Written by Joyce Cho, Minwoo Park, and Eduardo Baptista
SEOUL (Reuters) – As impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yul fights for his political survival, the embattled leader has found an ally among young conservatives.
Park Byung-hyun, 25, was the crowd favorite at a pro-Leon rally on Sunday, and was cheered when he delivered a 10-minute speech in English targeting foreign media, denouncing authorities' attempts to arrest Yoon for trying to impose martial law. law last month.
“This is the country we love. We have to protect it,” Park, a university student, told Reuters after his speech.
“The old people (at the marches) always tell me: ‘Actually, if we die, that’s it, you’re the young people who are in trouble.’ That’s actually what pushed me to participate in more of these marches over the past little while.” days.”
While the bulk of the pro-Leon demonstrators appears to be made up of retirees, young conservatives like Park have played a visible role in rallying support for the isolated Leon.
Popular pro-Yeon YouTubers, some of them conservative men in their 30s, used their online reach to rally support and assert unsubstantiated claims that the South Korean elections were marred by fraud, echoing one of Yoon's justifications for briefly imposing martial law on December 3. .
Yoon has encouraged their activism, telling supporters in a message last Wednesday that he “watches on YouTube all the hard work” they have been doing.
A columnist for the conservative-leaning JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said last month that Yoon's “addiction to YouTube” had caused him to fall “into a world of delusion dominated by conspiracy theories.”
Park doesn't see it that way.
“I watched videos of YouTubers spreading the truth, and I actually researched a lot of materials. I realized that all the South Korean media were lying, and that made my heart boil with anger,” Park said.
Park pointed to the claim of pro-Leon YouTuber Kim Sung-won, who also covered the recent rallies, that like the 2020 election that US President-elect Donald Trump claimed was rigged, South Korea faced the same danger.
Many demonstrators at the rally attended by Park were seen carrying a banner bearing the slogan “Stop the Steal,” which was popularized by Trump supporters after his loss to US President Joe Biden.
Yoon's supporters adopted the slogan in the hope that Trump would act or speak in support of his South Korean counterpart shortly after his inauguration on January 20.
Groups of young people were among a crowd of about 100 supporters who stayed up all night near Yoon's residence on Friday, vowing to prevent South Korean investigators trying to execute an arrest warrant for the ousted president.
One of these men, YouTuber Bae In-kyu, who calls himself an “anti-feminist,” a label the president has also adopted, filmed himself being greeted by Yoon Sang-hyun, a lawmaker from the ruling conservative People Power Party and one of those men. Outright opposition to the impeachment of the president.
One video posted by Pai defending Yoon's decision to impose martial law on the basis of legitimate concerns about election fraud has received more than a million views.
South Korean men in their 20s represent 63% of voters who supported Yoon in the 2022 presidential election, which he won by just 0.73%, compared to 26% of women of the same age.
The 2024 US presidential election also witnessed a similar shift to the right among young people, with 56% of men aged 18 to 29 voting for Trump last year, compared to 41% in 2020.
South Korea's previous center-left government under President Moon Jae-in pledged to address gender inequality in the country of 52 million people. South Korea has the worst gender pay gap in the OECD, and women's labor market participation rate is lower than the OECD average.
However, the effort has led to a backlash among South Korean men, with growing perceptions of reverse discrimination, including resentment of compulsory military service for young men, according to an October 2024 article by Sohyun Christine Lee, a senior lecturer at King's College London. .
