Moon Jae-in

Until he was nominated as his party’s presidential candidate in 2022, Lee Jae-myung had been an outsider in the Minjoo Party. He was elected twice as a mayor and then a governor, having had no time to rub shoulders with Minjoo insiders in Yeouido. When he was elected to

What should President Yoon do to improve his dismal approval rating? A noble man君子 would seek for a reform. Fortunately, there is—and will ever be—no shortage of issues that are of national urgency: um, how about improving corporate governance and shareholder value? That’s what delivered Japanese stock

Rumors said when Angelina Jolie signed a lease, jeonse전세, for a Gwanghwamun apartment for her son Maddox in 2019, she was surprised by the idea of jeonse and loved it. You need to deposit a substantial sum of money, but it can eventually be used to buy your own house.

Some Moon administration officials are reported to establish a policy forum to commemorate Moon’s legacy. In South Korean politics, so-called policy forums often function as campaign outposts, and I suppose this would also be the case here. The name of the forum, Sauijae四宜齋, is very symbolic. The forum’s

After election: Minjoo’s traditional support base falling apart No one doubted that the June local election would be Minjoo’s defeat. I already discussed some reasons, so let’s look at other things I haven’t mentioned. One remarkable result is Minjoo’s decline in the Gyeonggi region. Minjoo’

With the new President to be sworn in next week, it would be a good time to reflect on the Moon administration’s legacy. President Moon himself seems to have been thinking about this a lot these days: [E]very Korean president has had their share of accomplishments and failures.

President Moon signed the controversial prosecutor reform bill today. Well, I’ve talked a lot about the reform so let’s get straight to some interesting points I didn’t cover: * The Blue House changed its cabinet meeting schedule twice for this * This is the last (regular) cabinet meeting: as

Two weeks ago, I predicted that President Moon’s last interview with Sohn Suk-hee would be a tepid, pre-scripted-ish, just like his dialogue with the nation.  I was wrong. The interview got pretty tense several times, and the last time I felt this nervous while watching an interview was when

As Minjoo pushes ahead with the compromised bill of the prosecutor reform, President-elect Yoon Seok-yeol alluded to calling for a referendum on the bill. A series of bad calls for the following reasons: * Yoon shouldn’t have let the PPP strike a compromise in the first place (if he thinks

President Moon had a meeting with the Prosecutor General, who submitted his resignation in protest of Minjoo’s prosecutor reform, known as the complete deprivation of the Prosecutors’ investigation authority. Moon’s message, delivered by his spokesperson, was so cryptic that each media has its own interpretation of it. * Dong-A:

President Moon is the most popular President in the history of the Sixth Republic of Korea. This statement, however, makes heads tilt rather than nod. Questions like the below would likely follow: * Is Moon the most successful President? * Did his party win the next presidential election? * What are Moon’s

Hi, welcome to the third issue of Korea Kontext newsletter. This issue was supposed (at least in my mind) to be sent yesterday but I happened to watch Twin Peaks Season 3 (Korean OTT service Watcha has in its catalogue, I recently learned) in the weekend and it devoured my

This is the second issue of my newsletter. The format is quite different this time—this time the whole newsletter is about a single topic. My current goal is to provide a news roundup two times a week and a deep-dive write-up (like the below) a week. An ambitious plan

Hi, this is the first preliminary issue of my Korea Kontext newsletter. Though it begins as a weekly newsletter, I intend to increase the frequency as soon as I get the knack for it. My imaginary audience is those who read Korea news but want more context to connect the