by WorldTribune Staff, September 18, 2025 Real World News
Angered by what they say the leftist government of President Lee Jae-Myung is unleashing in their homeland, South Koreans living in the U.S. gathered recently in a Washington, D.C. suburb to make their voices heard.
“Democracy has died in South Korea,” Morse Tan, a former ambassador-at-large in the first Trump Administration, told a cheering throng gathered at the “Washington DC Truth Forum.”
“The slogan ‘Stop the steal’ — the same words heard at rallies in Korea against Lee’s government — echoed through the forum,” contributing editor Donald Kirk noted in a Sept. 17 analysis for The New York Sun.
Tan said that South Koreans “saw every kind of trick to cheat and steal” in the June 3 snap election in which the leftist Lee was elected to replace impeached conservative President Yoon Suk-Yeol.
Those at the forum noted that Lee’s regime has forced the South Korean press not to report or comment on impassioned critics whether in the streets of major cities or abroad.
“Korean correspondents in Washington say privately that their editors are reluctant to publish negative articles about Lee’s government,” Kirk cited forum attendees as saying. “They also told the Sun there was no chance of reports about the Truth Forum getting into the Korean press.”
A Korean teacher from Seoul told the Sun: “They are questioning people for what they say on Truth Social. Koreans are more divided than Americans. There is no real freedom of speech here.”
An Asia analyst frequently cited by conservative media, Gordon Chang, told the forum that Lee as president has “attacked the U.S. alliance and Korea’s own democratic institutions.” He accused Lee of allowing “Chinese infiltration of Korean society” while attacking religious institutions, many of which are conservative foes of the left-leaning government.
“We are seeing a wholesale reorganization of the justice department,” Chang said. Lee “is reorganizing the finance ministry. He will have unlimited power of the purse.” The audience at the Truth Forum burst into cheers as Chang shouted, “It is up to us to show he cannot go any further.”
The cheers grew louder as Chang declared that Lee “is more of a socialist, more of a North Korea lover, more of an America-hater. Korea’s alliance with the U.S. is in great danger, and Korea’s democracy is in great danger. This is a fight between freedom and oppression.”
Tan echoed the rhetoric heard at demonstrations by American flag-wavers in Seoul when he declared, “I would like to plead the U.S. step into South Korea and help.” President Donald Trump, he said, “knows there has been a purge.”
Kirk noted that Tan’s “logic was similar to that often heard in South Korean podcasts, if not in print. ‘There is war in Ukraine and in Israel,’ he said. ‘If China invades Taiwan and North Korea invades South Korea, that sounds like World War III. It’s important to win now before it turns into World War III. The world is watching.’ ”
Tan, ambassador in the U.S. State Department’s office of global criminal justice between 2019 and the end of Trump’s first term, is counting on the American president to defend South Korea against its enemies, notably Communist China and North Korea.
Tan’s appeal rests on what he sees as the mutual patriotism of both Koreans and Americans: “Korea is the linchpin of this region,” he told the Truth Forum crowd. “Korea is America’s best ally. Many Koreans love America more than some people in America.”
Koreans in D.C. protest leftist government, loss of press freedom back home added by Editor Two on
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