South Korea’s Ruling People Power Party Rebounds in Polls

On January 15, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol was arrested. It was the first time a sitting South Korean president had been detained. Outside the presidential residence, some of Yoon’s far-right supporters, wailing and flailing, flopped to the ground. Legislators from the ruling People Power Party (PPP) shed tears, some making their way to where Yoon met the investigators producing the arrest warrant and reading it out loud. Before stepping out, Yoon was given a private moment to spend some time with his dog. Snapshots of him being escorted away in a bulletproof vehicle showed him looking somber and wan.

This all-too-human mise-en-scène whipped up much sympathy. Since his ill-fated declaration of martial law on December 3, Yoon has appealed to his supporters, thanking and egging them on through a handwritten letter, social media posts, videos, and messages delivered by his lawyers. The PPP has stood fully behind him, swearing to reinstate his presidency. The party argues that Yoon has fallen victim to a judiciary and police allegedly controlled by pro-North Korea leftists. Far-right YouTube pundits have also been feeding their millions of subscribers with unfounded conspiracy theories not even worth explicating in this article.

It all seems to have worked, however. Shortly after Yoon’s martial law decree, Gallup found that only 11 percent of South Koreans supported Yoon and 24 percent supported the PPP. On the other hand, almost half of them supported opposition parties (40 percent for the Democratic Party and 8 percent for the Rebuilding Korea Party). In another Gallup poll in early January, however, the PPP and the DP were neck and neck at 34 and 36 percent, respectively. In mid-January, the same pollster found that the PPP had surpassed the DP by 3 percentage points at 39 percent.

In other polls as well, the PPP’s approval ratings were higher than the DP’s. (Gallup and other major pollsters refrained from asking about Yoon’s approval ratings since his presidency was suspended and its performance couldn’t be properly gauged.) In some fringe polls done by right-wing outlets, the PPP even soared into the 40-percent approval range.

Yoon’s supporters say that his popularity is picking back up because martial law was constitutional and part of legitimate governance. But not many believe this; even the PPP legislators shy away from peddling this view. Instead, the PPP and most conservatives are promoting the narrative that the authorities went completely overboard in staging the arrest and physically detaining Yoon.

The PPP and its supporters wanted to put any criminal investigations on hold until the Constitutional Court renders a final ruling on Yoon’s impeachment, on the grounds that he deserved a certain degree of respect as a sitting president. It’s worth remembering, though, that Yoon hid evidence related to his martial law decree from the police and there is credible context to believe that he could be destroying evidence, necessitating a speedy criminal trial. Yoon was arrested only after he repeatedly ignored subpoenas for the investigation.

The PPP’s stance serves multiple purposes: framing Yoon as the victim and the opposition parties as ruthless bullies, as well as earning time for the nation to cool down and the PPP to scout for their next presidential candidate. Most of all, South Korean conservatives don’t want to relive the trauma of the right’s political collapse following the impeachment of their much-adored Park Geun-hye, the former president jailed in 2017.

Thus conservatives aren’t so much rallying around Yoon as bristling against the prospect of the DP taking over the next government. “We are walking a tightrope to cater to hardcore supporters. But hardly any PPP members want to take part in Yoon’s political fate,” an anonymous PPP legislator told MBC.

As part of walking that “tightrope,” the PPP is spinning the narrative that, although Yoon’s martial law declaration was wrong, the president did it as a last resort to save his administration from the opposition parties’ legislative blockade, including impeachment votes against ministers and budget-slashing. The PPP has successfully persuaded its conservative base and right-leaning skeptics in the middle that the DP is irresponsible and incapable of running the government.

Meanwhile, conservatives’ unfounded argument that liberals are arm-twisting the judiciary and the police to do their bidding in locking up the president is taking root. In the PPP’s framing, this is what everyone should be scared of, not Yoon’s martial law. They have begun to carp on “procedural integrity” while glossing over the gravity and actual substance of the Yoon administration’s rampant corruption and nepotism, culminating in his unconstitutional declaration of martial law.

South Korea’s criminal law confers investigation authority regarding insurrection to the police, giving rise to the PPP argument that the entire investigation and arrests are null because the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO), not the police, has taken the reins in bringing Yoon to justice. Yet the CIO isn’t acting alone, having formed a collaboration unit with the police’s National Office of Investigation. Yoon’s alleged crimes are not limited to insurrection. The courts have confirmed the procedural validity on three occasions.

In the PPP’s rhetoric, the import of martial law is negligible; its significance lies not in the fact that it was unconstitutionally declared but in the supposed precipitating factors. Conservatives hold that Yoon’s incessant feuding with the DP and his eventual downfall and disgraceful treatment exemplify the DP’s political irresponsibility and heartlessness.

Meanwhile, the PPP fuels the far-right’s conspiracy theories and gladly entertains the theatrics of Yoon’s fans bawling and hurling insults at the DP and the police. The heightened emotions culminated in a full-on riot at the Seoul Western District Court on January 19, after the court issued a new arrest warrant extending Yoon’s time in detention. Yoon supporters broke windows and doors on their way into the courthouse and physically attacked both police officers and journalists. Over 50 police and 40 civilians were reportedly injured in the violence.

The PPP is holding onto Yoon (for now) because he is the perfect foil to underline what the conservatives hate about the DP, not because they genuinely want to save him.

“The PPP turns around fast. Soon enough, there will appear members attacking Yoon,” Lee Jun-seok, the ousted former chairman of the PPP, told CBS.