‘Stop the steal’: Right-wing conspiracists co-opt ballot shortage protests in Korea

Tuesday marked the fifth day of demonstrations outside a ballot counting center in the wake of a ballot shortage that occurred in Korea’s June 3 local elections. A new slogan rang out in front of the handball stadium at Olympic Park in Seoul’s Songpa District, with calls for same-day manual counting of votes joining previous demands to redo what critics are calling a “fraudulent” election.

According to unofficial police estimates, around 200 people were gathered around the stadium as of 7 am that day, marking a major drop-off from the gathering of over 10,000 the preceding weekend.

But while the early demonstrations had only permitted South Korean flags and calls for a revote in an effort to keep the proceedings from becoming too politicized, claims of vote rigging in the election have since intensified.

By Tuesday, some of the same arguments used by those who had spread election fraud conspiracy theories were starting to resurface more explicitly. These went beyond slogans of fraudulence in the election to call for the abolition of early voting altogether and an insistence on strictly manual vote counting, with claims that electronic voting cannot be trusted.

Posted around the site of the demonstration were messages such as “Stop the steal,” “Annul the fraudulent election completely,” and “On-site manual voting on election day.”

In online chat rooms frequented by demonstration participants, users posted numerous messages suggesting that those who proposed restricting “election fraud” slogans were “agents sent by the left” who should be treated with caution.

“We need to kick out all the people who want to integrate the slogans. Why are they stopping us from chanting slogans about ‘election fraud’?” one read.

The earlier reluctance to display flags other than South Korea’s and signs related to imprisoned ex-President Yoon Suk-yeol has also been falling by the wayside. While those elements were kept out in the past as a way of distancing the demonstrations from political calls beyond demands for a revote, the recent demonstrations have often included almost as many US flags on display as South Korean ones.

At a parking facility in front of the stadium, two air-conditioned buses for protesters to cool down in appeared with large US flags and the phrase, “America is with you.” At the stadium’s second-floor exit, balloon letters reading “MAGA is with South Korea” were hung alongside messages calling for a redo of the “fraudulent” election and same-day manual counting of votes.

Some have called for submitting election petitions with the National Elect