Analyzing "Jayu" in South Korean presidential rhetoric: a comprehensive study from 1948–2023 with a focus on the Yoon Suk Yeol administration

The study addresses whether President Yoon Suk Yeol’s frequent invocation of “Jayu” (freedom/liberty) is coincidental or a calculated rhetorical strategy that signals ideological alignment and policy orientation within South Korea’s polarized politics. In South Korea’s dynamic democracy, presidential speeches both communicate policy and assert ideological stances, shaping governance narratives. The research situates Yoon’s use of Jayu—highlighted in his inaugural address and at the 77th UN General Assembly—within broader patterns of partisan rhetoric and policy signaling. Using a large corpus of over 8,800 presidential speeches (1948–Oct 2023), the study explores temporal trends and partisan differences in the usage of Jayu versus Minju (democracy), and compares Yoon’s discourse with predecessors. The goal is to show how symbolic language functions in political communication, identity formation, and governance, particularly in a highly polarized environment with implications for domestic and foreign policy.

The paper engages theories of political language and symbolism drawing on Wittgenstein, Bourdieu, and Foucault to stress contextual linguistic proficiency and the links between language, norms, and institutions. Edelman’s work frames political language as constitutive of social reality, while scholarship on presidential rhetoric (Campbell & Jamieson; Hart; Stuckey; Zarefsky) demonstrates how symbolic language molds national narratives and public perceptions. In polarized contexts, symbolic rhetoric can exacerbate or bridge divides, depending on use and context (Iyengar & Hahn; Habermas; Entman). Focusing on Korea, the paper examines Jayu as a conservative ideograph contrasted with Minju (democracy), tracing historical layers: Cold War anti-communism, authoritarian developmentalism, and the New Right’s pro-market turn. Historically, conservative regimes leveraged Jayu to legitimize anti-communist governance and align with Western powers, while democratization movements stressed Minju. The New Right (2000s) reframed liberal democracy with market-oriented and revisionist perspectives, intertwining pro-business ideology with anti-communist symbolism. In contemporary discourse, Jayu embodies these layered meanings, increasingly used as a partisan signal. The review positions Yoon’s rhetoric as an intentional deployment of Jayu aligned with conservative ideology, small-government principles, and a more confrontational security posture vis-à-vis North Korea.

Data: The study compiles over 8,800 presidential speeches from 1948 to Oct 2023. Speeches from Rhee Syng-man to Moon Jae-in were scraped from the Presidential Archives (pa.go.kr); Yoon Suk Yeol’s speeches were collected from Korea Policy Briefing (korea.kr). For each speech, date, speaker, and full text were extracted. Variables and aggregation: Mentions of Jayu (freedom/liberty) and Minju (democracy) were counted and transformed to a daily time series; on days with multiple speeches, values were averaged. Party is a binary exogenous indicator (1=conservative, 0=Democratic/progressive). Analytical design: Three analyses were conducted. (1) Time-series analysis of the association between party affiliation and the daily counts of Jayu/Minju, across four periods: Full (1948–2023), Post-Democratization (1988–2023), Post-New Right Movement (2004–2023), and Post-Impeachment (2017–2023). Periodization was informed by Korean political milestones and supported by structural break tests (Chow; CUSUM). Stationarity was verified with Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF). The core model is ARMAX with AR(1) and MA(1): Y_t = α + β Party_t + γ Y_{t−1} + θ ε_{t−1} + ε_t. (2) Descriptive comparisons of Jayu usage by president, including averages, Jayu–Minju differences, ratios, and inaugural address counts. (3) Topic modeling via Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to extract salient terms per presidency and compare thematic emphases with Yoon’s discourse. Text processing for LDA: Korean NLP used KoNLPy’s Okt tokenizer; stop words were removed; POS-based filtering excluded Josa and conjunctions; regex retained Korean/English/numerals. Texts were converted to bag-of-words and modeled with gensim LDA targeting six topics per presidency. Sensitivity to tokenizer/stop-word choices is acknowledged.

- Macro trends: Jayu dominated pre-1980s political discourse; Minju mentions rose after 1987 democratization. Under Yoon (since 2022), Jayu mentions surged again, indicating a shift in discursive priorities. - Stationarity and breaks: ADF test confirmed stationarity (Z(t) = −15.024, p < 0.0001). Structural break tests indicated significant years (Chow p < 0.05) around 1987, 1989, 2008, 2010, and 2022; CUSUM indicated changes around 1964, 1988, 2008, and 2022. - ARMAX results (party effect on Jayu): Conservative party affiliation significantly increases Jayu mentions across all periods, with coefficients strengthening in later periods: Full (β=0.751, SE=0.195, p<0.001), Post-Democratization (β=0.754, SE=0.151, p<0.001), Post-New Right (β=1.179, SE=0.183, p<0.001), Post-Impeachment (β=2.719, SE=0.212, p<0.001). Effects on Minju were negative in Full (β=−1.142, SE=0.537, p<0.05) and not significant thereafter. - Presidential comparisons: Yoon’s average Jayu mentions (~3.1) are unprecedented—over twice the conservative average (~1.3) and ~six times progressive (~0.5). Moon Jae-in registers the fewest mentions of Jayu. - Jayu vs Minju: Yoon has the highest Jayu–Minju difference and the highest Jayu/Minju ratio (2.98), followed by Rhee Syng-man and Park Chung-hee among conservatives. - Inaugurals: Yoon’s inaugural address included 35 Jayu mentions, far exceeding predecessors. Roh Tae-woo emphasized both Jayu and Minju during Korea’s democratic transition. - LDA topics: Across presidencies, “the public” (국민) and governance/economy terms are recurrent. Yoon’s topics uniquely foreground Jayu across themes, marking a departure from the traditional 국민-centered rhetoric. - Policy-linkage evidence: Yoon’s Jayu-heavy rhetoric aligns with a pro-market, labor-flexibility agenda (e.g., debate over extending working-hour caps), skepticism toward expansive welfare (“Mooncare”), and a hardline security posture (e.g., Kill Chain/preemptive options, strengthened alliance rhetoric). During his April 2023 U.S. visit, Jayu appeared 157 times across speeches; analysis of 84 speeches showed most Jayu references tied to markets (n≈30) and security/diplomacy (n≈39) versus fundamental rights (n≈5).

Findings indicate Jayu functions as a conservative ideograph strategically deployed in Korean presidential rhetoric, with a significantly stronger association under conservative administrations and unprecedented intensification under Yoon. The time-series results rule out spurious temporal correlations by modeling autoregressive and moving-average dynamics, showing a robust party effect on Jayu usage that strengthens post-New Right and post-impeachment periods. Descriptive comparisons show Yoon’s Jayu emphasis exceeds all predecessors, especially in symbolically important addresses like inaugurals. Topic modeling reveals a thematic reorientation: prior presidents foregrounded 국민 (the public), consistent with Korea’s constitutional ethos; Yoon’s rhetoric centers on Jayu, signaling ideological definition and policy direction. Substantively, Yoon’s Jayu signals align with small-government, market-oriented policies and a hardline security stance toward North Korea, consistent with conservative and New Right currents. Politically, the heavy use of Jayu appears designed to consolidate and mobilize the conservative base amid legislative opposition and low approval, but risks intensifying polarization by framing opponents as anti-state or “communist totalitarian” forces. The results highlight how symbolic language shapes governance narratives, partisan identity, and public discourse in Korea’s polarized environment.

The study demonstrates a strong, consistent association between conservative partisanship and increased presidential use of Jayu, with President Yoon Suk Yeol exhibiting unprecedented frequency, contrast, and ratio of Jayu relative to Minju. This emphasis is most visible in his inaugural address and across major speeches, marking a notable shift from prior 국민-centered rhetoric. Empirical analyses (ARMAX, structural breaks, LDA) converge to show that Yoon’s Jayu is a deliberate rhetorical strategy tied to specific policy orientations—anti-communism, small government, market liberalism, and a hardline security approach—used to signal ideological commitments and mobilize conservative support. Contributions include extending presidential rhetoric research beyond Western contexts, showing how ideographs like Jayu function in Korea’s political communication, and linking symbolic language to policy orientation and polarization. Future research should examine the societal effects of such partisan symbolic rhetoric, its media amplification, and downstream impacts on public attitudes and inter-party cooperation, as well as broaden comparative analyses across leaders and keywords to generalize findings.

The study focuses primarily on the Jayu/Minju terminology and Yoon’s rhetoric rather than exhaustively analyzing all keywords across all presidencies, limiting breadth. Period demarcations, while theoretically motivated and supported by structural tests, retain elements of researcher judgment. NLP choices (Okt tokenizer, stop-word lists, POS filtering, regex) may affect topic-model outputs; alternative tools (e.g., KKMa, Mecab) could yield variations. Yoon’s atypical political trajectory and evolving presidency complicate inference and warrant continued monitoring. Data are drawn from official archives and government portals, which may omit informal or non-archival discourse.