Will South Korea be the next Venezuela?

SUMMARY

After impeaching and removing Conservative President Yoon Seok Yeol, alongside years of efforts to suppress opposition and control key power structures in South Korea, hardcore leftists, centered around the opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), are positioned to win next month’s presidential election.

The leftist radicals aim to establish one-party rule, end the U.S.-South Korean alliance, and shift South Korea towards North Korea and China.

BACKGROUND

South Korea’s Democratic Party – not regular ‘leftists’

A sizable chunk of the South Korean left and Democratic Party (DP) is pro-North Korea and pro-China. They are also anti-American and want to expel U.S. troops from the peninsula and end the U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) alliance.

Many key leaders are unreformed 1980s student radicals, known as Jusapa. President Moon Jae-in (2017 – 2022) was supportive of and surrounded by Jusapa. Moon was sympathetic to both North Korea and China and disliked the United States. In his autobiography, he describes his “euphoria” on hearing the Americans were defeated in Vietnam.

Moon had hardcore radicals working in his administration and at high positions. For example, Lee In-young, the Unification Minister, was appointed in July 2020. Lee In-Young founded Jeondaehyup (the National Council of Student Representatives), a radical anti-American student organization based on North Korea’s Juche ideology. During his confirmation hearing in the National Assembly, Lee In-Young refused to denounce Juche, repeatedly dodging the issue.

The Democratic Party of Korea has not changed its stripes.

The initial DP-drafted impeachment charges against President Yoon accused him of diplomacy that was “…antagonizing North Korea, China, and Russia, and instead focusing on Japan.”

The DP’s current leader, Lee Jae Myung, who is also favored to win the upcoming election, has called American forces in Korea “occupying forces.” Meanwhile, he is accommodating towards North Korea and China, including Beijing’s position on bringing Taiwan under its grip.

Election fraud to take the National Assembly

There is considerable and credible evidence of election fraud in the April 2020 National Assembly elections and the most recent 2024 National Assembly elections. This includes electronic manipulation of the National Election Commission (NEC) network, including the counting machines.

When asked about Chinese Huawei components in the electoral network, an NEC official claimed it was “irrelevant.” In October 2023, after the North Korean Lazarus Group hacked into the NEC network at least six times over the previous years, South Korea’s National Investigation Service tested the NEC network. They were able to run wild within the system and concluded that outside actors could relatively easily have their way with South Korea’s electoral network.

There was also credible evidence of old-fashioned ‘hard copy’ fraud – with pristine ballots, improperly printed ballots, dubious voter rolls, hard-to-ignore allegations of fraud in early voting and mail-in ballots, and polling stations reporting voters casting ballots every 4.7 seconds (something physically impossible).

The government, courts, and the NEC were uninterested in investigating. The mainstream media declared it all ‘debunked’. Citizens who tried to present evidence were cancelled, persecuted, and sometimes prosecuted.

Similar claims were made following the 2022 presidential election, which saw Yoon elected by a hair’s breadth despite huge leads in the polls. Astonishingly, the opposition DP declined to request a recount—maybe the first party on earth to do so.

Impeachment of President Yoon

Since President Yoon Seok-yeol’s election in May 2022, the DP has done everything possible to obstruct and destroy him. The DP’s commanding majority in the National Assembly – possibly achieved via election fraud – has been a helpful tool.

Since taking office, the DP has blocked Yoon’s policies at every turn, slashed or zeroed out his budgets, and tried to impeach him or his officials, including the Ministers of Justice and Interior, at least 22 times.

This goes well beyond sharp-elbowed politics. Yoon described it as a ‘legislative dictatorship.’

Believing that consensual democracy was in danger of being snuffed out, Yoon declared martial law on December 4^th, 2024, as allowed by the constitution. In his statement announcing and justifying martial law, Yoon warned of North Korean supporters in the opposition.

Yoon apparently saw martial law as the best way to beat back the opposition that had made South Korea ungovernable and to investigate election fraud allegations (one of the first moves he made was to try to secure access to the election commission, possibly to secure evidence). After a matter of hours, Yoon rescinded the decree in accordance with the law.

Yoon was eventually removed from office by the constitutional court, and an election to select a replacement will be held on June 3, 2025.

The End Game

South Korean leftists have long wanted a one-party state that they control. They have sought to dominate the levers of power beyond the government, including labor unions, academia, the media, the military, and big business.

But Moon Jae-in’s election in 2017 and the subsequent National Assembly elections in 2020 and 2024, which gave leftists overwhelming control of the National Assembly, put this goal in reach.

The National Assembly is arguably a more attractive target than the presidency in South Korea, as the National Assembly can make a president’s life nearly impossible.

Who benefits from the degradation and tearing apart – ‘entropic warfare’ – that’s been happening to South Korea for at least the last eight years?

China.

Alliance unravelling?

Most South Korean citizens don’t want to be ruled by North Korea – or a North Korean-like system, and they support the U.S.-ROK alliance.  But that doesn’t matter much when a coterie of hardcore radicals (Marxist or otherwise) take over a government and move a country where most people don’t want it to go.

We’ve seen it before. For example, Venezuela was a longstanding U.S. ally and Latin America’s oldest democracy.  But, Hugo Chavez won an election and gradually tightened control over enough levers of power to the point that neither elections nor opposition political parties mattered much. Freedom was snuffed out, and the U.S. was declared an enemy.

Meanwhile, Washington is counting on South Korea, including in cooperation with Japan, to consolidate free-world defenses in Northeast Asia and help rebuild American shipbuilding.

A leftist administration puts all this in jeopardy – to Beijing’s delight.

AUTHOR

Grant Newsham

Senior Fellow

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EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.