South Korea's embattled leader Yoon finds allies among young conservative men

Park Byeong-heon, 25, was a crowd favourite at a pro-Yoon rally on Sunday, cheered on as he gave a 10-minute speech in English aimed at foreign media, decrying attempts by authorities to arrest Yoon over his bid to impose martial law last month.

"This is the country that we love. We have to protect it," Park, a university student, told Reuters after giving his speech.

"The elderly people (at the rallies) always say to me 'actually, if we die, that's it, it's you young people that are in trouble'. This is in fact what motivated me to participate in more of these rallies these past few days."

While the bulk of pro-Yoon protesters appear to be made up of retirees, young conservative men like Park have played a visible role in rallying support for the isolated Yoon.

Popular pro-Yoon YouTubers, some of them conservative men in their 30s, have used their online reach to mobilise support and assert unsubstantiated claims that South Korean elections were marred by fraud, echoing one of Yoon's justifications for briefly imposing martial law on Dec. 3.

Their activism has been encouraged by Yoon, who told supporters in a letter last Wednesday that he was "watching on YouTube live all the hard work" they were doing.

A columnist for the conservative-leaning JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said last month that Yoon's "YouTube addiction" had caused him to fall "into a world of delusion dominated by conspiracy theories".

Park does not view it this way.

"I watched videos of YouTubers spreading the truth and I actually researched a lot of material. I realised that all the South Korean media were lying, and that made my heart boil with anger," said Park.

Park pointed to a claim by pro-Yoon YouTuber Kim Sung-won, who has also covered the recent rallies, that much like the 2020 election that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump claimed was fraudulent, South Korea faced the same risk.

Many protesters at the rally Park attended were seen holding a banner with the "Stop the Steal" slogan popularised by Trump supporters following his loss to U.S. President Joe Biden.

Yoon's supporters have adopted the slogan in the hope that Trump would act or speak in support of his South Korean counterpart soon after his inauguration on Jan. 20.

Groups of young men were among a crowd of around 100 supporters that stayed up all night near Yoon's residence on Friday, vowing to block South Korean investigators trying to carry out a warrant to arrest the impeached president.

One of these men, YouTuber Bae In-kyu, who calls himself an "anti-feminist", a label the president has also embraced, filmed himself being greeted by Yoon Sang-hyeon, a lawmaker from the ruling conservative People Power Party and a vocal opponent of the president's impeachment.

One of Bae's videos defending Yoon's decision to impose martial law on the grounds there were legitimate concerns about election fraud has racked over 1 million views.

South Korean men in their twenties accounted for 63% of voters that backed Yoon in the 2022 presidential election that he won by just 0.73 percent, compared to 26% of women of the same age.

The 2024 U.S. Presidential election also saw a similar rightward shift among young men, with 56% of men aged 18-29 voting for Trump last year, compared with 41% in 2020.

South Korea's previous centre-left government under then president Moon Jae-in had vowed to tackle gender inequalities in the country of 52 million. South Korea has the worst gender pay gap in the OECD and its women's labour market participation rate is below the OECD average.

This effort, however, led to a backlash among South Korean men, as perceptions of reverse discrimination increased, including disgruntlement at the compulsory military service of young men, according to an October 2024 article by Soohyun Christine Lee, a senior lecturer at King's College London.