S Coria Intide President Peniski Communical Pills and Conspiracies

In a cold January afternoon, a young pharmacy student, Shin Yong-Min, waited restlessly outside the Constitutional Court of South Korea as the country's president raised to fight his impeachment.

While John Suk Youol testified, she chanted, along with hundreds of his angry and worried supporters who gathered around him from his unsuccessful attempt to impose martial law. “Release him now. Cancel his musiming,” they called.

“If the president is obstructed and the opposition leader is elected, our country will become one with North Korea and Kim Jong Un,” Yong-Min said, citing a theory popular with President Ion's most fanatical followers: that the opposition party of the Opposition left opposition: that the opposition party of the left opposition opposition Party wants to unite with the north and to turn South Korea into a communist country.

At 22, Yong-Min stands out from the Legion of Adult Koreans, who have always feared and despised north and make up most of those who possess these far-right conspiracy beliefs.

This generation of Koreans, now of the 60s and 70s, lived during the Cold War and remembered the bitterly devastating consequences of the invasion of North Korea in the 1950s.

When John declared martial law in early December, he played these fears to justify his grip on power.

Without citing evidence, he claims that the North Korean Communist forces have penetrated the opposition party and are trying to overthrow the country. They had to be “eradicated,” he said as he quickly moved on a ban on political activity and put the army of responsibility.

Two months since its unsuccessful coup, anti -communist madness attracts the supporters of Ion, young and old.

Even some who have never considered North Korea or communism are now convinced that their dynamic democracy is on the verge of turning a left dictatorship – and that their leader has no choice but to remove the democratic rights of people to them to Protects from both of the two of the two of the two of the two of the two of their two leader Pyongyang and Beijing.

“This war between communism and democracy,” said an office employee of his 40s, who got out of work to join the protest in court.

Another man, at the age of 30, strongly claims that the president should be returned to the position as soon as possible. “He will arrest all North Korean spies,” he said.

Such threats were once very real. In the 60s and 70s, spies regularly tried to penetrate the government.

In 1968, a group of North Korean commandos crawled across the border and tried to kill President Park Chung-Hi then. A tree of the Bugak Mountain of Seoul is still carries the bullet markings from the intense battles with pistols that have been raging for nearly two weeks.

In the 1980s, in the last years of the violent military dictatorship in South Korea, a radically distant student movement began to praise Pyongyang for its “superb” political system. They were marked by Sympathizers mode.

It was also customary for authoritarian leaders to blame their political opponents in North Korean conspirators.

“Anti-communism has become the dominant ideology of South Korea military dictators who used it to control society and justify the restriction of people's freedom,” says Shin Jin-Win, a professor of sociology at the University of Chungang.

Today, these threats have been distracted. Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and sophisticated cyber-haki capabilities represent the greater risk and you will struggle to find someone in South Korea who wants to imitate life in the north. The political left and the right are simply separated how to deal with their problematic neighbors.

While the conservative conservative people's approach is to try to threaten the North to obey military superiority, the left -wing Democratic Party prefers to commit to Pyongyang, believing that the two countries can peacefully exist.

The president is accused of operating the historical fears of people. “The rhetoric of Ion almost completely coincides with that of past dictators. He is the first president to use this anti-communist ideology so rude as Korea became a democracy in 1987,” said Mr. Shin.

Not only did I accuse parliament, led by the opposition Democratic Party of being full of Pyongyang's sympathizers, but he hit the idea that North Korea with the help of China, falsified last year's parliamentary elections.

“This is a fake news prepared by Ion to demonize the opposition and to justify its undemocratic move,” the BBC told.

“We have a long history of the struggle for democracy and freedom in Korea. We are the ones who have managed to thwart the Ion's attempt to destroy Korea's democracy,” he said, citing opposition politicians who ran past the troops and climbed the walls of parliament during martial law to vote on the proposal.

Similar ideas were previously pedaling by extreme conservative groups, said Lee Sangsin, a survey expert at the Korean Institute of National Union.

“These groups were isolated. People didn't notice much,” he explained. “But since Ion is the president, his words bear weight and many people have accepted what he has said.”

It was obvious at one of the rallies of Pro-Yoon Weekend, which we attended last month. They were far from firm theorists of conspiracy, almost everyone we talked to said Yon had changed his thinking.

“At first I did not support Ion, but my military position opened my eyes,” says O Jung-Huk, a 57-year-old musician, with his wife there. “We can see how deeply the left -wing forces are in our society.” A woman of the 40s told us that she had a doubt about the arrangement of Chinese votes, but had studied the problem after the martial law and “realized it was true”.

Jon's supporters often point to real events-how the previous president of the Democratic Party, Moon Ja-in, met with Kim Jong Un to try to organize a peace deal; The fact that the current democratic leader, Lee Je -Mung, is being investigated for helping to send millions of dollars to North Korea -then uses them as evidence of a bigger plot.

“This distant conspiracy theory that China is seasoning the election is becoming more accepted,” said Sociology Professor Mr. Shin. “One of the most basic consensus in democracy is the prerequisite for fair and free elections. Now we have the people who trust it. This is very extreme.”

As Yoon's unjustified claims have rooted, his support seems to have grown. Although the bigger part of the people in South Korea still wants he constantly removed from office, the number has fallen. Last week it amounts to 57%Compared to 75% in the week after the military statement.

Through his anti -communist rhetoric, Ion also effectively became distrustful of China. Being afraid of North Korea now means watching for China as well.

At a recent rally over the weekend in Seoul, many supporters had exchanged their trademark brand “Stop the Posters for Election” for those who read the “Chinese Communist Party”.

“I believe China intervenes in all political affairs of South Korea. This is pulling the strings behind the scenes,” said 66-year-old Joe Yon-Deok, who was holding one of the signs.

According to the voting expert, G -n -Lee, “a growing part of the public now believes that China wants to turn South Korea into a vassal country.”

For those of the 20th and 30s, who have never experienced a real danger from North Korea, China is more firm threat. Last year, the Pew Research Center found South Korea and Hungary the only two countries in which Young people had a more negative look at China than the old one.

But contrary to the information they feed them, the fears of young people have nothing to do with communism, said Cho Jin-man, a political scientist at Duksung Women's University.

Until recently the South Koreans considered began to consider it as a threatEspecially after the United States began to treat it as such.

On top of that, young people have many complaints: they are struggling to find a job or afford a home and feel resentment when they see their universities care for Chinese students.

Communism, Mr. Cho believes, is used as a convenient catch-all to rebel fear and hatred. This message is amplified by the end channels on YouTube, especially popular with young men.

“North Korea and China are my biggest concerns,” says Kim Gung-Jo, a 30-year-old IT developer who came alone to one of the rallies. He was left as his friends, he said, and was initially very critical of the president's order. But after studying the YouTube issue, he realized that the martial law was “inevitable”.

“If I were in the president's position, I would have announced it,” he said.

Nevertheless, the Wi Sung-Lac politician of the opposition is not concerned about his party loss of support. “Although these extreme views are spreading, they will be limited,” he said. “Most people understand who we really are and they long for a return to normality.”

The survey expert Lee Sang-son is less Sangu, resembling Yon's supporters to a “fast-growing cult”. The President's move was “very separation,” he said.

“This will have a lasting effect on Korean society.”

Additional reporting from Hosu Lee and Leehyun Choi