In early November, when South Korean prosecutors indicted former President Yoon Suk-yeol for abuse of power over his short-lived martial law decree, the conservative American pundit Gordon Chang took to social media to raise the alarm to his over 400,000 followers.

“Lee Jae Myung, with new bogus charges against President Yoon, is determined to keep Yoon behind bars until he dies. How is this not state-sanctioned murder?,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Nov. 11.

He upped the ante the next day: “Is this moment Korea’s Kristallnacht?,” he asked, drawing a comparison to Nazi Germany’s