This article is by Lee Jian and read by an artificial voice.

On Dec. 12, nine days after declaring - and retracting - emergency martial law, President Yoon Suk Yeol stood before a camera and made controversial and somewhat confusing statements to the public for nearly 30 minutes.
He accused the opposing liberal Democratic Party (DP) of colluding with North Korea to shut down parliament and claimed that the April parliamentary election, where the opposition won the majority, was rigged. According to Yoon, there was no choice but to impose military rule and save Korea from "antistate forces."
It was the first time many had heard such assertions. But for a handful of avid YouTube users, Yoon's words rang a clear bell.

One month ago, far-right political YouTuber and popular pundit Ko Sung-kook uploaded videos that mirrored the president's televised public address, including the tone and rhetoric.
"No one trusts the polls and the NEC [National Election Commission] anymore. They carry the votes around in a basket and are a severe threat to democracy. They should not be trusted," Ko is filmed telling his 1.1 million subscribers.
Ko is just one in an ecosystem of right-wing political YouTubers who support their beliefs by stretching the truth and spreading unfounded ideas that extend to conspiracy theories.

Ever since the now-impeached Yoon's botched martial law declaration on Dec. 3, the big question on the lips of many has been why - why did the president make such a shocking decision, an ultimate act of self-sabotage that is now driving his political career to the brink?
Since then, a flood of findings and revelations have revealed that YouTube may be partly to blame. It also spotlights a political niche that is snowballing in defiance of a mainstream media that has repeatedly failed the public's trust.
So, what do Korea's partisan political views look like on the world's largest video platform? And has this fringe media movement become a more formidable force in Korean society today?
YouTube's influence on the president

Three days after Dec. 3, a hearing at the National Assembly unveiled that 14 names had been assembled and relayed to the National Intelligence Service (NIS) to track down. It included Yoon's most vocal critics, and some, according to NIS First Deputy Director Hong Jang-won, were to be arrested under the president's direct orders.
The list reportedly included politicians, like National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik and DP leader Lee Jae-myung, two ex-Supreme Court judges and one liberal YouTuber, Kim Ou-joon.
Special forces dispatched to the National Assembly on the night of Dec. 3 were also seen in front of Kim's YouTube studio in Seodaemun District, western Seoul.
Kim, who founded one of Korea's earliest political tabloids, The Ddanzzi, established his main YouTube channel, News Factory, in 2022. With 1.9 million subscribers as of Dec. 22, he runs an openly biased channel leaning left.

Martial law soldiers were also sent to the NEC office, where they were ordered by Yoon and then-Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun to secure evidence of election fraud on the commission's servers, according to special forces members' testimonies.
The NIS, which regularly runs inspections of the NEC, did not find any evidence supporting suspicions of a rigged general election during its security sweep last year, and it confirmed the facts again to parliament on Dec. 19. But it has been a consistent theory put out by the far-right YouTubers that elections have been faked and hacked by North Korea.

Lawmaker Lee Hai-min, who worked in Google's IT department, said that YouTube's algorithm was to blame for Yoon's behavior.
"Scrutinizing Yoon's public address, I learned that he was genuinely in agreement with the voting fraud rumors that some far-right YouTube channels claim to be true," she told the press on Dec. 13 at the National Assembly.
"YouTube's algorithm has created confirmation bias and hysteria for our president."
Partisan ...