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Stop the Steal(?): Korean Edition

Andrew Troutman
@Dotorimuk
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Here’s a minor update on the surreal Korean power play that’s wrecking the economy.

So, you may remember the People Power Party’s (conservative) Yoon Seok Yul tried to declare martial law on December 3, then revoked it, and is now being detained. He’s in the jailhouse now. He’s trying a kind of Larry David/George Costanza gambit of claiming that A) he didn’t do it and B) martial law is not unconstitutional. Yoon’s penchant for seeking the advice of shamans and writing symbols on his hands seems to have failed.

Meanwhile, the opposition leader, and likely repeat presidential candidate pending a few legal outcomes, Lee Jae Myung, of the Democratic Party (lefty), was given a suspended sentence for electioneering crimes, and walks around in a haze of other scandals, dirtier than Pigpen from Peanuts, if Pigpen was not only fundamentally corrupt, but also connected to a suspicious death or two.

And the leader of the third most powerful party is either under indictment or imprisoned. I couldn’t be bothered to check, because…

What I wanted to talk about was that leftists everywhere tend to overreach when they think they have the upper hand, and that’s what’s happened here. Their “indict everyone else” in the People Power Party strategy has turned off some, which has led to a bump in the polls for indicted President Yoon. Young men are particularly bothered, seeing some parallels with the lawfare against Trump. (I disagree. Yoon declared martial law with no real explanation. The overreaction by the Democrats is a separate matter.)

So, at rallies for Yoon in Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, not only are US flags flying, so are “Stop the Steal” signs (in English) and even a few MAGA hats. And yes, they are doing the Trump “YMCA” dance. To K-pop.

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Discussion (4)

  • John H.@JohnH

    Thank you for this update from another hemisphere. It motivates me to look up something from another other hemisphere, the J8 protests/attacks/riots/arrests in Brazil. Or so they were called online at the time; I couldn't have given you a right-there-and-then summary. Here at home, I see there is some effort, among some enthusiasts or ideologues, to emphasize or obscure the similarities to the J6 affair. More so on English Wikipedia, which for the moment hesitates to mention J6 at all. Portuguese Wikipedia on the other hand does link to J6 in its See Also section.

    Whether a South Korean can or should care about either, I don't know. But if any South Koreans are wearing MAGA swag, I'd guess somebody there is thinking about at least one.

  • Andrew Troutman@Dotorimuk
    ReplyingtoJohn H.

    John H. (View Comment):

    Thank you for this update from another hemisphere. It motivates me to look up something from another other hemisphere, the J8 protests/attacks/riots/arrests in Brazil. Or so they were called online at the time; I couldn’t have given you a right-there-and-then summary. Here at home, I see there is some effort, among some enthusiasts or ideologues, to emphasize or obscure the similarities to the J6 affair. More so on English Wikipedia, which for the moment hesitates to mention J6 at all. Portuguese Wikipedia on the other hand does link to J6 in its See Also section.

    Whether a South Korean can or should care about either, I don’t know. But if any South Koreans are wearing MAGA swag, I’d guess somebody there is thinking about at least one.

    There has been a bit of “let’s storm the courthouse,” but it hasn’t come to much. No Lectern Guy or Q-Anon Shaman analogues yet.