Ju-min Park, Hyunsu Yim and John Geddie
SEOUL (Reuters) – As 3,000 riot police swarmed his hillside mansion on Wednesday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol rallied with party loyalists, telling them people were increasingly realizing that leftist forces had hijacked the country’s legal system.
“People now see how serious the situation is,” the impeached president told the crowd, according to one of the lawmakers present, Yoon Sang-hyun.
“It starts now,” the 64-year-old leader said, according to another lawmaker, Kwon Young-jin.
Yoon cited the support of thousands of people who took to the streets to defend him since he was impeached by parliament under a short-lived emergency decree on Dec. 3 and charged criminally with sedition, another lawmaker said.
Hours later, Yoon, a former prosecutor, ended a weeks-long standoff and became the country’s first sitting president to be arrested, surrendering to authorities in what he says was an illegal investigation.
His baseless claims about South Korea’s compromised institutions are not new. They are among several reasons he cited, without evidence, to justify his emergency decree, which plunged one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies into unprecedented political turmoil.
But reports of his latest impassioned plea, some of which have not been published before, suggest Yoon feels his support is growing and sees a glimmer of hope for his presidency.
Yoon remained in custody Friday and refused to talk to investigators. In addition to the criminal investigation, he is also facing an impeachment trial at the Constitutional Court, which will decide whether to restore his presidential powers or remove him from office.
His lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this article.
POLLS BOUNCE
Support for Yoon’s conservative People Power Party plummeted after his declaration of a state of emergency, which he rescinded hours later in the face of a unanimous vote in parliament rejecting it.
But in the turmoil that followed – in which the opposition-majority parliament impeached his first replacement and investigators failed in their first attempt to arrest Yoon – the PPP’s support has soared.
His party led the opposition Democratic Party, 39% to 36%, for the first time since August, a Gallup Korea poll showed on Friday.
It is difficult to determine how much of the PPP bounce is sympathy for Yoon and how much may be broader frustration with the ensuing chaos, as Gallup Korea and most other pollsters have stopped examining Yoon’s personal ratings.
A Friday poll showed 57% still support his removal from office, and anti-Yoon protesters continue to gather regularly in large numbers.
Yoon and his party’s constant messaging to supporters appeared to have an impact when political divisions over his arrest deepened, Gallup Korea said, explaining the PPP’s resurgence.
As his mostly elderly supporters protest, some waving American and South Korean flags and “Stop the Steal” banners, right-wing YouTubers are promoting his claims, including that election hacking contributed to the opposition’s landslide election victory last year.
Many of Yoon’s supporters have drawn parallels between his plight and that of US President-elect Donald Trump, who has claimed that voter fraud contributed to his 2020 election defeat and that a series of legal problems were politically motivated. Trump has also provided no evidence for such claims, and dozens of court cases challenging his loss have failed.
Jun Kwang-hoon, the evangelical pastor behind many of the pro-Yoon protests, said he will attend Trump’s inauguration on Monday and plans to speak with him about election fraud in South Korea. Trump’s representatives declined to comment.
‘DIGGING’
Jeremy Chan, Northeast Asia analyst at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, said Yoon’s defiance in the face of extreme adversity also has parallels with Trump. “It looks like he’s digging his heels in, just like Trump would do,” Chan said.
The question is whether Yoon has any chance of a Trump-like political comeback.
On Thursday, the court rejected a challenge by Yoon’s lawyers, who argued that his arrest was illegal because the warrant was issued in the wrong jurisdiction and the investigative team had no mandate to investigate them. His lawyers also lost a bid to exclude one of the new Constitutional Court judges from the impeachment trial on the grounds that Yoon could not get a fair hearing before an opposition-appointed jurist.
The Eurasia Group’s Chan sees little chance of Yoon’s return because he said there is unlikely to be a widespread national review of the legitimacy of Yoon’s declaration of a state of emergency – an act Chan called “bordering on political suicide.”
That didn’t stop Yoon’s loyalists.
Lee Sang-hwi, another PPP lawmaker who met with Yoon at his compound shortly before his arrest, said the wartime president prepared ham sandwiches for his visitors. Some wept and bowed as he revealed he would submit to investigators just to avoid violence.
Citing the party’s recovery in ratings, Lee expressed hope that more people would side with Yoon.
“People have common sense,” he said. “What is happening now defies common sense.”
