The Current - Did South Korea’s president fall down a ‘YouTube rabbit hole’?

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Protestors in South Korea are demanding the arrest of President Yoon Suk Yeol, who declared martial law and is now accused of committing insurrection — with some observers pointing the finger of blame at what he was watching on YouTube.

Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on a Viking longship with thoughtful service and cultural enrichment on board and on shore. Learn more at Viking.com. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is the Current Podcast. Protests erupted once again in Seoul this weekend. Hundreds of thousands of South Koreans took to the streets demanding the arrest of impeached

President Yoon Sok-yul. Such demonstrations have grown steadily since the 3rd of December when President Yoon declared martial law and triggered a political crisis in that nation. John Lee is the editor of the online news and analysis publication Korea Pro. He is in Seoul. John, hello. Hello. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for being here. You tweeted South Korean politics in a nutshell. It's a madhouse. Tell me a little bit more about why you use that word to describe what's going on in your country right now. Well, to explain, we need to talk about what happened beyond just what President Yun did. Now, as you mentioned,

President Yun declared martial law on December 3rd, and on the 14th, he was impeached. And according to South Korea's Constitution after a president gets impeached then the Constitutional Court will need to get involved to either overturn or to confirm that impeachment currently the Constitutional Court is in deliberation but while the Constitutional Court decides to ultimate fate of the President, the Acting President assumes control. Now the Acting President, after December 14th, for at least a few days, was the Prime Minister,

Han Deok-soo. Now Han Deok-soo, because he was Prime Minister, had assumed that role of Acting President, but after a few days he too was impeached. And the reason why he was impeached was because while he was serving as acting president, he refused to appoint constitutional court justices. Now, I mentioned the Constitutional Court earlier. The Constitutional Court in South Korea has nine justices in total, but until just a few days ago, there were only six constitutional court justices. Three

were missing, and that was because of disagreements between the ruling and opposition parties as to whom, how and when to appoint them. But because there were only six the opposition party really wanted to fill those remaining three seats and the reason why the opposition party was in a hurry to do this was because in order for the presidents to be impeached by the constitutional courts, six of those justices had to agree on impeachment. Now there were six already, so they had enough

for quorum, but if only one of them dissented, then president Yun would have been reinstated. Hence the use of the word madhouse to describe. We have a lot of political chaos in this country right now, but it kind of puts it into perspective when you're describing that. Can you just go back to why, I mean, martial law is an extraordinary thing to declare. What led the president to declare martial law in the first place? That is the million dollar question.

Now, if you just go according to his officially stated positions President Yoon said that right before he declared martial law He was saying that the opposition party was using its legislative majority to essentially Paralyze state governance. He brought up a whole list of grievances. He mentioned that the opposition party had attempted to or succeeded in impeaching various figures. They've attempted to impeach ministers. They've succeeded in impeaching prosecutors. And the opposition party had also managed to use the budget discussions to really slash

the budget for the presidential office for this year. But if you listen to all of those statements, those are normal parliamentary activities that fall within the rights of the opposition party. And the fact that the president stated those reasons to declare martial law was a huge question mark. But after declaring martial law and after withdrawing it, he then started to change the story a little bit. One of the things that he mentioned after he withdrew martial law was that the opposition party, they tried to stop the government from

amending the country's anti-espionage laws. Now in South Korea, in order to be tried for espionage, you have to have spied for North Korea. If you spy for any other country beyond North Korea, then that espionage law does not apply. And he mentioned that there were Chinese nationals who had taken pictures of the National Intelligence Service headquarters building and yet that the opposition party had refused to amend that law. And he had also started to talk about election rigging, which was completely unsubstantiated. But he said that he felt the need to investigate the National Election Commission, hence sending soldiers after declaring martial law instead of doing the proper thing like going through legislation or passing laws. What is the role of YouTube in all of this? This is something, I mean, and that seems like a strange

question, but this is something that has come up in conversation in the wake of that declaration. I mean, martial law was declared and then revoked, but people have pointed to social media and the social media algorithm of YouTube in particular here. What's going on? Well, just as the new year had approached on January 1st, there were already a number of pro-Youth supporters right outside of his residence. And he had sent them a written letter.

The letter was essentially thanking them for helping to protect him, but the phrase that he used was helping to defend constitutional democracy. And he had the sentence there. He said that he was watching them via YouTube. Now this already got a lot of, a lot of people had already assumed that President Yun had fallen into a YouTube rabbit hole. Now I'm sure that there are many people around the world who can attest to this, but there are a lot of right wing YouTube channels here in Korea as well.

And this has had a transformative effect here in South Korea. I was reading something like this, 53% of South Koreans get their news from YouTube and somebody had described this as the world's first insurrection instigated by algorithm addictions. I don't know if that's entirely accurate, but it does sound plausible. Uh, now for decades, South Korea had several established newspapers and

TV broadcast channels and many of them skewed conservative. But with YouTube and with the way the algorithm rewards people who espouse more extreme views, right-wing YouTubers have gone more and more extreme. Again, not unique to South Korea. But because of the way that this algorithm has morphed and incentivized people to become more extreme, many conservatives no longer trust the traditional established media and instead they now rely on YouTube and it is suspected that

President Yun was one of those people which is why he mentioned election rigging. Although there's no evidence whatsoever that there was any election rigging that took place, there is a claim that many right-wing YouTubers have made. Where is he now? I mean, he's been impeached, he faces this arrest warrant. Where is he now? He is currently holed up in his residence, and I use that phrase literally, he is holed up there.

On January 3rd, there was a move to arrest the president. And after he was impeached, the Constitutional Court and the Corruption for Investigative Offices, they summoned him to appear for questioning. And they summoned him to appear three times. The president rejected all of those requests. And so an arrest warrant was issued so that he would finally be forced to appear before investigators to answer questions. But they failed to arrest him and that's because his security, the presidential security service

just refused to allow anyone to enter the premises to arrest him. South Korea sits as you well know in a very volatile region and I wonder what this turmoil that you're describing means for the region and for its position in that region. Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, was just in Seoul. And as he's there, North Korea fires a missile, testing it out, I guess, to show something to

the Americans, but also to the South Koreans. So how does what you're describing impact the region? Well, for one thing right now, because of the turmoil that's going on with leadership and questions regarding the chain of command, that's a whole other issue, South Korea's foreign policy is essentially on hold.

Until this martial law was declared, the South Korean president was very much active in foreign policy, but now the only sort of foreign policy that we've seen is low-level meetings with the Japanese and the Chinese ambassadors or the attache and now with the U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, but of course he's on his way out. Now, this is something that I have to bring up. When Anthony Blinken was here, he repeated this often used phrase that the alliance is ironclad. Now this is a very old phrase that describes the US-South Korea alliance, but the question is, is it really robust? And that's because one of the things that we have

to talk about is that among the accusations that the defense minister is facing, the defense minister was one of those people who told the president to declare martial law was that in about October or so the defense minister had ordered the military to fly drones into North Korean airspace to distribute anti-regime leaflets. Now this is a big deal because if South Korea took proactive steps and violating north korean airspace that could have devastated consequences are now thankfully in the uh... the north koreans did not respond violently

complained about the drones being in their space but they did not attack now happy done something different have to respond to it in a much more kinetic sort of matter that would have been immediately involved the US troops that are stationed in South Korea to get into a fight. There are over 28,000 American soldiers stationed in South Korea. There are thousands of their family members here.

Had there been a conflict, that would have put the lives of thousands of US service members on the line. And the fact that South Korea did this without consulting with the US. Now, we don't know if they actually did this. The Ministry of Defense is denying that it had done this. But if it's true, and that the Ministry of Defense had actually done this without consulting with the United States, this could have a devastating impact on the alliance, especially when Donald Trump comes to the office in just a few days.

John, I have to let you go, but just finally, how does this turmoil end? How does the madhouse, as you described it, how is that resolved, do you think? This will take quite a while, longer than any of us had hoped or anticipated when this first started. The president's legal team is trying to drag this out for as long as possible.

I initially anticipated this to be over by March. This might go up till April or May, perhaps not up till June, but it will take a while. Pete John John, it's good to speak with you. Thank you very much. What a complicated situation. Appreciate you walking us through it. Thank you. John Lee John Lee is the editor of the online news and analysis publication Korea Pro. He was in Seoul.