Koh Ewe and Yuna Ku
BBC News
Reporting from Singapore and Seoulgetty Images
A pro-yoon fringe movement, delighted by the youtubers across the right, has become both more energized and extreme
The painful cries sounded in front of the official residence of former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday, while the judges of the judges of the Constitutional Court confirmed his dismissal.
“I came here with hope in my heart, believing that we would win … It is so unfair,” said Bog-Sil, 64, in BBC Korean since the rally, where thousands of people had gathered to support Yoon.
These scenes were broadcast live to thousands of others on YouTube-a popular platform not only with supporters of Yoon, but the president himself.
A disgrace yoon is now stripped of his power, but he leaves behind a southern Korea increasingly divided.
Last December, the declaration of the Martial law of Yoon cost him the confidence of a large part of the country. But among his supporters, his current legal problems have only strengthened the image of a injured Savior.
Many of them echo the stories tied up by right-right influential youtubers who support Yoon: this martial law was necessary to protect the country from the opposition legislators of pro-North Korea and dangerously powerful opposition, and that the conservative party of Yoon was the victim of electoral fraud.
All this culminated in a marginal movement which has become both more energetic and extreme, spreading behind the computer screens in the streets.
The “Stop the Steal” signs have become a must during pro -Yoon rallies – co -opted by supporters of US President Donald Trump, whose own political career has been helped by a network of conservative youtubers.
Shortly after Yoon’s arrest in January, enraged supporters stormed a courthouse in Seoul, armed with metal beams, stressing police officers who got up on their way.
Last month, an elderly man died after burnt down near the Seoul town hall a few weeks earlier. A pile of deplicants accusing opposition leaders of being pro-North pro-Korean forces was found near him.
“If they stay here, our country will become a communist nation,” said the leaflets. “There is no future for this country, no future for young people.”
Getty images
The assault of a Seoul courthouse by Yoon supporters represents a new trend of violence that has divided the Conservatives
Even the conservatives were surprised and divided by this new trend of violence.
“He watched too many trash YouTube videos,” read an editorial in daily Korea Jongang – one of the many conservative media who are increasingly disagreeing with Yoon supporters. “A compulsive observer of biased YouTube content can live in a fanatic world dominated by plots.”
From the start, Yoon kissed the Youtubers on the right, inviting some of them to its inauguration in 2022.
In January, while defying the attempts at the arrest, the president told the supporters that he looked at their gatherings on Livestream Youtube. PPP legislators said Yoon had urged them to consume “well -organized information on Youtube” instead of “biased” media.
The accounts of the Democratic Party of the Opposition are maintained by the Democratic Party of the opposition in Beijing and to try to curl the favor of Pyongyang.
After the Democratic Party won in the polls by a landslide last April, some of these channels claimed that Yoon was a victim of electoral interference led by China, and that the sympathizers of North Korea who hid among the opposition were at the origin of the defeat of the ruling party. Similar affirmations have been taken up by Yoon when he tried to justify his declaration of short -term martial law.
These stories have found a resonance in an online audience which houses a general distrust of the media and the concerns of the neighbors of South Korea.
Getty images
When Yoon supporters gathered in front of his residence in January to block his arrest, scenes of confrontation with the police were broadcast live on YouTube
“I think that (the election was) totally fraudulent, because when you vote, you fold the newspaper, but they continued to find papers that were not folded,” Kim said, who only gave his family name, to the BBC during a pro-Yoon rally in January. Affirmations like these have not decreased despite a previous decision of the Supreme Court that the voting slips have not been manipulated.
Kim, 28, is among a contingent of young men who have become the new faces of the right of South Korea.
Young perspective, a YouTube channel with more than 800,000 subscribers led by someone who describes himself as “a young man who values freedom”, often shares clips of parliamentary sessions showing that PPP politicians destroy the members of the opposition.
Another popular youtuber is Jun Kwang-Hoon, pastor and founder of the Evangelical Party for Unification of Liberty, which publishes videos of politically loading sermons urging its 200,000 subscribers to join pro-Yoon rallies. This is in accordance with the historically strong Protestant support for conservatism in South Korea.
Nam Hyun-Joo, an employee of a theological school, told the BBC that she thought that the Chinese Communist Party was “the main actor behind electoral fraud”. Standing outside the Constitutional Court in the cold of January biting, she held a protest sign denouncing the judiciary.
Other voices dominating the virtual domain are a snapshot of the rest of Yoon’s support base: middle -aged men or the elderly. One of them manages a stroke of genius, one of the largest professional YouTube channels with 1.6 million subscribers. His difficulties in networks of rallies and monologues regularly pill Yoon opponents regularly accumulate tens of thousands of views, the section of the flooded calls to “protect President Yoon”.
During the tumultuous months since the declaration of the Martial Law of Yoon, it seems that the popularity of his party has not suffered.
In fact, completely the opposite: while the PPP approval ratings increased to 26.2% in the days that followed martial law, it rebounded more than 40% a few weeks later – much higher than before chaos.
Supported by the loyalty of his supporters, Yoon wrote them in a letter in January that it was only after being charged that he “felt like a president”.
“Everyone scratches their heads a bit here,” said Michael Breen, a consultant based in Seoul and former journalist who covered Korea, to the BBC. While the conservatives in South Korea have been “very divided and weak” in the last decade, he says, Yoon is “now more popular with them than before trying to introduce martial law”.
This solidarity was probably fed by a shared aversion to the opposition, which launched multiple attempts to dismiss members of the Yoon cabinet, pushed criminal investigations against Yoon and his wife, and used his parliamentary majority to dismiss the replacement of Yoon Han Duck-SOO.
“I think that the power of the opposition party to the Assembly has put itself at the head,” explains Mr. Breen. “Now they have gotten into the foot.”
Natalie Thomas / BBC
A besieged yoon has become greater than life, renamed as a martyr who considered martial law as the only way to save the democracy of South Korea.
“If it was not for the good of the country, he would not have chosen martial law, where he should pay with his life if he failed,” a participant in the pro-Yoon rally told the BBC, who only gave his surname park.
This also contributed to an expansion of the chasm within the PPP. While some have joined Pro-Yoon rallies, others have crossed party lines to vote for the dismissal of Yoon.
“Why do people love him like a king? I can’t understand him,” said PPP CHO Kyoung-Tae legislator, who supported Yoon’s dismissal.
Kim Sang-Wook, another PPP legislator who has become a prominent anti-yoon voice among the conservatives, said he was forced to leave the party after supporting Yoon’s indictment. And now, the Youtubers, according to Kim, have become the president’s public relations machine.
The concerns simmered an increasingly ungovernable group within the conservative movement. And as influential left-wing youtubers also rally the anti-Yoon demonstrators, it is also feared that political differences are increasingly in-depth in the fabric of South Korea society.
“Much damage has already been caused in terms of radicalization of the right, and the left also elsewhere,” the BBC, lawyer and American Korea, lawyer and Korea in the United States.
He added that at this stage, “any compromise with a conservative party which continues to kiss Yoon will probably be considered an anathema”.
“By conducting his attempt as an insurrection in the center of Korean policy, Yoon actually executed a decade of polarization.”
