South Korea's embattled leader Yoon finds allies among young conservative men

SEOUL — As impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol fights for his political survival, the embattled leader has found an ally among young conservative men.

Park Byeong-heon, 25, was a crowd favourite at a pro-Yoon rally on Sunday, cheered on as he gave a 10-minute speech in English aimed at foreign media, decrying attempts by authorities to arrest Yoon over his bid to impose martial law last month.

"This is the country that we love. We have to protect it," Park, a university student, told Reuters after giving his speech.

"The elderly people (at the rallies) always say to me 'actually, if we die, that's it, it's you young people that are in trouble'. This is in fact what motivated me to participate in more of these rallies these past few days."

While the bulk of pro-Yoon protesters appear to be made up of retirees, young conservative men like Park have played a visible role in rallying support for the isolated Yoon.

Popular pro-Yoon YouTubers, some of them conservative men in their 30s, have used their online reach to mobilise support and assert unsubstantiated claims that South Korean elections were marred by fraud, echoing one of Yoon's justifications for briefly imposing martial law on Dec 3.

Their activism has been encouraged by Yoon, who told supporters in a letter last Wednesday that he was "watching on YouTube live all the hard work" they were doing.

A columnist for the conservative-leaning JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said last month that Yoon's "YouTube addiction" had caused him to fall "into a world of delusion dominated by conspiracy theories".

Park does not view it this way.

"I watched videos of YouTubers spreading the truth and I actually researched a lot of material. I realised that all the South Korean