South Korea’s President, Impeached and in Jail, Winning Support in Polls

South Korea’s impeached president, Yoon Suk-yeol, languishing in jail following his short-lived attempt to impose martial law, can take comfort in the resurgence of his conservative adherents in the wake of the leftist drive to have him ousted, imprisoned, and possibly executed.The wave of liberal enthusiasm for stripping Mr. Yoon of all power is fading while increasing numbers of Koreans recognize that he may have been justified in losing all patience with the Minju, or Democratic Party, which controls the national assembly. It was after the Minju blocked just about every bit of legislation that Mr. Yoon proposed that he issued a martial law decree on December 3. The Minju majority in the assembly quickly rejected it, forcing him to rescind the decree, and then began the campaign to destroy him by voting 10 days later to impeach Mr. Yoon.Eager to wreak complete vengeance, the Minju needs the country’s constitutional court to oust Mr. Yoon from office by approving the impeachment motion. Simultaneously, a posse known as the Corruption Investigation Office for high-level officials has him in jail awaiting possible indictment for staging an insurrection, a crime that carries life imprisonment or the death penalty.Poll results — on top of widespread, sometimes violent protests — show that the popular support on which Mr. Yoon’s enemies counted is waning. Increasingly, on the streets of Seoul and other large cities, speculation turns to the possibility of clashes between leftists and rightists; China is often blamed for spurring the left in a bid to dominate the South.“More people want to keep Yoon-aligned PPP in power than not,” reads a headline in Joongang Daily on the English translation of an article published in Joongang Ilbo, one of Korea’s best-selling newspapers.The poll, conducted for Joongang by a Seoul polling organization, Realmeter, showed 48.6 percent of 1,004 respondents support Mr. Yoon’s party. That figure compares with 46.2 percent who do not.The poll does not say what percentage want Mr. Yoon to return to his duties as president. It does, though, show a measure of respect — if not popularity — for the man who made his mark as a public prosecutor before defeating the Minju leader, Lee Jae-myung, by a slim margin in 2022.Facing charges of corruption in real estate dealings, Mr. Lee still hopes to win the presidency in a “snap” election that would have to happen 60 days after the constitutional court upheld the impeachment decree, stripping Mr. Yoon of the title of president. Regardless of the court’s decision, Mr. Yoon’s enemies are likely to go on trying to eviscerate him for the insurrection, or “coup against the government,” as they call his six-hour fling at martial law.The Joongang Ilbo poll, though, clearly has many people thinking twice about the wisdom, or common sense, of persecuting a man who has stood up firmly against North Korea, in contrast to the record of his leftist predecessor, Moon Jae-in. From the American viewpoint, Mr. Yoon’s greatest accomplishment has been to enthusiastically approve joint exercises by American and South Korean troops — something Mr. Moon had rejected.“It appeared that the PPP had recovered public support nearly 50 days after President Yoon’s botched imposition of martial law,” Joongang Ilbo said. “Public support for the PPP,” the paper noted, “dropped to 26.2 percent in the first week of December in an identical series of surveys by Realmeter.”As is often the case in South Korea, regional differences mattered. Mr. Yoon is most popular in the southeastern region including the enormous, flourishing port of Busan and the industrial city of Daegu. In the southwestern region, including the restive city of Gwangju, a hotbed of opposition and the scene of a bloody revolt in May 1980, the Minju is favored.Polls, though, are open to question and criticism, as Joongang Ilbo recognized in a previous article.The paper reported analysts saying that “small, inexperienced polling agencies” were “undermining the accuracy and neutrality of surveys.”The paper railed against “excessive pollster activities,” which it said could “negatively affect voters’ behaviors toward political surveys” conducted via random calls, sometimes to temporary numbers. “Voter fatigue with political polls can undermine accuracy,” it said. “People who are fed up with incoming calls from pollsters will likely decline them.”

South Korea’s President, Impeached and in Jail, Winning Support in Polls

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