Has South Korea just witnessed its own January 6 moment?
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Protesters who stormed a Seoul court at the weekend may not have worn animal skins, but the similarities are striking. They arrived intent on causing mayhem. The political figurehead they supported had, they said, been the victim of a grave injustice at the hands of the establishment. The ringleaders had soon broken through security cordons, armed with fire extinguishers, steel pipes and police shields, smashing windows and gaining entry to a government building, leaving destruction worth an estimated £400,000 in their wake.
![[A crowd of protesters hold up placards, including one that reads 'stop the steal']](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/38fb16ba01f9b2278c524532e03d0a23b21029d4/451_465_4438_2663/master/4438.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The scene of the riot was not the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021, and the mobs attempting to overturn the rule of law had swapped animal skins and bald eagle masks for hooded down jackets and face masks. But the similarities between Maga ideologues’ attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, and the far-right protesters who stormed the Seoul Western district court building this weekend in support of the impeached South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, are hard to ignore.
About 25 terrified court workers barricaded themselves on the rooftop for an hour as rioters reached the seventh floor, hunting specifically for the judge who had issued the warrant to detain their leader as part of an investigation into allegations that his 3 December declaration of martial law amounted to insurrection.
Of the 90 people arrested, more than half were in their 20s and 30s, including three YouTubers who livestreamed the chaos. The violence left 51 police officers injured, seven seriously, while broadcast journalists from KBS and MBC were attacked and had their equipment damaged. Both have announced they are taking legal action.
