President Yoon's Approval Ratings Surges to 47%, Gets Arrested, and Declares Rampant Election Fraud

• Yoon Suk-Yeol became the first sitting South Korean President to be arrested.

• A recent local poll showed that President Yoon's approval rating surged to 46.6%.

• President Yoon released a letter to the Korean people. The heart of the letter is about the rampant election fraud in Korea and the desperate need to restore election integrity.

President Yoon Gets Arrested

It has been another wild day in South Korea as Yoon Suk-Yeol became the first sitting South Korean President to be arrested. President Yoon is now being questioned by investigators and can be held for 48 hours. He may be released unless investigators obtain a new detention warrant to detain him for another 20 days.

President Yoon's Approval Ratings Surges to 47%

A recent local poll released on 14 January showed that President Yoon's approval rating surged to 46.6%, with the approval rating among the 20/30 generation recording 44%-49%. This poll included 1,000 people in Korea. President Yoon's approval rating was in the 10% range right after he declared martial law on 3 December 2024. Thus, the recent surge in President Yoon's approval rating is stunning. Several other recent polls showed President Yoon's approval rating rising to more than 40% in recent days.

By age group, the approval rating was 44.8% for those in their 20s and younger, and 49.1% for those in their 30s. The approval rating was 38.4% for those in their 40s, and 37.5% for those in their 50s, but 50.0% and 63.7% for those in their 60s and 70s, respectively. The approval rating for the People Power Party was 45.7%, while that for the Democratic Party was 39.8%. The sampling error for these surveys is ±3.1%p at a 95% confidence level.

President Yoon Releases an Important Letter

Prior to being arrested, President Yoon released an important letter to the people of Korea. This is lengthy and you could read the entire letter below (Google translated). The entire letter (translated into English) has 3,651 words.

The heart of the letter is about the rampant election fraud in South Korea and the need to restore election integrity. We highlighted the parts about election fraud/election integrity in bold - this accounts for about 1,579 words (43% of the entire letter). You could clearly see from his letter how President Yoon considers the election system in Korea to be broken and that it needs to be fixed since without a fair election system, the entire democracy of a country is at risk.

<A Letter to the People>

Dear citizens, did you have many good dreams for the New Year? I hope you will have many happy events in the New Year. Since I was impeached on December 14th last year, I have had a lot of time to think alone. It may be ironic, but now that I am impeached, I finally feel like I am the president. After 26 years of public service, 8 months of presidential campaigning, being elected president and taking over the government, and taking office as president... I have been working so hard from dawn to late at night since taking office that I have not been able to think about myself as the president.

There were many things that required me to think hard, discuss, and make difficult decisions on issues such as public service appointments, election pledges and state affairs, current issues and crisis management, diplomacy, security, economy, and society. Since my school days, I have lived with the idea that ability is effort, so I have worked hard and fiercely. Many people advised me to have authority and take a break as a president, but the domestic and international situations have not been easy since taking office.

The global security and supply chain crisis, high prices, high interest rates, and high exchange rates have brought about an exogenous economic crisis. The explosive increase in national debt due to the previous government’s populist policies, the problem of household loans due to the failure of real estate policies, and the increase in the minimum wage due to the small-scale policy have made it more difficult to overcome the economic crisis, including the deterioration of management and loan problems for the self-employed, small business owners, and small and medium-sized enterprises.

However, thanks to the people who trusted and followed me and the government despite the difficult circumstances, we were able to gradually resolve the current issues and crises. As a result of abolishing the punitive tax policy and faithfully implementing the real estate policy based on market principles, we managed housing prices stably, connected the diplomacy and economy of global pivot countries, developed overseas markets, and made efforts to export.

As a result, we achieved the highest export performance ever last year and almost caught up with Japan, which has a population 2.5 times larger than ours. Last year, GDP per capita surpassed Japan’s. The nuclear base upgrade of the ROK-US alliance, the strengthening of the comprehensive strategic alliance, and the ROK-US-Japan trilateral cooperation system through the normalization of ROK-Japan relations have solidly supported our economy’s external credibility.

These days, the past two and a half years of running around here and there for security, economy, and social reform pass by like a panorama. I have many regrets that I should have listened more wisely and done better. When I look back on the last presidential election period and the two and a half years since my inauguration, I think of the faces of each and every citizen who believed in me and supported me despite my shortcomings, and I think of those who drag their tired bodies to work at dawn, students who go out carrying school bags to prepare for the future in the cold morning, and those who suffer from illness and discomfort in difficult circumstances. I feel regretful that I cannot visit you and help you.

I think that it is because of this regret that I finally think, “I am the president,” after working hard and working hard and being suspended from my duties. This suspension from my duties is the fourth suspension from my duties in my public service career. I was suspended from my job three times, once as a prosecutor and twice as the Prosecutor General. People around me say that I am foolish for not making moderate compromises and taking the easy way out. When I am suspended from my job due to foolish choices, people close to me turn their backs and I feel lonely, but as time passes, misunderstandings are resolved and the support and encouragement of many people become strength.

My foolish decisions have always been based on my unchanging belief in liberal democracy and the rule of law. Democracy that is not liberal democracy is fake democracy, and it is dictatorship and totalitarianism in the name of democracy. Democracy is a system that protects individual freedom, and liberal democracy is realized through the rule of law.

In addition, the rule of law is the way in which the freedom of all people in our community coexists. The rule of law is realized by reasonable laws that respect freedom and fair judges. The rule of law is a core element of liberal democracy. Liberal democracy combines with the principles of a free market economy in the economy to achieve our prosperity through autonomy and creativity, and creates abundant resources for welfare and solidarity, creating a virtuous cycle of prosperity.

Our country does not have natural resources, but it has excellent human resources and has developed through open and active international trade. Today, the world is a place where all countries have complex relationships with each other in areas such as security, economy, and raw material supply chains. In order to continue our prosperity and pass it on to future generations, solidarity with countries that share the values ​​of freedom and the rule of law is especially important.

Of course, countries that do not attack us hostilely should cooperate with us in the realistic aspect of mutual respect and the pursuit of common interests, even if their systems and values ​​are different from ours. However, countries that have different systems and values ​​and that are invading us with hostile influence should always be on guard and protect our sovereignty and prevent it from being undermined. We should always be on guard against hostile influence operations by external forces that encroach on our sovereignty. Only by doing so can we block the influence of such forces and prevent them from taking us lightly, while realizing mutual respect and common interests. Only by being on guard and careful can we enjoy common prosperity and peace.

After World War II, the UN was established, and resolving disputes through military attacks and war for any reason was prohibited under international law, and war other than for defensive purposes was prohibited. Military attacks and war provocations that shed blood with guns and swords are prohibited under international law, so even for powerful countries, they become a great diplomatic burden, and gray zone tactics that do not use guns and swords have become widely used.

Psychological warfare using false propaganda, political warfare such as bribing politicians and interfering in elections, cyber warfare that attacks digital systems, and hybrid tactics that add military demonstrations and threats have become widely used. Information warfare such as the theft of national secrets and key industrial technology information are also included in hybrid warfare. Therefore, modern emerging security is very comprehensive and diverse, going beyond military political security to include economic security, health and environmental security, energy and food security, advanced technology security, cyber security, and disaster security.

Military political security includes information protection, security, and blocking various influence operations. Military provocations and wars are political acts that infringe on the sovereignty of the opposing country, but they do not engage in military provocations and wars prohibited by international law, and they use various gray zone hybrid warfare in which the attack and the responsible party are not clearly revealed as a means of infringing on sovereignty.

In particular, authoritarian dictatorships and totalitarian states are trying to keep many countries, including neighboring countries, under their sphere of influence or vassal states in order to maintain their regimes. If domestic political forces join hands with external forces that encroach on sovereignty, it is advantageous to gain political power with the help of their influence operations.

However, there is no such thing as a free lunch. We must give up our core national interests. We give up not only confidential national information and industrial technology information, but also energy security such as nuclear power plants and industrial competitiveness, and furthermore, we destroy solidarity with countries that share the value of freedom and invite diplomatic isolation.

This is an anti-state act that clearly goes against the national interest. This anti-state act goes against the national interest not only when such forces are in power but also when they become a huge opposition party that occupies a large number of seats in the National Assembly. With the powerful power of the National Assembly and the dictatorship of the National Assembly, they thoroughly block the ruling party’s state administration and paralyze state affairs through legislation and budget blockade.

Beyond the political differences between the ruling and opposition parties and the checks and balances, they are pushing for the abandonment of anti-national interests, paralysis of state affairs, and collapse of constitutional order. This is not a story from someone else's country. This is the reality of the Republic of Korea.

Any political force has to watch the voters' mood, so it is difficult to continue their outrageous tyranny, but if they are confident that they can secure seats in the National Assembly as planned or take over administrative power at any time through election manipulation, what can they not do? There is so much evidence of election fraud in our country's elections.

The National Election Commission's sloppy system that makes this possible has also been revealed. We cannot dismiss election fraud as a conspiracy theory just because there is insufficient evidence to punish a specific person for election fraud. Many bodies were found stabbed to death, but we cannot claim that there was no murder and that it was a normal natural death just because the murderer was not identified. A normal country governed by the rule of law should actively request an investigation by the investigative authorities and cooperate to find the culprit.

If a huge number of fake ballots were discovered during the ballot counting in the election lawsuit, and the National Election Commission’s computer system is vulnerable to hacking and manipulation and significantly falls short of the standards of a normal national organization’s computer system, and if they not only make no efforts to correct this, but also refuse to verify and confirm whether the announced number of voters matches the actual number of voters, then a total election fraud system has been put into operation.

This is an act of stealing the sovereignty of the people and an act that undermines liberal democracy. In a normal country that pursues liberal democracy and the rule of law, the Supreme Court Justice and the National Election Commission that discovered this in the election lawsuit should have requested an investigation and actively cooperated in the investigation to thoroughly confirm whether such illegal election activities occurred.

Nevertheless, they covered it up. Many bodies were found, but if they attack people who talk about murder as a conspiracy theory unless the victims’ families find evidence to prove who the culprit is and file a lawsuit to confirm the punishment, is this a country?

An election fraud system consisting of digital systems and fake ballots cannot be attempted and promoted by an inexperienced political force of a country alone. If you make a mistake and get caught, your political power can collapse. It is something that you cannot even think of doing alone. At best, it would be bribery, trading of interests, and manipulation of public opinion.

However, the election fraud system that links vote rigging and opinion poll manipulation shows that international solidarity and cooperation are necessary for political powers that attempt and promote this. The election fraud system consists of a public opinion poll system controlled by a specific political power and the National Election Commission’s refusal to confirm and conceal the results.

The creation of public opinion that the murder case is a conspiracy theory because the murderer has not been identified also constitutes one axis of the election fraud system. As you know, if this is the reality of our country, is this a crisis? Is this normal?

Is it a national emergency equivalent to a war or an incident? If war and an incident are physical situations that occur on our national territory, that is, a hardware crisis, then our current reality is a crisis of our country’s operating system and software.

Article 66 of the Constitution states that the President represents the country as the head of state and has the responsibility to protect the independence of the country, the integrity of the territory, the continuity of the country, and the Constitution. In simple terms, it is giving the President the responsibility to protect the hardware of the Republic of Korea and the operating system and software.

The situation in which the giant opposition party paralyzes state affairs by blocking legislation and the budget through the dictatorship of the National Assembly, promotes discontent and division of public opinion against the government by abusing unconstitutional laws and abnormal laws that go against the national interest, suspends high-ranking public officials from their duties through dozens of impeachments, and even impeaches prosecutors and the head of the Board of Audit and Inspection who are investigating and auditing their corruption, and recklessly pushes forward bulletproof legislation to cover up their corruption is a national crisis that threatens the governance of the Republic of Korea, and the president has a responsibility to protect this governance system.

When I saw that they were trying to impeach the head of the Board of Audit and Inspection, a constitutional institution, and bring him to court in the Constitutional Court, which is also a constitutional institution, I thought that emergency measures were necessary to fulfill the duty to protect the Constitution. I judged that the series of actions by the giant opposition party constituted a national emergency equivalent to wartime or an incident, and decided to exercise the martial law authority exclusively granted to the president.

Martial law used to be limited to preparing for war, but our Constitution stipulates that it is a “state of national emergency equivalent to this,” and thus anticipates various national crises other than war as situations in which martial law can be declared. In a national crisis, the first thing the president of a liberal democratic country should do is to inform the sovereign people of the national crisis and appeal to them to work together to overcome it.

A national crisis should not be overcome solely with the military and dictatorial administrative power, but should be overcome by sharing the situation with the sovereign people and receiving their cooperation. Doesn’t the word martial law mean to inform the public of the gravity of the situation and to be on guard?

I have tried to protect liberal democracy and constitutional order by informing the public of the urgency of the situation and having the sovereign people keep their eyes wide open and watch and criticize the destructive corruption of the National Assembly dictatorship, to the public who do not fully recognize that our country’s liberal democracy and sovereignty are in a state of crisis.

So, in order to inform the Minister of National Defense of the dictatorship of the National Assembly and maintain order, and to properly inform the public of the fraudulent election system and to find out the truth, I ordered the minimum number of troops to be deployed, and 280 troops were deployed to the National Assembly and 290 troops to the National Election Commission.

The 280 troops deployed to the National Assembly were on standby in the National Assembly yard, and the troops deployed to the National Election Commission were only a few dozen digital agents who had access to the internal system, while the rest were on standby outside. They immediately withdrew 2 hours and 30 minutes after martial law was declared, when the National Assembly passed a resolution demanding the lifting of martial law, and it ended peacefully without any casualties or damage.

Citizens, martial law is not a crime. Martial law is the exercise of the president’s authority to overcome a national crisis. That is why the martial law department exists in the Joint Chiefs of Staff to assist the president in exercising his authority. I was also impeached due to the frame offensive of ‘martial law = rebellion,’ and the Minister of National Defense and military officials who prepared and executed it are now under arrest. This is truly absurd. The deployment time is only 2 hours, but is there a 2-hour civil war?

Have you ever seen a civil war where they announce to the entire world and the entire nation that they are starting, and then withdraw troops and stop in less than 3 hours because the National Assembly tells them to stop? According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff martial law and martial law manual, nationwide martial law presupposes the use of at least 6~7 divisions and tens of thousands of troops. The Minister of National Defense, who served as the Chief of Operations and the Chief of Operations Headquarters of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, must know this.

Since it is an appeal to the people in the form of martial law, a small number of troops were planned. Since members of the National Assembly and National Assembly staff were allowed to enter the National Assembly after checking their IDs, the deliberation on the resolution demanding the lifting of martial law proceeded quickly, and thousands of people surrounded the 280 troops in the main building and yard. In accordance with the order to withdraw troops, the troops politely greeted the citizens in the yard and withdrew. Did they intend to close the National Assembly? Or did they plan a riot?

Recently, the opposition party’s impeachment officials withdrew the charge of sedition from the charges at the Constitutional Court. Since the charge of sedition cannot possibly be established, they took the right measure. However, if they impeached him for sedition and then removed the charge of sedition in the trial, isn’t it a fraudulent impeachment and fraudulent prosecution? Looking at the situation after the impeachment, I wonder if the politicians who boast of having participated in the democracy movement for so long are right. However, seeing that many citizens and young people have recently recognized the crisis in our country and have a sense of rights and responsibility as sovereigns, I think they did a good job informing the people of the national crisis and appealing to them, and I feel deep gratitude to the people.

Since I ran for president, I have been well aware that the position of our country’s president is not a path of glory but a path of suffering. However, since I promised to establish this country’s liberal democracy properly and fight against the totalitarian vested interests that ignore freedom and the rule of law to restore sovereignty to the people, I personally have no regrets no matter what happens. Would I have imposed martial law like this to extend my dictatorship and rule? I mean, martial law for a very short period of time with such a small mini force. I don’t know what the judicial judgment will be, but I believe that the people know well whether this martial law is for protecting the Constitution and saving the country.

In the past, members of the National Assembly resisted the dictatorship of the president and fought for democracy, but as the president who has been given the responsibility to protect the Constitution, it is natural to resist and fight against the brutality of the dictatorship of the National Assembly, which is unprecedented in the constitutional history of any country in the world. It is to normalize the functions of the state and protect liberal democracy.

When I look at the current judicial reality, where arrest warrants are issued by agencies without investigative authority, and where judges arbitrarily lift restrictions on search and seizure under the law through judicial shopping rather than normal jurisdiction, and where thousands of riot police are mobilized to enforce them, and where they trespass into a first-class military facility protection zone and arrest the presidential security guards in the act of obstructing the execution of the warrant, I am shocked at how the legal profession, which I have experienced for 26 years, is like this.

I am bitterly convinced that my judgment that our country is currently in a serious crisis of national ruin was not wrong, when I see what those who disdain liberal democracy do when they hold the sword of power. Liberal democracy and the rule of law are two sides of the same coin. The rule of law that realizes liberal democracy is not a formal rule of law or a rule of law that uses tricks. This kind of rule of law is the rule of law that is abused to suppress freedom in a people's democratic dictatorship and a totalitarian state.

Laws should be created to realize the constitutional spirit of liberal democracy, and once created, laws should not be governed by majority rule, but should thoroughly protect minorities and individual rights. When the leftist movement in our country was not the mainstream, it also relied on this protection of the rule of law, but after it won an absolute majority of seats in the National Assembly, it prioritized majority democracy over actual rule of law, and democratic control over control under the rule of law.

I experienced this lawless tyranny of the Democratic Party government when I was the Prosecutor General. When this happens, lawyers and legal professionals are reduced to servants of political power. However, citizens, cheer up. If the sovereign citizens have a firm sense of rights and responsibility and strive to protect them, the future of this country is bright and hopeful.

What's Next in the Wild Politics of Korea?