Does a viral video show a massive crowd at a rally by President Yoon Suk-Yeol's supporters in South Korea? No, that's not true: The video shows people gathered for the 2025 New Year countdown's celebrations in Nanchang, China.
The claim appeared in a TikTok video (archived here) published on January 3, 2025, under the title "์ผ์ด๋๋ผ!์ถ์ ํ ๋งบํ ํจ์ฑ!!! ์ค์์ด ๋ํต๋ น ํ๋ด์ธ์," translated from Korean to English by Lead Stories staff as "Rise! it's a festival roar with grief!!! Cheer up President Yoon Suk-yeol." It opened:
I am crying for this.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Fri Jan 17 00:16:13 2025 UTC)
The original video was uploaded by ShanghaiEye, (archived here) a YouTube channel run by the Shanghai Media Group (archived here). The original video's title was:
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Mon Jan 20 08:46:47 2025 UTC)
The video was re-labeled, presented as a Yoon supporters' rally, and shared on TikTok. Even though on December 14, 2024, South Korea's Parliament voted to impeach President Yoon Suk-Yeol (archived here), massive pro-impeachment rallies were happening every Saturday, in the heart of Seoul.
Supporters of President Yoon, who is currently in prison and facing an investigation for his failed attempt to impose martial law in the country, have also organized rallies. With light sticks - originally for K-pop events - becoming a symbol of the pro-impeachment movement (archived here), Yoon supporters chose the traffic safety baton light, which is glowing red, as their symbol (archived here). Red has been a symbolic color for right-wing Koreans for over a decade and has been the official color of the governing conservative People Power Party (PPP) - President Yoon's party - since 2012 (archived here). Even though the party changed its name thrice in 13 years, it kept red as its symbolic color.
