Special Series | Sojeong Park, When Knowledge Influencers Turn Political in South Korea
On December 4, 2024, the declaration of martial law in South Korea (hereafter Korea) marked an extraordinary moment of political rupture. In the six months that followed—before a presidential election was held and state power formally shifted—politics unfolded in a hyper-saturated environment of voices. Politicians, YouTubers, activists, and ordinary citizens alike rushed to occupy what many perceived as a historic turning point. Political confrontation did not remain confined to the streets; it expanded aggressively into digital platforms, where competing narratives collided in real time. This moment exemplified the mediatization of politics, a condition in which political practice is increasingly shaped and even colonized by media logic rather than merely transmitted through media channels (Strömbäck, 2008). In such an environment, visibility and emotional resonance become central political resources. Both progressive and conservative political actors in contemporary Korean society have increasingly relied on social media-driven strategies within digital environments to engage and mobilize ordinary citizens. Yet these same platforms, particularly YouTube, have fostered highly polarized political communities that reinforce ideological echo chambers and deepen audience bias (Tran et al., 2022).
It was against this backdrop that a YouTube video went viral roughly one month after the declaration. The video was uploaded to a channel titled Jeon Han-gil over Flowers, run by Jeon Han-gil. In the video, Jeon criticized the factors he claimed had triggered the national crisis while simultaneously raising allegations of election fraud in previous general elections, implying that the declaration of martial law itself may have had a legitimate basis. This moment marked the beginning of his public opposition to President Yoon’s impeachment and signaled a turn toward far-right political position. His intervention immediately attracted intense public attention, not only because of its content, but because of who he was.
Jeon is widely known as a star lecturer in Korean history, a core subject for both the national college entrance exam and civil service examinations. His popularity long extended beyond the classroom. His teaching style, marked by blunt reprimands and visible anger toward what he framed as students’ laziness, was often interpreted as a sign of passion and authenticity. This persona elevated him from instructor to celebrity, generating a devoted fandom. In this sense, he can be understood as a knowledge influencer, a figure who translates professional expertise into publicly shared knowledge through media platforms (Maddox, 2023). In Korea, such figures, often referred to as “jisik selleob (knowledge celebrities)”, have enjoyed sustained popularity for the last decade. Although Jeon himself did not actively monetize his knowledge as an influencer, his lectures were widely repackaged into YouTube videos and Shorts by fans and students, effectively transforming him into a mass-mediated knowledge influencer. This visibility, in turn, led to frequent appearances on television talk shows. Importantly, despite being known to privately support a particular politician, Jeon was widely perceived as politically neutral in his pedagogy. He always presented Korean political history through a balanced lens.
Therefore, the release of videos with a strong political tone prompted public debate quickly shifted toward speculation about Jeon’s motives—whether he was “riding a right-wing wave” or positioning himself for a future political career.[1] While such claims remain speculative and lack direct evidence, the analytical significance lies less in assessing Jeon’s personal intentions than in what this speculation itself reveals. It reflects a widespread awareness that YouTube has become a central site of influencer propaganda, where political meaning is produced not through formal institutions but through social media influencers who leverage visibility and emotional appeals (Xu & Schneider, 2025). In Korea, far-right discourse has been particularly shaped by such influencer-driven ecosystems, within which far-right YouTubers increasingly function as “primary definers” of political reality—to borrow Stuart Hall’s term from Policing the Crisis—by setting frames and agendas before mainstream media respond (Lee, 2025). In particular, among the senior generation in their 60s and 70s, who constitute a core support base of conservative politics and pro-Yoon rallies, reliance on YouTube as a news source has increased. Some members of this demographic have also engaged in political activity as far-right YouTubers, further consolidating YouTube as a primary political mobilization platform within the conservative bloc (Lee, 2021).
In this context, Jeon’s case is not an anomaly but an instructive example of how knowledge influencers are activated within far-right influencer propaganda circuits. The channel Jeon Han-gil over Flowers—its title a playful reference to the K-drama Boys Over Flowers—was originally created by a fan to circulate humorous or memorable remarks from his online lectures. It had already amassed over 600,000 subscribers before any political content appeared. After the declaration of martial law, Jeon assumed operational control of the channel from its original fan operator,[2] allowing him to leverage its large subscriber base to disseminate his arguments. When criticism emerged that this shift violated the channel’s original purpose, Jeon launched a separate channel branded as a “news” outlet, Jeon Han-gil News, which rapidly gained approximately 788,000 subscribers as of February 2026.
Here, Jeon’s intervention illustrates how symbolic capital accumulated in one domain can be converted into political legitimacy. As he began operating his YouTube channels directly, he withdrew from his work as a lecturer, thereby ensuring that his political statements would not be reflected in classroom teaching. Nevertheless, the identity-based capital he had accumulated as an educator continued to serve as the foundation for his YouTube presence and political interventions. His long-standing trust as a teacher and his symbolic authority as a familiar public figure were thus translated into political credibility. In this process, his statements circulated less as an interest-based political arguments than as authentic, moral, and patriotic judgments grounded in who he is. This dynamic exemplifies a defining mechanism of influencer propaganda, which relies on personal credibility and affective authority rather than institutional verification. Accordingly, comments on his content frequently describe him as a “patriot,” a “true educator,” or even a “martyr.”
This dynamic becomes even more significant when considering Jeon’s intended audience. His interventions were not primarily directed at political elites or institutional actors, but explicitly at younger generations—particularly the so-called “2030 generation,” referring to those in their 20s and 30s. In many videos, he directly addresses this cohort, features thumbnails stating “An appeal to the 2030 generation and the people,” or appears alongside university students. Unlike much of the far-right YouTube sphere, which tends to target the senior generation as its primary audience, Jeon mobilizes a younger demographic that comprises both his former students and a follower base formed through platform-based fandom.
Teenagers and civil service exam candidates, in particular, occupy precarious social positions. Intense academic competition, economic uncertainty, and delayed social mobility place sustained pressure on young people whose futures appear increasingly fragile. Jeon’s public persona resonates deeply within this context. His celebrity has been built on a self-made narrative. He frequently recounts his upbringing in a poor family and emphasizes a life marked by repeated failure and perseverance, positioning himself as an aspirational figure for students facing similar structural constraints. Even as a star lecturer, he consistently performs an anti-elitist stance that appeals to generational grievances. While framing the civil service examination as one of the few remaining institutions promising formal equality of opportunity, he has openly criticized flaws in the exam system itself. Notably, his condemnation of excessively obscure and hyper-specific questions, designed solely to intensify competition, reinforced his image as a truth-teller willing to challenge institutional logic. Within a generation experiencing intensified competition and declining faith in meritocratic mobility, such performances of authenticity carry particular resonance This image later became a resource when he repeatedly claimed that his political videos were produced out of conscience and a duty to reveal the truth. In this sense, his biography and pedagogical authority constituted a reservoir of symbolic capital that could be reactivated in moments of political crisis.
It is this generational positioning that renders his influence politically consequential. In recent years, a rightward shift among younger generations has been widely observed (Park, 2025). Since the mid-2010s, especially following the rise of feminist movements around 2015, anti-feminist sentiment has spread among young men. Amplified through misogynistic online communities and mobilized by right-wing populism, this resentment has evolved into a male-driven right-wing political current (Roh & Kim, 2025; Lee, 2025). The emergence of the term idaenam, a Korean abbreviation referring to men in their twenties, reflects the extent to which this political shift has been publicly recognized as gendered. Jeon’s YouTube content does not appear to explicitly mobilize Korea’s manosphere communities. However, once he began articulating positions aligned with far-right political narratives, it became difficult to separate his public persona from the gendered political context. Observations of online communities suggest that some users who self-identify as idaenam express support for Jeon, while others criticize him for mobilizing the idaenam cohort. After all, Jeon’s political interventions cannot be fully understood without situating them within Korea’s increasingly gendered right-wing media environment. Even without explicit gender-targeted messaging, his authority as a male knowledge influencer and his resonance with male youth audiences position him within a broader ecosystem where far-right political mobilization is deeply intertwined with masculinity-based identity politics.
Jeon’s case thus offers a compelling example of influencer propaganda within the Korean socio-political context, in which authority is derived not from political expertise, but from a preexisting pedagogical relationship—one in which audiences were already accustomed to accepting his evaluations as legitimate. His trajectory demonstrates how educational influence can be transformed into political resonance through the mechanisms of knowledge influencers and digital propaganda. Regardless of his specific political position or the factual accuracy of his claims, the significance of this case lies in how it illuminates a contemporary political landscape in which media, celebrity, and symbolic capital increasingly converge. This dynamic raises broader questions about how, under the mediatization of politics, democratic publics become increasingly vulnerable to influencer-driven forms of mediated power.
Notes
[1] He later joined a conservative party in July 2025.
[2] The channel’s revenue reportedly continued to go to its original owner.
References
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Sojeong Park is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Culture Contents, Hanyang University, South Korea. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication from Seoul National University. Her research interests span diverse aspects of popular culture and digital culture, with a focus on the way identity and intimacy are constructed and mediated by media.
To cite this essay, please use the bibliographic entry suggested below:
Sojeong Park, “When Knowledge Influencers Turn Political in South Korea,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, March 22, 2026; https://doi.org/10.52698/DOUB1917.