“LEFTIST” BLAMED
Conspiracy theories have flourished on South Korean social media in the wake of the martial law declaration.
In one, Facebook posts alleged an anti-Yoon rally was infiltrated by China’s ruling Communist Party, sharing pictures they falsely claimed showed protesters carrying “Communist Chinese milk cartons”.
“I knew they had planted spies in our country to get rid of President Yoon,” one comment read.
An AFP analysis of the products in the pictures found they were in fact from Taiwan.
Many in the online conspiracy ecosystem felt vindicated by Yoon’s claims that the NEC had been compromised by North Korean agents.
“I knew early on that North Korean hackers were infiltrating our National Election Commission to manipulate votes,” firebrand Pastor Jun Kwang-hoon, whose weekly rallies in downtown Seoul draw thousands of supporters, said on his YouTube channel.
Former Prime Minister Hwang Gyo-ahn – who defended martial law as a war on “leftists” – has also weighed in on his channel, calling for the electoral commission to be “disbanded”.
The electoral commission has rejected Yoon’s claims of hacking and condemned the “unconstitutional” seizure of its headquarters as a threat to democracy.
“No evidence of election system breaches caused by North Korean hacking was found,” the commission said.
The “allegations of election fraud are no different from a self-denial of the electoral system that brought him into office,” it added.
South Koreans vote using physical ballots counted manually, with information systems and electronic devices serving only as support tools, the commission underlined.
And in 126 lawsuits aiming to nullify poll results in the 2020 general elections, no claims of interference were substantiated.
“No evidence has emerged to suggest the commission engaged in election fraud,” an official from the commission said.
It’s unclear just how much Yoon’s actions were driven by conspiracy theories.
But the far-right conservatives have for months been pushing for a probe into electoral fraud after the opposition obtained a landslide victory in parliament.
Yoon’s unsubstantiated claims echo former US president Donald Trump’s accusations that the 2020 US elections were rigged – claims that sparked a riot at the capital.
“Such claims are completely unreliable black propaganda,” said Shin Tae-sub, head of the Coalition for Democratic Media, a left-wing civic group.
“The fact that (Yoon) believed these claims so strongly and even sent troops to the National Election Commission seems to reflect a projection of his own desires.”
