On December 3, 2024, then-South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol announced that he was imposing martial law, deploying troops to the country’s election commission and accusing his opposition of “trying to overthrow the free democracy.” South Korean officials have since rebutted claims of election fraud, and Yoon has been impeached and removed from office, but South Korean right-wing YouTubers are reportedly helping fuel the claims. Some South Korean supporters of Yoon have invoked phrases used in the United States in support of President Donald Trump, including “Stop the Steal,” the slogan used to push false claims of election fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Media Matters has found that far-right media figures in the United States, including some who pushed U.S. election misinformation, have hosted right-wing South Korean personalities to push false claims about the country’s elections and justifications for Yoon’s use of martial law.

On December 9, 2024, days after the martial law declaration, Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of the right-wing organization True the Vote — known for pushing election denial — hosted a South Korean graduate student named Yechan Bae on her podcast.

During the appearance, Engelbrecht said Yechan had seen “many similarities in what was happening in South Korea and in the United States relative to the elections,” adding that “their elections run on the same cycle.”

Before introducing Yechan, Engelbrecht called South Korea’s elections “chapter and verse of what happened here in 2020,” and said that “people didn’t appreciate … that martial law was declared to sequester the corrupt congress and to seize property at their election commission.”

Yechan claimed that the “same enemy rigged our — stole our elections in South Korea and the United States too.”

He also said he thinks Yoon declared martial law because “the whole legal system in this country is totally corrupted” and it “denied the election was fraud,” adding, “He didn’t try to get rid of democracy in this country.”

In response, Engelbrecht suggested that Yoon’s declaration of martial law was part of his “efforts to establish the election integrity necessary” and “the goal was to try and see for themselves what had really transpired in previous elections.”

In May, after Yoon was removed from office, Kim Jeong-hyun (who goes by Alfred Kim in his American appearances) appeared on the right-wing Rumble podcast Headmaster’s Homeroom. On-screen text identified him as the “founder of White Skull Squad,” which Agence France-Presse has described as a “far-right youth group” whose name is a reference to “a unit that cracked down on pro-democracy protesters in the 1980s and 1990s.”

During the appearance, Kim said his organization is “similar to” the violent American far-right extremist group the Proud Boys and “stood up for election integrity.”

“There has to be some case, right, that authorities … make it clear that there was a fraud election, right?” he said. “But that never happened in South Korea. So my question is, so what … do we do? Like, what do we do when the higher hierarchy, like, high-rank authority, becomes corrupted?”

He also compared the situation in South Korea to “the January 6 when, you know, the fraud election cartel still, you know, stole the election, and Trump just has to, you know, step down” because “RINOs … turned out to be a betrayer.”

The host, who goes by “Lady Hamilton,” said Kim’s story of election fraud and “hacking” “sounds familiar” and that it’s “not the first time we've heard stories about election fraud and trying to be able to choose our president.”

“That just alarms me,” she said. “I mean, how did the people react? I mean, I guess you don’t have a choice, but that’s going to awaken a lot of people when you put down something like martial law.”

Days later, Kim went on a Proud Boys-affiliated podcast and pushed the same claims. He told host Barry Ramey and network co-founder Enrique Tarrio, the group's former chairman, that “we have to forbid this election machine, electronic machine, worldwide. We have to stop it, and I believe Donald J. Trump can do it, right away,” urging the Trump administration to investigate Korea’s election commission.

He added that it “is so crucial that, you know, President Trump and MAGA patriots are on our side.” He also said that he is planning to “establish White Skull Squad in the states.”

Ramey and Tarrio appeared to express sympathy for Kim. Ramey told him that he was “extremely brave and courageous” and noted that he “tried to spearhead the people understanding that there was some fraud in the election” in South Korea, and Tarrio said that “it is pretty insightful here talking to you that, you know, this … is a global problem.”