Separating young people’s outrage at disenfranchisement from election denial in Korea’s ballot protests

Unable to sleep for frustration that “common sense had gone out the window,” a 25-year-old surnamed Song headed to Olympic Park, in Seoul’s Songpa District, at 2 am on Saturday.

An individual surnamed Jeong, aged 35, also joined the demonstrations to show that “it’s not all about claims of election fraud or rage over Yoon Suk-yeol’s removal from the presidency.”

A 36-year-old graduate student surnamed Cho constantly monitored a chat room involving thousands of protestors despite not personally joining the protests. Cho was afraid of being “framed as a mole.”

The protest movement triggered by a shortage of ballots in Korea’s local elections on June 3 has lasted a week so far.

People in their 20s and 30s are the largest contingent at the demonstrations, which are a jumble of sensible outrage over voters’ disenfranchisement and the desire by far-right politicians to divert that outrage into conspiracy theories about election fraud.

While each of the protestors had their own unique take on the past week, they agreed that they were motivated by mainstream journalists and politicians’ kneejerk reaction to outrage over the breakdown in “procedural fairness,” which was widely written off as a backlash from the far right. The protestors also conveyed their desire for a suitable space for venting anger and holding serious debate. Angered by legitimate anger being dismissed as a far-right scheme

During the week since some polling stations ran out of ballots, the demonstrations have undergone a dramatic transformation. The outrage initially on display at Jamsil-7 Polling Station No. 2 on the evening of June 3 was expressed by those who had struggled to vote or missed their chance altogether.

Around 10 pm, when voting finally concluded four hours behind schedule, conspiracists pushing theories of vote rigging spoke to the gathered crowds and mobilized their followers.

On Friday, conspiracy theorists and far-right activists who were trying to block the authorities from collecting ballot boxes moved to a handball arena at Olympic Park, where the boxes were finally moved to be tallied, to hold a sit-in at the ballot counting center.

But the mood shifted over the weekend. The demonstrations expanded to include not only conservative-leaning people but politically unaffiliated people who had seen a range of posts on social media.

Signs displayed at the demonstration said, “No political slogans allowed other than calls for a revote,” and some demonstrators shooed away conservative YouTubers who tried to bring American flags.

“I was surprised to see so many people