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South Korea’s Constitutional Court, by unanimous decision, removed conservative-leaning Yoon Suk Yeol from office on April 4, citing his December 3 declaration of martial law.
The election to replace Yoon has been set for June 3. An anti-American, hardcore leftist, Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party of Korea, is now the leading candidate to become the 14th president of the Republic of Korea.
If Lee gets his way, he will almost certainly try to end South Korea’s alliance with the United States and there will be nothing stopping him from opening his country to more Chinese and North Korean infiltration. He apparently believes in the reunification of Korea, so as president he will probably do all he can to merge his Republic of Korea into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the formal name of North Korea.
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The South Korean people as a whole do not share Lee’s agenda, but there are two problems. Lee is absolutely ruthless — he threatened “horrific mass bloodshed and chaos” this month if the Constitutional Court freed Yoon — and his party is almost certain to rig the next election.
The next election, therefore, could be the last in Korea.
All the national elections this decade in South Korea have been marred by fraud. Minjoo, as the Democratic Party of Korea is commonly known, almost certainly changed ballots in at least the last three national elections, starting in 2020.
Its “uniformly narrow” wins in district after district in the National Assembly contests in 2020 were “statistically improbable” as were the results in the National Assembly election last year. The results in both 2020 and 2024 were substantially different than late polling suggested, an indication of ballot fraud.
Also, improbable was Lee Jae-myung’s impressive showing in the 2022 presidential election, which he lost to Yoon by a much closer margin than the last polls indicated.
What is the possibility of ballot rigging now? “There’s a very high likelihood of fraud in the upcoming South Korean presidential election, say, 99%, maybe 100%,” Grant Newsham, a South Korea analyst, told me after Yoon was removed. “Every stage of the electoral process is susceptible to manipulation and outright fraud. The National Election Commission, the NEC, is a tainted organization and shows no signs of wanting to address vulnerabilities, much less actual evidence of fraud.”
“The NEC after the Constitutional Court’s ruling is even more powerful,” Tara O of the East Asia Research Center pointed out in comments to me recently. “They hate it when anyone mentions election fraud.”
South Koreans mention fraud, with good reason. In October 2023, the South Korean National Intelligence Service tried to penetrate the country’s election infrastructure and found that the NEC’s system was easily compromised. The NIS found it could manipulate votes, vote counts, and electoral rolls, among other things.
North Korea’s hackers, including the notorious Lazarus Group, also have penetrated the NEC’s system.
Worse, as Newsham points out, “There’s been no apparent effort to strengthen the NEC network.” There has been an almost complete failure by government officials and prosecutors to examine and fix what independent observers, such as Newsham, have observed.
The failure to fix South Korea’s faulty election infrastructure will have consequences. “This upcoming election is Minjoo’s best chance ever to get control of the main levers of power and move the Republic of Korea toward a one-party state, its long-term objective,” says Newsham, also author of “When China Attacks: A Warning to America.” “Will they cheat your way to power with this last piece of the puzzle, the presidency? Of course, they’ll try.”
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Why should Americans care? The last leftist president, Minjoo’s Moon Jae-in, tried to force Samsung and other South Korean giants to disclose technology, thereby giving China invaluable assistance. Samsung, along with Taiwan’s TSMC, makes the world’s most sophisticated computer chips. Its tech in the hands of Beijing, especially if Taiwan were to fall to China, would give China control of chipmaking worldwide.
Geopolitical considerations are even more important, and China and North Korea know what’s at stake. Beijing and Pyongyang have actively engaged in covert efforts to overthrow South Korea’s democracy. As David Maxwell of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Asia Pacific Strategy reports, “China’s United Front Work Department has been conducting extensive covert operations in South Korea as part of Beijing’s broader ‘unrestrictive warfare’ strategy.”
What is the possibility of ballot rigging now? “There’s a very high likelihood of fraud in the upcoming South Korean presidential election, say, 99%, maybe 100%,” Grant Newsham, a South Korea analyst, told me after Yoon was removed.
Maxwell also notes that pro-North Korean elements within South Korea, including political figures, civic organizations and clandestine groups, are receiving “covert assistance” from North Korea’s United Front Department and Reconnaissance General Bureau.
A destabilized South Korea would pose significant challenges to American security interests. As Maxwell, who served five tours of duty in the South with the U.S. Army, points out, “For North Korea and China, undermining the South Korean government is a means to fracture the Republic of Korea-United States alliance, dismantle the U.S. nuclear umbrella, and ultimately drive Americans forces out of the Korean peninsula and mainland Asia.”
Newsham worries about something that now seems inconceivable but is in fact entirely possible. “South Korea,” he says, “could become the next Venezuela.”
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