Editor’s note: For teenagers, Instagram is an all-purpose app. It serves as a messaging service for chatting with friends, a platform for watching videos, and a source of news and information about social issues and history. It can fairly be described as their window on the world.

Over the past year or two, however, a far-right worldview has begun to permeate that space. It is awash with hatred, mockery and fake news. The use of humor, memes and slick presentation makes it all the more dangerous.

While this is a new phenomenon in Korea, Instagram has long served as a gateway to the far right for teenagers and young adults in countries such as Germany and the US.

For this series of articles, the Hankyoreh conducted a data-driven analysis of the Instagram ecosystem.

On June 4, 2026, a post titled “Irrefutable evidence of election rigging in Tongyeong” appeared on the Instagram account “Ineugeum” (@dlsmrma, 23,000 followers).

Along with a screenshot of a news report about ballots being recounted for the mayoral election in Tongyeong, a city in South Gyeongsang Province, the post claimed that the decision had followed the discovery of 240 invalidated votes cast for a candidate from the conservative People Power Party.

But that was fake news. In the Tongyeong mayoral election, the candidate for the Democratic Party was elected by just 44 votes — the narrowest margin of Korea’s local elections on June 3. Election officials held two recounts to confirm the results. But while the margin narrowed to 38 votes, the outcome did not change.

Between June 3 and Sept. 15, a combined 755 posts claiming election fraud appeared on 48 major Instagram accounts studied by the Hankyoreh, or an average of seven posts per day. The posts collectively attracted 2.34 million Likes, based on 749 posts for which Like counts were publicly visible.

Claims of rigged elections stoked by certain far-right Instagram accounts spread like wildfire, even to teens. In a Hankyoreh survey of 604 people aged 14-18 last month, 46% said they saw or knew of posts alleging such fraud or phrases such as “Stop the Steal” within the past six months.

In addition, 28% said they agreed that the June local elections were “rigged and fraudulent.” Unlike other statements, such as “the martial law declaration was justified,” no major difference in opinion by gender was seen, with 28.5% of men and 27.5% of women agreeing with the sentiment.