Asia-Pacific
Why South Korean protesters are using US flags and a pro-Trump slogan
By
The Washington Post January 5, 2025
Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Kelsey Ables
The Washington Post January 5, 2025
A woman sits at a protest against the impeachment and the arrest warrant for South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in Seoul on Sunday. (Jintak Han/The Washington Post)
SEOUL, South Korea — U.S. flags, “Stop the Steal” and the Virginia state motto are finding a home in a political battle halfway around the world from Washington, as supporters and critics of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol invoke familiar American political symbols of freedom and defiance.
As investigators closed in on Yoon on Friday, attempting to detain him in relation to insurrection charges, his supporters waved American flags, sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” and held signs reading “Stop the Steal,” a slogan borrowed from supporters of President-elect Donald Trump, who deny the results of the 2020 election, which Trump lost.
Meanwhile, the Virginia state flag — bearing the state motto of “sic semper tyrannis,” or “thus always to tyrants” — took on new meaning more than 7,000 miles from its home, when the mayor of the southwestern Korean city of Gwangju displayed it outside City Hall to criticize Yoon on the day of his potential arrest.
Together, the opposing sides created an unexpected constellation of American symbolism, appropriated for vastly different ends.
South Korean conservatives, who fervently support the country’s security alliance with Washington, have long displayed U.S. flags at rallies. But their recent adoption of “Stop the Steal” highlighted the increasing similarities between Yoon’s political rhetoric and Trump’s, as the South Korean president defends his short-lived martial law decree that has plunged the nation into its worst political crisis in decades.
Yoon is now under criminal investigation for his decision and faces charges of insurrection and abuse of power. But the operation to detain him on Friday was abandoned after investigators had an hours-long standoff with the presidential guard.
Yoon has claimed he declared martial law to warn “anti-state” opposition party lawmakers. He has also cited allegations of systemic voter fraud going back as many as four years, and sent in martial law troops to the National Election Commission to check election machines. Independent investigators have debunked those claims, which his supporters continue to amplify.
His rhetoric has echoed that of Trump, who has labeled his political opponents as “enemies from within” and has claimed baseless allegations of widespread election fraud in 2020.
Yoon’s legal team has even invoked the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling granting Trump immunity from official acts taken while in office. However, under South Korean law, sitting presidents are immune from arrest except on charges of insurrection or treason.
Some of Yoon’s supporters said they hoped Trump would find sympathy and recognize their shared plight.
“I am certain there was election fraud,” said Na Yoon-seop, 58, who was holding a homemade “Stop the Steal” sign, two South Korean flags and an American flag outside Yoon’s residence. Na was among the loyal Yoon supporters protesting his arrest in the snow on Sunday morning.
“In America, Trump was criticized a lot for his concerns about election fraud. … This is to appeal to that,” he said. “The moment Trump was elected, I thought things will finally get better again, so I cheered wholeheartedly.”
Yoon, a political novice who squeaked into office in 2022, has maintained loyalty from a fringe base of ultraconservative voters, even as his approval ratings dropped to historical lows. Belief in election denialism has increasingly intensified among them, especially after martial law, polls show.
Many of Yoon’s supporters are elderly and members of an evangelical Protestant base comprised of Christians who fled communist persecution in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula before the 1950-53 Korean War, which broke out after the Soviet Union-supported northern troops invaded the pro-American South.
The U.S.-South Korean security alliance is core to their identity because they view Washington’s intervention in the Korean War as critical to containing communism and to South Korea’s economic rise, experts say. And Yoon, who has prioritized improving relations with Washington during his tenure, has found sympathy among these supporters.
“Yoon Suk Yeol is using the USA and Donald Trump as an example,” said Uichol Kim, political culture expert at Inha University in Incheon, South Korea, citing Trump’s instigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection, his claim of immunity from prosecution and his right-wing values. Kim added that Yoon “is using the same tactic in asking his supporters to reject impeachment and protect him from the arrest.”
Meanwhile, a different kind of American symbol took root in Gwangju, a city with a history of oppression and violence under military dictators, and whose residents and leaders have been especially critical of Yoon’s martial law decision.
On Friday, the day that investigators tried and failed to detain Yoon, the Virginia state flag was displayed in a sign of resistance to the impeached president, who declared the nation’s first martial law in more than four decades.
Bearing the state motto “sic semper tyrannis” — which conveys the meaning that tyrants will always be overthrown — the flag is a kind of a threat. During the U.S. Revolutionary War, the motto was directed at the British. In Gwangju, a city known for laying the foundation for Korean democracy after a 1980 uprising in the city, it’s aimed at Yoon.
“It is an eternal truth that those who abuse power will inevitably end up in ruin,” Gwangju Mayor Kang Gi-jung wrote in a Facebook post alongside a photo of the flag on Friday.
“It’s the morning of arresting a tyrant, Yoon Suk Yeol,” Kang said.
Initially adopted in 1861, the Virginia state flag depicts the Roman goddess of virtue, Virtus, standing on top of a conquered king. It was taken up by Virginia just days after the state seceded from the Union ahead of the Civil War, giving its “anti-tyrant” sentiment a darker undertone.
The Latin phrase “sic semper tyrannis” has a long history and debated origins. It was adopted by Virginia as the state motto in 1776, the same year the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence and is said to have been called out by John Wilkes Booth when he assassinated Abraham Lincoln in 1865.
In Gwangju, the flag “symbolizes that Yoon Suk Yeol will eventually meet the fate of a tyrant, rather than an admiration for the United States or the state of Virginia,” said Jaechun Kim, a political scientist at Sogang University in Seoul.
How the Virginia flag came to fly in Gwangju may be little more than coincidence, though. According to a press release from the Gwangju government, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) sent Gwangju the flag, which, it said, once flew at the state capitol in Richmond, as a thank-you gift for welcoming a delegation from Virginia to the city to discuss agriculture collaboration in November. Youngkin’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In his Facebook post, Kang said the flag arrived “just in time.”
Jintak Han contributed to this report.