(Photo by Daily Minjoo via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 3.0 DEED)
On the night of December 3, 2024, South Korea came close to becoming a dictatorship.
In an attempt to seize power, then-President Yoon Seok-Yeol claimed that South Korea was “under threat” from North Korean forces and abruptly declared martial law. With this declaration, Yoon suspended most civil and political rights in the East Asian country, including the right to protest, the free press, and the parliament.
Yoon also tried to order the arrest of politicians and journalists who opposed him. However, in the face of a huge public outcry, South Korea’s parliament, controlled by the opposition, quickly annulled the martial law declaration. Many commentators described Yoon’s actions as a coup attempt.
For South Korea, the coup attempt was an unwelcome reminder of the country’s past. After the Second World War, South Korea was run by a dictatorship until the late 1980s. In fact, democracy is a relatively young phenomenon in South Korea. Yoon’s attempt to impose martial law is the first serious threat to Korean democracy since then.
Due to his part in the coup attempt, Yoon was impeached by the Korean parliament. Subsequently, he was also unanimously removed from office by the judges of the Constitutional Court in April 2025.
However, despite attempting to overthrow South Korean democracy, Yoon still enjoys significant support among South Koreans. For example, the People’s Power Party, which Yoon was a part of up until May of this year and whose candidate Yoon had endorsed, received over 41% of the vote in June’s presidential election. By comparison, Lee Jae-Myung of the Democratic Party won the election with just under 50% of the vote.
“Make Korea Great Again:” A Denial of Democracy?
In fact, many of Yoon’s supporters are part of a “Make Korea Great Again” (MKGA) movement in South Korea. In a parallel to the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement led by U.S. President Donald Trump, the MKGA movement is closely linked with the Korean far-right and evangelical Christian groups.
This movement, encouraged by Yoon, opposes his removal from office. For example, tens of thousands of the group’s supporters took to the streets of South Korean cities in February 2025, calling for the Korean National Assembly to nullify Yoon’s impeachment and the arrest of leaders opposed the former president. In a haunting parallel of the January 6, 2021, riots in Washington, D.C., where MAGA protestors tried to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, these events in Korea show that the MKGA movement openly doubts South Korea’s democratic system.
Is Yoon Encouraging Attacks on Korean Democracy?
Yoon remains active in politics despite his coup attempt and open investigations into his alleged crimes. In fact, he may face the death penalty for his role in declaring martial law. Yoon has denied all charges against him and maintains that the martial law declaration was in the country’s interest without presenting any convincing evidence.
His argument is also further undermined by the fact that South Korea has never had a declaration of martial law since the country transitioned to democracy four decades ago. In fact, Yoon is resisting prosecutors’ efforts to investigate his crimes even after being arrested. For example, in August, he resisted questioning for the third time by taking off his clothes and lying on the floor of his prison cell to evade prosecutors.
Even worse, Yoon actively encourages conspiracy theories among his supporters. For example, he promoted an unsubstantiated theory that North Korea had interfered with South Korea’s 2024 parliamentary elections, which Yoon’s party had lost. On their part, MKGA supporters have responded by adopting the “Stop the Steal” slogan used by MAGA supporters in the US. Some Yoon supporters even believe that North Korea is infiltrating South Korea, ready to topple the country—a belief used by Yoon to justify his martial law declaration. These conspiracy theories are also spread online, often in channels with hundreds of thousands of viewers.
Why is the MKGA Movement Popular (and Why is it Dangerous)?
Despite Yoon trying to overthrow democracy, he and his movement still enjoy a high level of popularity among Koreans. One explanation may be that Korean politics remains deeply polarized, with right-leaning conservatives being particularly pro-America. This may be due to South Korea and the U.S.’ shared history of enmity against communist nations, particularly North Korea and China. For instance, many conservative South Koreans credit the U.S. with “saving” the country from communist takeover during the Korean War.
Both left and right-wing parties in South Korea have embraced negative attacks on each other, resulting in hard-to-break political divisions. The June presidential election is a classic example: the two main parties alternatively accused each other of being corrupt or enabling corruption, among other attacks.
When the opposition is smeared, supporters are more incentivized to back their party on the grounds of what they perceive as the morally superior option, compared to the “evil” opposition. The trend in South Korea mirrors what has been observed in the US, which has seen some of the strongest political polarization among established democracies over the past four decades. Indicators of political polarization, such as the percentage of people who think the opposing party is “evil,” have been rising in other countries as well.
Concerningly, pro-Yoon protesters even formed a paramilitary group called the Baekgoldan, or the “white skull squad,” which is a name associated with a police unit used to suppress pro-democracy forces in South Korea’s former dictatorship. Furthermore, pro-Yoon protestors have launched physical attacks, including one on a court after a judge extended Yoon’s time in detention. Both of these examples show that many MKGA supporters are willing to resort to violence, if necessary, to achieve their goals despite South Korea’s established democratic institutions.
Other Countries Aren’t Immune, Either
Unfortunately, South Korea’s example is just another in a growing global trend of democratic backsliding. For example, the U.S. saw its own attempted coup on January 6, 2021. Despite a committee from the US House of Representatives finding that Trump was the ‘central cause’ of this attack, Trump did not face any consequences. In fact, he won re-election in the 2024 presidential election and is now dismantling American democratic institutions at an alarming speed. States such as Hungary, India, and Türkiye have also seen their democracies dismantled by strong leaders.
In December, South Koreans successfully stopped an attempt to overthrow their democracy by protesting, blocking the armed forces and police and allowing the parliament to quickly overturn martial law. Despite this, the MKGA movement remains a threat to the country’s democracy, with its continued rejection of democratic processes and worrying turn towards violence.
As the US has shown, a strongman dictator can easily mobilize a strong base of support to overturn an established democratic system. With political polarization on the rise across democratic states, all nations must also remain vigilant about threats to their own democratic systems.
Edited by Chelsea Bean
