In a week that saw French right-wing leader Marine Le Pen banned from running for office, the South Korean Constitutional Court’s ouster of President Yoon Suk Yeol from office on Friday has critics looking towards Beijing\u2019s hand in efforts to remove the leader from power.<\/p>\n

‘Yoon\u2019s foreign and security policies stand in stark contrast to the pro-China figures long supported and controlled by the [Chinese Communist Party (CCP)],’ Anna Mahjar-Barducci, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) project director, told Fox News Digital. She explained that those policies ‘posed a threat to Beijing\u2019s long-term strategy of cultivating a pro-China faction in South Korea,’<\/p>\n

Mahjar-Barducci claimed the CCP has used ‘overt economic cooperation, political donations, covert benefit transfers and even illegal sexual bribery’ to cultivate ‘certain South Korean political figures over time, aiming to undermine the U.S.-South Korea alliance, weaken South Korea\u2019s strategic independence and expand its regional influence at the expense of the U.S.’ <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Mahjar-Barducci also claimed that one Korean activist who spoke to her on Friday told her that election fraud in South Korea had been organized in cooperation with China, whose government had unduly influenced the past two general elections. <\/p>\n

The Associated Press reported on Friday that supporters of the ousted president were enraged by the decision. Kim Min-seon, a Yoon supporter, is quoted as saying it was the only way to deal with liberals blocking Yoon\u2019s efforts to fight Pyongyang and Beijing\u2019s campaigns to threaten South Korea\u2019s democracy through cyberattacks, disinformation and technology theft \u2014 something denied by the opposition party. <\/p>\n

Yoon had long provoked the ire of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un over his plans to increase his country\u2019s nuclear capacity. The former South Korean leader sought increased cooperation with the U.S. as a deterrent to the North Korean threat.<\/p>\n

A spokesman from the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C. did not answer Fox News Digital questions on allegations the country interferes in Seoul’s politics. Questions sent to the South Korean embassy were not returned. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Mahjar-Barducci also explained that given the ‘intensive coverage by Beijing\u2019s media’ of Yoon\u2019s dismissal, the CCP is ‘brimming with pride’ and ‘extremely pleased’ with the turn of events. Beijing ‘has already taken down two pro-American South Korean presidents, Park Geun-hye and Yoon Suk Yeol, which shows just how deep Beijing\u2019s infiltration and influence in South Korea are,’ she said.<\/p>\n

‘South Korea needs to be the strongest ally, along with Japan, of America,’ Mahjar-Barducci continued. But Beijing is poising itself to ‘win over this important strategic area,’ which the U.S. ‘cannot afford to lose.’<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Mahjar-Barducci said Yoon’s removal is part of a ‘pattern\u2026 all over the world’ of right-wing candidates being forbidden from seeking election, including Romanian right-wing presidential frontrunner C\u0103lin Georgescu and French right-wing politician Le Pen. ‘The judiciary has been weaponized once again,’ she explained.<\/p>\n

The CCP\u2019s hand in South Korea comes at a time when Beijing is holding large-scale military drills around Taiwan, with 19 vessels from the Chinese navy being spotted in the waters surrounding Taiwan between Monday and Tuesday morning. Mahjar-Barducci said that while Beijing has attempted to make such drills ‘a new normal,’ it has also warned that the ‘drills could unexpectedly turn into a real war.’<\/p>\n

South Korea will hold elections for a new president in two months. Fox News Digital has reported that surveys show liberal opposition Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung is ‘an early favorite’ for the position.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n