He imposed martial law, sent armed troops to parliament, and was unceremoniously stripped of office — but some South Koreans still believe disgraced ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol is the country’s true leader.
Yoon is barred from standing in the June 3 snap election triggered by his ouster, but experts say his influence continues to loom over the poll as he drew extreme religious figures and right-wing YouTubers into mainstream politics.
These die-hard backers dismiss his impeachment and ongoing criminal trial on insurrection charges as a sham, and say he is a hero who has sacrificed himself for the country.
With election hustings on, they’re taking to the streets to support Yoon, not his ex-party’s new candidate.
Wearing matching pink T-shirts that read “I love Yoon” and a drawing of the former president with his wife, many of his most fervent supporters gathered in Seoul Monday, waving signs saying: “We are always on Yoon’s side.”
Outside the Seoul Central District Court, where Yoon attends criminal hearings for his insurrection trial, his supporters prayed in the streets and sang Yoon-themed K-pop inspired hymns, including one called “Yoon’s Eternal Spirit”.
Yoon’s martial law bid was a “courageous” attempt to save the country from North Korea, 40-year-old Lee Ju-hean, a North Korean defector, told AFP at the pro-Yoon rally.
“Seeing the country in such a state, I thought it would’ve been stranger if the president had done nothing,” she said.
Yoon’s actions “reaffirmed my love and respect for him — the president I chose,” she added.
Yoon himself had justified his bid to end civilian rule as necessary to break legislative gridlock and “root out” pro-North Korean, “anti-state” forces.
– ‘Betrayal’ –
The Constitutional Court, when ousting Yoon from office on April 4, said his acts were a “betrayal of people’s trust” and “denial of the principles of democracy”.
The court’s unanimous decision significantly diminished Yoon’s far-right support base, experts said, and the former president quit his conservative party before pressure grew for it to expel him.
But even so, the political forces that Yoon cultivated and unleashed onto the South Korean political scene may outlive him, experts say, with a sharp rise in misinformation and online conspiracy, including unproven claims of election fraud.
Yoon has been accused of tacitly encouraging his extreme supporters — who stormed a court building in January after it extended his detention — sending them messages through his lawyers, and issuing statements that he would stand with them “to the very end”.
When leaving the presidential residence after being ousted, he wore a red hat that said “Make Korea Great Again” — an apparent nod to the Trump-era slogan.
On Wednesday, Yoon attended a screening of a film alleging vote tampering, as his supporters held signs reading: “(We are) convinced that the June 3 election will be rigged.”
The Yoon presidency has “deepened societal fractures” in South Korea, Gi-Wook Shin, a sociology professor at Stanford University, told AFP.
“His loyalists have contributed to a growing mistrust in core institutions,” Shin said.
“Courts are viewed as partisan, mainstream media as elite and complicit, and emergency powers as tools of political combat rather than constitutional safeguards.”
Party adrift?
After a spectacular bout of infighting, Yoon’s former conservative People Power Party selected Kim Moon-soo as their candidate, although he remains solidly in second place.
The former labour and pro-democracy activist pleased pro-Yoon hardliners when he initially refused to join the cabinet in a bow as apology for failing to prevent martial law — although he has subsequently apologised for the incident.
He’s trailing front-runner ex-opposition leader Lee Jae-myung by a wide margin, polls show, and while Yoon has told his supporters to vote for Kim, the official PPP candidate does not appear to be tapping into Yoon’s most loyal base.
Many such supporters, like O Yu-hyun, 26, describe Yoon’s actions in almost biblical terms, claiming he has done everything as “an act of sacrifice to restore the country to normal”.
Another supporter, Hudson Park, 32, said Yoon was his hope for the future, when “neither the judiciary, the media, families, nor even the church has listened to the problems or pain of the younger generation”.
At the pro-Yoon gathering Monday, emotions ran high as supporters broke into tears, before one shouted, echoing Yoon’s words from January: “We have not forgotten him. We will stand by President Yoon Suk Yeol until the very end!”
