As South Korea grapples with the political turmoil of impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol’s arrest following his failed declaration of martial legislation, lawmakers from Yoon’s conservative Individuals Energy Social gathering (PPP) are turning to U.S. President Donald Trump in a determined cry for assist. After a mob of evangelical far-right supporters of Yoon stormed the Seoul Western District Court docket constructing on Jan. 19 in a violent riot in opposition to his arrest—drawing alarming parallels to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol—conservative politicians are spinning Yoon’s authoritarian gamble as a courageous geopolitical transfer in opposition to Chinese language interference and towards a stronger alliance with the US.
As lawmakers from the PPP and the opposition Democratic Social gathering gathered at Trump’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., to make diplomatic overtures amid the manager vacuum, Yoon’s allies turned to the newly returned U.S. president to intervene of their home disaster.
“We’ll ship an correct account of the unprecedented state of affairs, detailing how the opposition celebration incited a riot to question the president and, thereafter, the performing president,” Na Kyung-won, a lawmaker from the PPP, wrote on Fb the day earlier than she left for Washington. Na, a longtime conservative stalwart, flaunted her friendship with first woman Melania Trump, supposedly blossoming from a joint marketing campaign in 2017 to advertise women’ sports activities in faculties within the run-up to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
“We’ll articulate to the US how the opposition celebration denigrated liberal democratic diplomacy and espoused a totalitarian, anti-liberal worldview by means of its impeachment efforts,” she wrote, echoing Yoon’s vilification of his political enemies as patrons of “communist totalitarianism.”
Heading to D.C., she was accompanied by a flurry of flushed conservative lawmakers who every flexed their very own tenuous ties to the Trump administration and flashed excessive hopes for the U.S. president’s admiration for authoritarians around the globe.
Na, together with most different PPP lawmakers, voted in opposition to Yoon’s impeachment on the Nationwide Meeting final month and braved the frozen streets exterior the presidential compound in Yongsan, Seoul, earlier this month to rally in opposition to Yoon’s arrest over revolt expenses.
She was joined by far-right supporters of Yoon, principally older, evangelical Christian nationalists harboring staunch anti-communist sentiments, who weathered the chilling daybreak with their MAGA-inspired pink baseball caps and held up banners emblazoned with the phrase “Cease the Steal,” a slogan borrowed from conspiratorial Trump supporters. They name themselves the “national-flag brigade,” a nod to their trademark mixed South Korea-U.S. flags broadcasting a transnational alt-right alliance.
As each pillar of Yoon’s energy toppled—his martial legislation troops, his conservative celebration, his presidential fortress—his followers have clung to the hope, fervently preached on alt-right conspiracy boards, that Trump would swoop to their rescue. They proclaim that Trump would in some way examine their claims of voter fraud within the final parliamentary elections following the opposition celebration’s landslide victories—fictional narratives propagated by a military of alt-right Youtubers and championed by Yoon himself. Finally, they avow with evangelical fervor, Trump would defeat the Constitutional Court docket’s impeachment of Yoon.
To be clear, the U.S. president has no energy to overturn South Korean democracy. However in a determined try to salvage his botched autogolpe, Yoon has launched into a brand new political maneuver. He has reframed his bid for autocracy as a triumphant protection in opposition to Chinese language infiltration into home politics, evoking reminiscences of Washington’s intervention within the Korean Battle as a democratic savior in opposition to communist subversion.
In a televised handle earlier than his impeachment, Yoon pointed to nationwide safety threats posed by China as grounds for declaring martial legislation, alleging that Chinese language espionage was focusing on the army alliance between South Korea and the US. He additionally warned that “Chinese language solar energy amenities would destroy forests throughout South Korea,” interesting to deep-seated anxieties amongst conservatives over Chinese language industrial energy.
An extended-standing pressure of Sinophobia plagues South Korean politics, stemming from Chilly Battle legacies; historic disputes over territorial id and most not too long ago, China’s financial retaliation in opposition to South Korea’s deployment of a U.S. missile protection system.
Constructing on this lineage of Sinophobic sentiments, Yoon has been spinning lies that China is a secret mastermind behind his home defeats, together with the parliamentary elections held final April. After his impeachment, Yoon posted a transcript and a photograph of a six-page handwritten letter on Fb, claiming that “the rigged election system was architected by a world alliance and cooperation of political forces,” even going so far as to accuse China and the Democratic Social gathering of electoral collusion.
Yoon’s supporters took his fringe rhetoric as a cue to flock to Trump, the chief crusader in opposition to China and champion of electoral conspiracy theories. They argued, taking to the streets of Seoul and flooding on-line boards, that Democratic Social gathering chief Lee Jae-myung—Yoon’s principal political rival, poised to be the front-runner within the subsequent presidential election—was backed by “Chinese language communists.” Borrowing the language of evangelical Christianity that a lot of them espouse, they declared that Trump has a messianic mission to dismantle China.
After raiding the Seoul Western District Court docket constructing on Sunday, rioters flooded a web site referred to as “New Man Energy,” a web-based bastion of alt-right conspiracy theories, with messages that they nonetheless had a “sturdy card to play—Trump.”
To redeem Yoon’s authoritarian gambit, the PPP has been amplifying the conspiracy narrative propagated by his supporters.
“All over the place you go, the Chinese language are rallying for Yoon’s impeachment,” stated Kim Min-jeon, an in depth ally to Yoon and former political science professor who made her title as an avid liberal political commentator earlier than diving into politics and regularly switching allegiances to the far proper. “The crux of Yoon’s impeachment is about whether or not South Korea turns into a liberal democracy like the US or turns into China, North Korea, or Russia,” she stated, fueling geopolitical anxieties over the trilateral partnership.
A far-right firebrand, Kim didn’t draw back from respiration air into fringe nationalist actions to impress conservatives. Earlier this month, Kim held a press convention that includes an anti-communist youth league nicknamed the “White Cranium Corps” after the plainclothes cops in white helmets who violently cracked down on democratic protesters preventing in opposition to army dictatorships within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties.
In spite of everything, the mob raid on the district courtroom might have been a “tragedy foretold by the [PPP’s] glorification of the White Cranium Corps,” stated Lee Jun-seok, a frontrunner of the conservative New Reform Social gathering who was as soon as an in depth confidant to Yoon and now his most vocal critic.
“Justifying Yoon’s martial legislation declaration to a discerning South Korean public is a difficult feat,” stated Kim Heung-kyu, a professor of political science at Ajou College and the director of the U.S.-China Coverage Institute. “Far-right supporters of Yoon are reframing their resistance in opposition to Yoon’s impeachment as an influence battle between the US and China to make a extra persuasive enchantment to the general public and switch across the political disaster in favor of Yoon,” he added. “This pivot helps them construct an alliance with Trump, who advocates a staunch anti-China platform, and ship a powerful sign to Washington to assist Yoon.”
However the Democratic Social gathering paints a unique narrative of the bilateral alliance that has lengthy served as a bedrock of South Korean diplomacy. “The US firmly helps the individuals of South Korea. We’ve reaffirmed our shared dedication to the rule of legislation,” stated Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Social gathering chief, in a Supreme Council assembly on the Nationwide Meeting earlier than Trump’s inauguration, casting South Korea’s most formidable ally on the Democratic Social gathering’s aspect.
To shed his undeserved caricature as a China sympathizer, Lee refined his diplomatic posture, one selling a realistic partnership with China centered on commerce, by affirming his alignment with Washington.
“The South Korea-U.S. alliance, which has fostered prosperity in South Korea and peace in Northeast Asia, assumed a crucial function in resolving the nationwide calamity,” Lee stated. “By means of the democratic disaster, our alliance will solely develop stronger.”
A probable successor to Yoon, Lee is positioning himself as an adaptable chief poised to navigate Trump’s mercurial statecraft. In a gathering with performing U.S. Ambassador Joseph Yun following Trump’s inauguration, Lee promised “to maintain tempo with the brand new overseas coverage to be executed by the brand new United States administration.” When Trump controversially referred to as North Korean Supreme Chief Kim Jong Un “a nuclear energy” after taking workplace—a pointy departure from the long-standing settlement between Washington and Seoul to not acknowledge North Korea’s nuclear standing—Lee welcomed the diplomatic overture. “We welcome President Trump’s willingness to renew the stalled dialogues between North Korea and the US,” he stated.
South Korea’s liberals, whose political heritage is rooted within the democratization motion within the late 1900s, are considered extra impartial from U.S. hegemony, much less hawkish on North Korea, and open to a strategic cooperation with China. Whereas honoring the diplomatic values that he inherited, Lee has additionally branded himself as a pragmatist nearer to Trump, prioritizing nationwide pursuits over partisan doctrines, in sharp distinction to Yoon’s demagogic diplomacy.
PPP lawmakers are pushing again to stymie the brewing energy shift to the left. “The Democratic Social gathering has been made acutely aware of its pro-China and anti-U.S. agenda and concocted an impromptu decision supporting the South Korea-U.S. alliance,” wrote Na, the PPP lawmaker, on the morning of Lee’s assembly with the performing U.S. Ambassador. Lee countered, in a Supreme Council assembly held simply earlier than the diplomatic talks, that it was time for South Korea to transcend ideologies and factions and embark on a pragmatist overseas coverage.
Regardless of the PPP’s rallying outcries, Trump appears disinterested in coming to their rescue. Within the fallout of Yoon’s self-immolation, Trump chaffed, “Everybody calls me chaotic, however take a look at South Korea.” He joked about assembly with Yoon “in the event that they ever cease impeaching him,” however didn’t counsel, to the dismay of the conservative lawmakers who flew over to attend his inauguration, that he would intervene within the home battle.
Meddling in South Korea’s factional warfare would incur irreparable geopolitical prices. An avowed champion of American pursuits pushed by “principled realism,” a overtly transactional method to overseas affairs that brushes apart values and alliances, Trump is prone to view South Korea’s political disaster with a transactional eye targeted on conserving South Korea because the linchpin of the U.S.-led alliance throughout Northeast Asia, unmoved by ideological issues.
“Trump is not going to need to aspect with Yoon to instigate additional chaos and battle and create a critically crippled South Korea, which might empower China, Russia, and North Korea to take cost of Northeast Asia,” stated Kim Heung-kyu. To the chagrin of South Korea’s conservatives, indictments of an encroaching totalitarian, anti-liberal worldview is not going to transfer Trump.
Given his exasperation with liberal internationalism, coupled along with his blithe indifference to democratic values, Trump will in all probability keep out of the affair altogether. If something, pushed by his distaste for political losers, “he’ll extra possible bide his time to take care of a brand new South Korean administration bestowed with political legitimacy,” Kim stated.
In spite of everything, the higher diplomatic ally for Trump might transform Lee, not Yoon. It’s attainable that dueling realists, harboring starkly totally different political values, might find yourself forging a stunning geostrategic partnership.
