Contempt for Democracy

The verdict elated the majority of South Koreans, who braved a freezing winter to daily protest Yoon’s attempt to dismantle the very democracy that had elected him to the country’s highest office. The thirty-eight days leading to the highest court’s decision also exposed the fragility of South Korea’s democracy — and the ruling elite’s unabashed contempt for it — in spite of the resilience of its people.

The case against a coup organizer should have not been this time-consuming or complex. However, Yoon, together with his legal team and the ruling conversative People Power Party (PPP), delayed and obstructed the proceedings at every turn. The first attempt saw no progress. In December, the National Assembly had to vote twice on the impeachment because the PPP’s boycott left the session without a quorum.

Yoon retreated deep into his official residence behind a human shield of security guards, dodging the police’s first attempt to arrest him on insurrection charges. Neither of the state’s acting presidents has deigned to appoint a new justice — a former labor activist recommended by the National Assembly — to fill a vacancy on the Constitutional Court, where conservative and centrist justices together outnumbered the liberal ones.

Meanwhile, both Yoon and PPP hard-liners publicly espoused and disseminated fringe conspiracy theories about election fraud, claiming that Chinese hackers rigged last year’s general election in favor of what they present as the left-leaning Democratic Party of Korea (DPK). They also contended that Yoon must have won the presidency three years ago by a wider margin than the historically narrow 0.78 percent in the official figures. On January 19, the flirtation of the conservatives with such fringe narratives helped incite far-right protesters to raid and ransack a courthouse after a judge extended Yoon’s detention, creating scenes reminiscent of the January 6 Capitol attack in the United States.

Two months later, in March, Yoon was released from detention thanks to a sympathetic judge who broke with seventy-five years of precedent by measuring detention in hours rather than days. Under Korean law, a judge may extend detention twice, for up to thirty days in total, before an indictment. But in Yoon’s case, the judge measured his detention in hours rather than days.

Far-Right Upsurge

The rapid rise of the far right, with their own self-sustaining conspiracy theories and ecosystem, caught many South Koreans off guard. In hindsight, however, rising economic polarization and shifting demographics mean that South Korea has increasingly become fertile ground for such a surge. There are three main forces behind the rise of the far right.

First, with about 32 percent of its population identifying as Christian, the country is home to five of the world’s twenty largest Christian congregations. They include the world’s largest Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist megachurches, all of which were preaching the prosperity gospel long before it gained traction in the United States and other parts of the world.

Conservative Christian gatherings were among the few outdoor mass events permitted under military dictatorships during the 1960 and the 1980s. US right-wing evangelist Billy Graham held his largest-ever rally for an entire week in Seoul at the behest of the authoritarian president Park Chung-hee, himself a Buddhist, who supported Graham’s crusade to bolster conservative congregations and curb rising labor ministry. After the one-week rally, which was broadcast live nationwide and rerun repeatedly, megachurches began to emerge, as Billy Kim, the Korean Baptist pastor who served as Graham’s interpreter, recalled.

Recently, these congregations have begun to face challenges not unlike those confronting mass retailers as congregations decrease under the pressure of South Korea’s shrinking and aging population trends. In response, they have rebranded themselves as rallying points of bigotry, spreading homophobia, Islamophobia, Cold War–style anti-communism, and hostility to organized labor, in an effort to shore up their diminishing congregation bases.

Second, with a national pension scheme introduced only in 1988, many South Korean baby boomers — those born in the first three decades after the Korean War (1950–53) — have come to view retirement or job termination as the starting point for a self-run small business, employing up to five workers or family members, financed by lump-sum payouts and loans. Since the late 1990s, a growing number of young people have also dipped into generous government loan programs to start their own small businesses, opting out of the highly competitive labor market as first-time jobseekers.

However, the small-business sector is known for its volatility and diminishing success rates — vividly illustrated by the economic downfall of the Kim family in the Oscar-winning 2019 film Parasite. With 42 percent of such firms in default on loans totaling KRW 30 trillion ($21 billion), their surging disillusionment with liberal politicians — particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic — reflects a broader sense of abandonment and frustration amid ongoing economic jitters. Having traditionally been aligned with the liberal DPK, many have begun gravitating toward strongman-style leadership that promises order and stability.

Finally, like many other advanced capitalist economies, South Korea has been faced with its own deepening problem of discontent among young men. While youth unemployment hovers below 6 percent, which is well under the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of 10.6 percent, the majority in this age bracket are highly educated with high career expectations. About 54.5 percent of South Koreans aged twenty-five to thirty-four have finished college education — the largest share in any OECD member-state, according to a recent report.

Thirteen percent of the college-educated men in this age group are “economically inactive,” meaning that they are neither employed nor actively seeking employment. This is the second-highest rate in the OECD. While the rate for college-educated women is even higher at 21 percent — the OECD’s fourth-highest — social pressure on them to find jobs appears to have been largely dampened by a combination of entrenched prejudices against working women, increasing opportunities for women, and the fact that men demographically outnumber women.

In South Korea’s regulatory context, many of these inactive individuals are preparing for exams for public servants and other private and public sector positions in which women have already outcompeted men. In other words, young women have become able to gain an upper hand in certain parts of the job market, provided they can overcome persistent prejudices and obtain the necessary qualifications, and even though deep wage and promotion gaps remain firmly in place.

Some college-educated young men have grown frustrated and disgruntled at their increasing inability to land jobs at the level they consider appropriate. They have been drawn to the online subculture of misogyny and conspiracism, forming a Korean analogue to US “incels.” In the post-coup period, many of these young men — along with an alarming number of women with similar economic frustrations — have become foot soldiers of the far right, enabling its rallies to become large and vibrant enough to match rival pro-impeachment mobilizations.

Two rival campaigns, both led by pastors, have recruited from the aforementioned three forces. The older group is led by Jeon Kwang-hoon, the foul-mouthed pastor of a near-cult church, who has turned his rallies into a money-making scheme by collecting undisclosed sums of donations while selling smartphone plans and credit card accounts.

The newer group, Save Korea, has rapidly eclipsed Jeon’s previous dominance. Founded by Presbyterian evangelist Son Hyun-bo, Save Korea has gained traction through its stoic and solemn rallies that drew support from megachurches and even conservative lawmakers. At one rally, thirty-seven PPP lawmakers appeared, publicly endorsing Son’s claims of election fraud and his defense of Yoon.

Following the Constitutional Court ruling, Jeon, now under investigation for his role in the courthouse raid, vowed to continue his (lucrative) fight. For his part, Son said he would respect the verdict, likely shifting focus to mobilizing support ahead of the upcoming snap election.

Meanwhile, Yoon has already released two separate statements aimed at rallying the far-right base, conspicuously omitting any mention or acceptance of the verdict. He will likely turn his criminal insurrection trial into a media circus to rile up the far right. If convicted, he will be sentenced to life in prison or could even face the death penalty.

Global MAGA Movement

Recent attempts by Elon Musk and J. D. Vance to meddle in European politics had a startling impact. In February, we also saw a gathering in Madrid of the Patriots for Europe, a network of European far-right parties including the French Rassemblement National and Spain’s Vox. The conference, under the slogan “Make Europe Great Again,” signaled the growing appeal of MAGA-style far-right politics outside the United States.

The MAGA influence on South Korea can be traced back to 2019 when a Hawaii-based multimillionaire far-right activist, Annie Chan, formed the Korean Conservative Political Action Conference in the United States and South Korea, modeled after and closely tied to the US CPAC. In a series of exposes in February, South Korea’s centrist daily, Hankook Il Bo shed light on Chan’s financial and ideological support for far-right groups and politicians in Seoul, confirming my earlier story in Jacobin.

The latest CPAC showcased the deepening ties between MAGA and the South Korean far right. One of Chan’s brochure distributors, Kim Jeong-hyun, also known as Alfred Kim, has attempted to launch a vigilante squad to protect Yoon. It is named after the White Skulls, a violent elite police squad from the dictatorship era.

Gordon Chang, a mendacious China hawk who received an appreciative shout-out from Donald Trump during his CPAC speech, defended Yoon’s coup in his remarks. In front of Steve Bannon, Matt Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union and the only American to meet with Yoon after the botched coup, quoted Yoon as saying that the Chinese tech firm Huawei “runs South Korean elections.” Sinophobia has become a central theme in the South Korean far-right movement, which has been stoking fear and racist hate in relation to the political and economic advances of its next-door neighbor.

The Next 60 Days

The removal of Yoon from power was undeniably a historic triumph achieved through the strength of mass protests and the integrity of the constitutional judiciary. However, nothing else has changed. It is disheartening to note that the Korean left and organized labor could have more significantly expanded their influence on a new generation of protesters and capitalized on this rare political opening than they have managed to date.

On the surface, the scene was a rerun of mass protests eight years ago, which contributed to the Constitutional Court’s removal of another corrupt president, Park Geun-hye. Back then, the DPK and its core supporters tightly controlled the mass rallies, while far-right counterprotests consisted almost exclusively of retirees.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), the country’s independent union congress, was routinely sidelined, despite the fact that its equipment and mobilizations helped the protests achieve momentum from the very beginning. Nevertheless, despite limited visibility, the KCTU surpassed the psychologically important milestone of one million members after Park’s impeachment, driven by an influx of young tech and service workers who were radicalized during the protests. In the five years since Park’s 2015 impeachment, unionization steadily rose to 14.3 percent, recovering from the historic low of 9.8 percent recorded in 2012.

In the past four months, the KCTU called for a national strike twice, only to retract its call on both occasions, on the grounds that its demands had been met in terms of the impeachment time frame. However, many national affiliates and locals, along with a new generation of protesters including LGBTQ campaigners, joined the rallies as organized contingents, underscoring the declining DPK influence on protests compared with eight years ago.

In last year’s general election, the KCTU leadership sought to endorse the Jinbo Party, a small left-nationalist party that had entered into a vote-swapping deal with the DPK. Its proposal faced significant pushback from many delegates. Even after intense debate, the KCTU could not endorse any party.

The KCTU leadership appears poised to pursue a similar move ahead of the snap presidential election set to be held in the next sixty days. The temptation is clear. The broad left, both parliamentary and revolutionary, is in disarray, with little chance of fielding a formidable left candidate of their own.

Lee Jae-myung of the DPK is rising as an undisputed front-runner from the ashes of Yoon’s ouster. He narrowly lost the presidency to Yoon three years ago. Lee is a former governor of the Gyeonggi province, an affluent commuter and high-tech region surrounding Seoul. Though he casts himself as a former human rights lawyer, there is scant publicly available information that substantiates his self-depiction.

Above all, he is a pro-business candidate. Under his leadership, the DPK and the PPP reached a rare consensus on several major pro-business laws in a legislature otherwise paralyzed by squabbles and shouting matches. The content of those laws is worth spelling out: repeal of taxes on large financial-market transactions, elimination of tenant protections, and expanded corporate secrecy. Lee has recently floated the extension of the working week, the very policy he criticized harshly when it was part of Yoon’s platform.

Will the triumph over Yoon’s reckless coup be overshadowed by the rise of another pro-business president? This seems very likely. However, the outcome still hinges on whether the Left and organized labor can act independently of the liberal DPK over the next two months.