Growing Protests at Seoul Point to a Society Deeply Divided Along a Left-Right Axis

SEOUL — Rising protests against the impeachment, jailing and possible ouster of Korea’s President, Yoon Suk-yeol, reflect growing divisions in a society torn between old-style conservatism and leftist fears of a return to dictatorial rule that ended with adoption of the country’s “democracy constitution” in 1987.Liberals and leftists appeared to be winning when Mr. Yoon was jailed and charged with “insurrection” for his disastrous attempt at imposing martial law on December 3, but now his advocates and sympathizers are waging a massive campaign that many of them hope and pray will influence judges on the constitutional court, which must decide whether to approve his impeachment.“They have to be listening,” a retired Korean diplomat, who requested anonymity in order to speak frankly, told me Sunday. “I don’t think the court will throw him out.” Dramatic evidence of the reaction against the movement to destroy Mr. Yoon is apparent in the intensity of the latest rightist demonstrations unfolding this weekend at central Seoul. The crowds packing the ten-lane avenue from City Hall to the historic South Gate shouted, in Korean, “Stop the steal” and “no impeachment,” in response to the screamed imprecations and prayers of orators on a huge platform from which megaloud speakers spread their voices across the heart of the South Korean capital. In a headquarters tent near the platform, the organizer of the weekly protest, the pastor of one of Seoul’s biggest protestant churches, the Rev. Jeon Kwan-hoon, was confident the voices of a crowd he estimated at “one million,” and the police put at 300,000, would get the country’s impeached president “out of prison.” While Mr. Yoon awaits the constitutional court decision on approving his impeachment and ousting him as president, Mr. Jeon claimed Mr. Yoon had “declared martial law because Korea was entering North Korean communism.” Mr. Yoon “will win in the constitutional court,” deliberating on the impeachment motion voted by Korea’s National Assembly, said Mr. Jeon, and he will “win in the criminal court,” which could sentence him to life or death for “insurrection”— for his abortive martial law decree.The protest is a show that’s quickly growing in noise and numbers as the polls show most Koreans no longer support the Democratic, or Minju, party. The protesters are leading the charge against the leftist bid to overthrow the conservative Mr. Yoon, elected by a slim margin in 2022 after five years of liberal rule wedded to reconciliation with North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong-un. Mr. Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, “is a North Korean spy” and China, on which North Korea depends for oil and food, “tried to occupy Korea,” Mr. Jeon told me. “That’s why Yoon declared martial law.” Together, he said, China and the Minju party “try to unify Korea” as a communist state. Behind us, a young spectator, Yang Joo-young, shared Mr. Jeon’s outlook but not his optimism about Mr. Yoon. “It will be very difficult for him,” she said. “It will be a miracle if he survives.”The chief judge of the constitutional court, she told me, “is a friend” of the Minju leader, Lee Jae-myung, Mr. Yoon’s foe in the 2022 election. “Half of the judges are extremely left” — that is, four of the eight now on a panel to which the Minju is trying to install its ninth member. With six of the nine needed to approve Mr. Yoon’s impeachment, his chances of exoneration remain uncertain — even before he’s tried for the martial law decree that the Minju-dominated assembly promptly voted down.The pressure to release Mr. Yoon is weighing on the Minju and the anti-Yoon crowd, whose own protests are far smaller — a shadow of the mobs the Minju mustered in 2016 and 2017 when campaigning for the ouster and jailing of the previous conservative president, Park Geun-hye. On the same avenue, hundreds of thousands shouted epithets attacking Ms. Park in 2016 and 2017. The complexion of the conservative crowds is changing too. Now people in their 20’s and 30’s are joining the elderly, with memories of the Korean War. Millennials are among the loudest firebrands, outshouting the old folks in a densely packed formation noteworthy for avoiding violence. But Ms. Yang doubts the conservatives will remain so orderly if the Miuju’s Mr. Lee, facing trial for corruption in real estate scandals while mayor of a nearby city and governor of the province surrounding Seoul, were to win a snap election for president as prescribed 60 days after impeachment of the president. “If this continues, there could be civil war,” she said. “North Korea has spies all over. They are in the assembly and control the biggest workers’ unions. Double the people will come out to demonstrate.”Mr. Jeon, who was in Washington for President Trump’s inauguration and saw a number of senators, is confident “he will exert strong pressure on China.” No way, Mr. Jeon believes, will Mr. Trump pull America’s 28,500 troops out of Korea, as he threatened during his first term, to get Korea to pay more than the $1.1 billion it’s agreed to contribute toward the annual cost of keeping them here “American troops cannot withdraw,” he said. “They are deeply concerned with China. We don’t forget the American blessing on Korea.”But what if Mr. Trump meets Kim Jong-un, with whom he sat down three times during his first term and has said he would like to see again. Mr. Trump, he said, “will play with him.”

Growing Protests at Seoul Point to a Society Deeply Divided Along a Left-Right Axis

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