The Yoon Suk Yeol

The Yoon Suk Yeol, who was now arrested and charged, was the president who was elected with the support of the conservative camp. It is difficult to see his rampage as a simple personal deviation. There are structural roots. Without clear recognition of this, political leaders such as Yoon Suk Yeol may reappear.

How did the Yoon Suk Yeol come to this? Let's think about the process of the collapse of the Yoon Suk Yeol step by step.

In the first stage, he was elected president with the support of the majority of the people.
In the second stage, support for him began to decline rapidly from the beginning of his inauguration, and eventually, support for the state administration reached the 10% range.
Step 3, they start to vent their anger, saying that no policy can be implemented properly.
Step four began blaming the National Assembly, the opposition party, and the leader of the opposition party, saying it was all because of the Democratic Party. Contrary to his belief, of course, a president with an approval rating of around 10 percent cannot implement any policies properly. But instead of trying to regain support, he is obsessed with the delusion that it is all because of a conspiracy by the leader of the opposition party.
Step 5, they began to have a delusion that the election of these lawmakers must be due to fraudulent elections. They begin to shoot down the election watchdog according to fake news spreading on some YouTube channels. When investigations and trials reveal that there is no legal problem, they fall into a larger conspiracy theory that there is a problem that cannot be solved legally.
Step 6, we reach an extraordinary solution to declare martial law and take control of the National Assembly and the NEC.

Yoon Suk Yeol's ideas and actions are obviously abnormal. However, his failures were largely planned immediately after his election. He also experienced problems that many of Korea's previous presidents had. Successive presidents have tried to break through them in their own right, with some succeeding and many failing. Yoon Suk Yeol did not do either of those efforts, but rather acted the other way around. It is an effort to unify voters with different values.

Let's take out the data that analyzed the value orientation of Korean voters again. Based on the results of a survey conducted immediately after the start of the Yoon Suk Yeol's term in summer 2022, the analysis was conducted by dividing the policy value-oriented clusters of Korean voters into six.

Nearly 40 percent of the respondents are equality-peaceful. They support traditional progressive values. Those who support expanding welfare, including the basic income system, support peace policies toward North Korea, and close the gender wage gap were united as a group.
Liberal-capabilityists were at just over 20%. They are a group with strong pro-U.S. and anti-North Korean sentiment while believing in meritocracy and fairness discourse. Considering Yoon Suk Yeol's recent tendency, it seems that they were major supporters. However, the group is smaller than expected.
Nearly 20% were eco-friendly and pro-growthists. It is a group that is pro-business but also takes environmental issues such as the climate crisis seriously. It is also a group that sympathizes with welfare expansion. Their size was larger than expected.
The anti-authoritarian-populist group did not reach 10%. It is a group with characteristics similar to Trumpists in the United States, characterized by anti-feminism, fairness, and distrust of existing systems. However, it was also a group that supported welfare expansion such as the basic income system. Compared to the fact that these issues were largely discussed socially, the group was relatively small, and it was surprising that it existed independently of the traditional conservatives.
Just over 6% of the people's livelihood priority group came out, which are pro-business and in favor of welfare expansion, but welfare expansion
A little more than 6% of reform-first people responded sensitively to issues such as prosecution reform but showed a conservative attitude toward social issues such as feminism.

At first glance, it is difficult for traditional conservatives to take power. Progressive value voters were united, and conservative value voters were dispersed. During the presidential election, the Yoon Suk Yeol seems to have been elected by forming an anti-Moon Jae-in anti-Democratic Party anti-Lee Jae-myung structure and uniting various groups. In other words, groups that could not gather in policy gathered and voted for the Yoon Suk Yeol.

After winning the election like this, it is natural that problems arise from the beginning of the administration. The consolidation of supporters will collapse the moment the new administration begins to announce its policy. If we move toward welfare reduction, liberal-capabilityists will like it, but all other supporters will oppose it. The same is true of adopting a hardline policy toward North Korea and putting a pro-U.S.-China policy into action.

When trying to do something, it is a scheduled step to face opposition from the sea and lose support for state affairs. It is not because of the opposition National Assembly or progressive voters. It is because his supporters are divided. This is because the supporters were originally a coalition of groups with conflicting value orientation.

It was possible to rally opponents of the existing regime during the election, but it was a very difficult structure to maintain during the period of governance. From the beginning of the regime, it seems that Yoon Suk Yeol was almost impossible to govern. Very wise cooperation was needed.

The Yoon Suk Yeol, however, went the opposite way. It established policies and foundations that were only appealing to 20% of the electorate. Naturally, there was a divide in the support base and a decline in support. He seems to have begun to indulge in delusions of grandeur at some point after failing to accept this fact.

In the value-oriented structure investigated at the time, it was very difficult to govern if the conservatives came to power. It was then-People's Power Party leader Lee Joon-seok and candidate Ahn Cheol Soo, who resigned at the last minute to announce their support for Yoon Suk Yeol, that made this difficult election win. In addition, some people who moved from the Democratic Party to the people's power seem to have had a certain influence. Rather than from the viewpoint of having a large number of voters who supported them, it seems to have been an important factor showing that the value orientation of the Yoon Suk Yeol camp at the time was diversified.

Given this, it appears that the only way to govern was to run the country in a way that cooperated with various value groups so that its existing values were not compromised rather than actively doing something during Yoon Suk Yeol's reign. It also had to accept some progressive policies. For his core supporters, he is the way to be criticized for being incompetent. He was the one who couldn't bear this criticism, and it became our misfortune.

This didn't just happen to him. Elections are won on reflective interest