Image: Sky Daily "exclusive" on USFK's capture of 99 Chinese spies. Credit: Sky Daily.
An article of faith among South Korea’s far-right is that the United States stands ready to step in against a communist takeover - and, by extension, any potential victory by South Korean liberals. (See previous coverage, “Conservatives Pray to the CIA.”) So strong is this faith that it remains unshaken, even in the face of outright denial by the US military.
On January 16, Sky Daily 스카이데일리 - a fringe, far-right online outlet connected with the Sincheonji 신천지 cult - ran what it presented as a bombshell exposé claiming that on the night of Yoon Suk-yeol 윤석열’s self-coup, the joint US-South Korean military raided the educational facility for the National Election Commission 선거관리위원회 in an operation, supposedly titled “Code Number 99,” that arrested 99 Chinese nationals.
The report further elaborated that these Chinese nationals were being held at the US military base in Okinawa, Japan, and were being interrogated for election interference - supposedly lending support to Yoon’s claim that he had to declare martial law to prevent election-rigging by the Democratic Party 민주당. (See previous coverage, “Yoon’s Pizzagate Coup.”) Yoon’s attorneys were quick to refer to the claims - and to claim that the US government would vindicate Yoon - in Yoon’s impeachment trial before the Constitutional Court 헌법재판소.
The US Forces in Korea (USFK), usually reluctant to comment on South Korean domestic politics, issued an uncharacteristically strong denial that directly called out Sky Daily’s report. When far-right online trolls attempted to claim that USFK does not speak for the US forces in Okinawa supposedly responsible for detaining the 99 Chinese spies, the USFK issued a further denial on behalf of the US Forces in Japan as well as the United States Department of Defense.
Despite the denial, Sky Daily continues to stand by its claims, arguing that the USFK is in the dark about Code Number 99 because the operation was carried out through the incoming Donald Trump administration’s Black Ops team, without the knowledge of Joe Biden’s DoD. Sky Daily also claimed that the USFK’s public relations team was “problematic,” because it “communicated with leftist media outlets” that were attempting to fact-check Sky Daily’s claim.