon’s martial law declaration.
“If President Yoon hadn’t declared martial law, the country would already be in the hands of North Korea!” he shouted.
Christianity in South Korea traces its origins to the northern regions of Korea, where missionaries first arrived and the faith thrived before the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, Tark Ji-il, a professor at Busan Presbyterian University, told CNN.
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.
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.
Jun and his followers share Yoon’s claim the 2024 election was rigged by North Korean hackers, and he frames his cause as a sacred war against “evil communism.”
Political scientist Schattle says Yoon may be projecting an image to his supporters that “he 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.”
“It’s also worth noting that Yoon’s foreign policy since he took office as president in 2022 has been driven by forging closer ties with the United States and Japan,” he said, the latter being “especially controversial in South Korea.”
Some Yoon supporters outside his residence hope Trump will hear their concerns and even come to his rescue.
“I 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,” Pyeong In-su, 71, told Reuters.
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CNN’s Jay Ganglani contributed reporting.
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