South Korean posts resurface fabricated BBC commentary after Yoon’s impeachment

After South Korea’s Constitutional Court formally removed former president Yoon Suk Yeol from office over his short-lived imposition of martial law, points from a purported BBC “commentary” accusing judges of being corrupt and sympathetic to the North resurfaced online. But the content does not appear on the British broadcaster’s website, and the outlet confirmed to AFP it is fabricated.

“The British broadcaster BBC’s commentary on South Korea,” reads a Korean-language graphic shared April 9, 2025 on Facebook.

It goes on to claim the BBC called South Korea “a crazy country that eats its own flesh” and a “strange nation that kills itself”.

It says the country’s “judges and prosecutors are the main culprits of legal disorder” and accuses a Supreme Court justice of selling out the country for five billion won ($3.5 million USD).

“South Korea is a country ruined by biased beliefs and Juche ideology of its judges,” reads the graphic’s final point.

Juche, meaning self-reliance in Korean, refers to the state ideology developed by North Korea’s late founding leader Kim Il Sung.

That same day, a right-wing YouTuber with 970,000 subscribers echoed similar claims in a video titled: “British BBC commentary: South Korea on path to failure due to legal disorder”.

The posts surfaced after South Korea’s Constitutional Court unanimously upheld the impeachment of Yoon, whose failed attempt to suspend civilian rule in December 2024 led to political turmoil (archived link).

Yoon claimed he acted to safeguard the country’s liberal democracy from “anti-state elements” and “threats posed by North Korea”.

In a separate, ongoing criminal trial, Yoon has denied insurrection charges, for which he could face life in prison or even the death penalty if convicted (archived link).

Similar claims that the BBC criticised the country’s judges spread elsewhere on Facebook and X, South Korean online forums Naver Cafe and Naver Blog, and the websites of NBN News Agency, Public Broadcasting System and Seoul Administration News. The purported commentary has circulated online since at least 2020.

Comments show some users were misled.

“The BBC commentary lays bare the full reality of our country. It’s humiliating,” one said. Another wrote: “The BBC really knows accurately.”

But keyword searches on Google, as well as live and archived versions of the BBC’s official website, found no similar reports or commentaries.

“We can say with some certainty that we didn’t publish this content,” the BBC Press Office told AFP in an April 23, 2025 email.

Woongbee Lee, head of BBC Korean, also told AFP the claims had “no real basis”.

“We confirmed that neither the Seoul bureau nor the Asia desk had ever published such reports or commentaries,” he said April 21.

Moreover, the tone of the fabricated commentary does not align with earlier BBC coverage of Yoon’s declaration of martial law and subsequent impeachment.

In an April 4 explainer, the broadcaster described the court’s decision to remove Yoon as a “victory for South Korea’s democracy”. It characterised his martial law bid as an “authoritarian power grab” (archived link).

A report published December 4, 2024 referred to South Korea as a “stable, prosperous democracy,” adding: “Yet Yoon claimed he was introducing military rule to save the country from dark forces” (archived link).

AFP has debunked other claims stemming from Yoon’s declaration of martial law here.