4th exclusive interview with KIM Jong-un - Chollyu time!

Even if eight years have passed since our last meeting*, the Beer Leader remembers me all right, almost choking me with a long, nicotine-laden bear hug. His daughter KIM Ju-ae opts for a quick high-five before returning to her smartphone - probably posting ahout the event on KCNA's latest app Instagrim.

KIM Jong-un: "Welcome back to my lair! See how my beloved daughter, the Morning Star of Korea, has grown into a perfect heir? You know she's already become a Missile General Director? Well from day one I've trained her so well.... she executed her first traitors before she could even walk."

Seoul Village: "How cute... a chip off the old block indeed. Your dynasty's 4G is enjoying a great coverage from your propaganda machine, but I can't see KIM Yo-jong today, and she's always photobombing our interviews from the background... Is she jealous because her niece got the leather jacket she always dreamed of?"

KJU: "Ju-ae wouldn't fit, fat chance.... No, Yo-jong's mission is over: we had to get our people used to a potential leading female figure from the divine bloodline, the time for 4G to grow out of her diapers."

Birds of a leather rule together - KIM 4G with her high fructose sugar daddy

SV: "Ever the gentleman... I also noted how you're trying to counter illegal Hallyu content by developing series shot in a more Hollywood fashion."

KJU: "Yup. We call that Chollyu. We produced very popular series, like 'Camp 14', which I'm sure inspired Squid Game. You know, our whole nation is a big survival game. BTS is also drawing huge crowds here."

SV: "BTS?!?"

KJU: "Yeah. 'Behind The Scenes' is a reality show devoted to torture techniques. Our domestic audiences are literally hooked to it."

SV: "You've also been exporting such niceties as cannon fodder to Russia or missile technologies to Iran."

KJU: "Among others, got that right. And business has been booming even more since the US have embraced the dark side of the force."

SV: "Wow wow, not so fast, the Midterms might put the brakes on your friend Donnie." 

KJU: "Yes, Donald is on the right track, except of course when he's unfairly competing with us. By the way did you see how his dynasty's raking in cryptocurrencies? And they're not even hiding behind hackers and aliases when they demand bribes or ransom or anything. But Trump is not the guy in charge of America. Pete will make sure November will come out just fine."

SV: "Pete? Not Vlad?"

KJU: "Putin showed the way, Thiel perfected it. With this guy, Trump won't even need redistricting. They've got all the data they want on every single citizen, they know what they're thinking because they shape it. Actually I asked him to upgrade our rusty software - can you believe we're still running on Kimchi Analytica 1.0?".  

SV: "So no need for another Trump-Kim summit then?"

KJU: "Not officially. Of course Donald will visit, but essentially on a benchmark tour of our regime: for his ICE facilities naturally, but also for his ballroom, his military parades, his monuments, his dynastic trickle-down economics, and of course his cult of personality..Trump is tired of the French model - doesn't feel personal enough. I was touched by his Trump pin initiative, a nice tribute to our tradition. I also loved his giant portrait on the Department of Justice HQ, a perfect symbol of the abolition of the separation of powers, but Don wants something more long-lasting than a banner."

'#TrumpPresidentialLibrary obviously designed to host a #NorthKorea plenum. #Trump #architecture' (20260331 - @theseoulvillage)

'#MAGA goes #KCNA:' (20250804 - @theseoulvillage)

 

'OMG #KarolineLeavitt is actually going full #RiChunhee!!!' (20260108 - @theseoulvillage)

 SV: "No summit with South Korea either?" 

KJU: "I don't need puppets down South anymore, now that I've got the perfect love triangle around me. When Trump pulls out the troops, Vlad and Jinping will maintain some Mexican standoff. Could get trickier when Putin kicks the bucket though. Russian mobster succession wars can get messy." 

SV: "You're distancing yourself from South Korea at the very moment a good friend rules supreme. LEE Jae-myung sent you money, legalized your propaganda, his unification minister leaked essential intel from the States... and you're still snubbing him?"

KJU: "The more I wait, the more he'll send my way. Besides, he's also busy with his own takeover of justice. Plus I have tests to run and he doesn't like that."

SV: "Nukes?"

KJU: "Our pyrotechnics shows will depend on which part of our catalogue our clients are interested it. It won't be as spectacular, but I'm also developing a lovely new weapon with Pete, Elon, and Vlad: swarms of nano drones. We all need them for our core surveillance and spying activities, but also for surgical removal of political opponents. Much more efficient and discreet than VX or Novichok."

SV: "Are Thiel and Musk also considering this kind of applications?"

KJU: "Which verses of Project 2025 and Dark Enlightenment did you skip?" 

Seoul Village 2026
Welcome to our Korean Errlines! Follow Seoul Village on Facebook, Bluesky, Threads, Substack, and X/Twitter, follow me on Instagram.
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* see previous episodes: "Exclusive interview with KIM Jong-un" , "EXCLUSIVE-Second interview with KIM Jong-un", "Exclusive interview with KIM Jong-un - Season III"- Agence Fausse Presse.

SeMA's saemaeuldeul

SeMA's latest branch was inaugurated on March 12 in Siheung-dong, Geumcheon-gu. Between an elementary school, big apateu blocks, the huge district office and its namesake subway station, this long, low rise structure designed by KIM Chan-joong sits in a small park and dons a headband reflecting light like a screen, probably an echo to its dedication to new media art.

The new ship is docked to its neighborhood through an anchor outdoor installation (Yaloo's Shininho Landing), and an inaugural exhibition ('Mneme topos') honoring its own construction. Nothing revolutionary or pretentious; visitors are even entertained with fun signage from the parking lot to various outdoor spots. The idea seems to make families and newbies comfortable, contemporary art accessible to everyone. 

Seo-Seoul Museum of Art fills a cultural gap in southwest Seoul, and somehow combines Siheung-dong's nature dimension with Doksan-dong's industrial culture. Going to Geumnarae Central Park with the kids or to the district office for some administrative stuff? You can seize the opportunity and take a short cultural break. 

#SeoSeoulMuseumofArt in #Geumcheongu, #Seoul.#culture #architecture pic.twitter.com/DsmrQsiSbu

— Seoul Village 🇺🇦 (@theseoulvillage) April 24, 2026

Previously, SeMA only had one site south of the Hangang, in Gwanak-gu: the Nam-Seoul Museum of Art inaugurated in September 2004 in the former Belgian Consulate building relocated to Namhyeon-dong 21 years earlier.

Before Seo-Seoul, SeMA's last inauguration (in May 2025) was at the diagonal opposite in Chang-dong, Dobong-gu. A sliced dark cube - or should I say a camera obscura? - The Photography Seoul Museum of Art is a more daunting beast, with an edgier inaugural program featuring familiar names, but also experimental artists I'd never knew graced the Park Chung-hee era.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Stephane MOT (@stephanemot)

As it opens, step by step, new Seoul villages to art, SeMA welcomes as always visitors for free. In case you missed any, here are the other venues:

• Seosomun Main Building: SeMA's Main Branch is located in Seosomun-dong, Jung-gu, in the original Supreme Court (built in 1928). Inaugurated in 1988, it moved in 2002 from Sinmunno-2-ga, Jongno-gu, within Gyeonghuigung grounds (now the site of the Seoul Museum of History).
  
  
• Buk-Seoul Museum of Art: inaugurated in September 2013 in Junggye-dong, Nowon-gu, SeMA's second biggest branch filled a regional void and often proposes interesting exhibitions
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Also:
• Archives, Seoul Museum of Art (inaugurated in April 2023 on the main axis of Pyeongchang-dong, Jongno-gu).
•  SeMA Storage (inaugurated in 2016 in the former Innovation Park in Nokbeon-dong, Eunpyeong-gu )
• SeMA Bunker (inaugurated in October 2017 under the Yeouido park and former runway - in Yeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu)
• Nanji Residency SeMA  (in Sangam-dong, Mapo-gu)
• Paik Ground (formerly Nam Jun Paik memorial house, inaugurated on March 10, 2017 in Changsin-dong, Jeongno-gu)

Seoul Village 2026
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Vinyl Nation

With 80% of its oil coming from the Strait of Hormuz and a currency crisis that started long before the Iran war, Korea is feeling the pinch at many levels. Beyond the obvious impact at the gas station, possible shortages in secondary products already loom on the horizon. Recently, panic-buying swept the pay+as+you+throw plastic bags issued by Seoul districts, and that's a good occasion to talk about plastic dependence here.

I mean we've seen decent progress regarding single-use plastics, for instance with reusable shopping bags at the supermarkets or reusable cups in fast food restaurants. But the land remains covered with 'vinyl houses', the East Sea the most polluted by microplastics, and the dreaded black 'vinyl bongtu' pervasive.

Black plastic is the most toxic (don't forget plastics are full of chemicals) and the most difficult to recycle. Why on Earth is this increasingly health-conscious country still hooked to that thing? You see it everywhere, and particularly where you should never see it: wrapped around food. 

And of course that black plastic is not even see-through; one of the reasons some people still prefer them to paper bags. The good news is that there are bio-source and bio-degradable alternatives that have become common in Europe, some can break down naturally in non-industrial settings, and leave no harmful waste. 

We could  also write volumes about the deadly combo of over-packaging and plastics here (how many layers of plastic even in Coupang's renewable 'Fresh Bags'?), but getting rid of these little black bags would be a good step forward.

Vinyl houses in Gimjae

Seoul Village 2026
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Seoul Village Season XX

Welcome to 2026, the year of the Red Horse! I know, technically, we have to wait for the lunar new year and some may prefer the Fire Horse moniker but anyway, here's an AI generated beast for all of you:

Change, bold choices, that's what's supposedly in store for the new year.

Korea experienced its share of changes in 2025, but they were expected:

• YOON Suk-yeol's impeachment was confirmed
• LEE Jae-myung managed to elude justice and get elected
• Korea has de facto become a single-party nation, and not the party the disgraced president wanted 

A single party nation?

YOON's party - which never really was his - is in shambles. And that's not the first time: the PPP failed to truly reform itself (beyond rebranding) after PARK Geun-hye's impeachment, and it doesn't seem willing to evolve following YOON's either. In fact, this election losing machine succeeded only in 2022, when the DPK led the national shoot-yourself-in-the-foot contest with a LEE Jae-myung ensnared in scandals and a then highly unpopular president MOON Jae-in creating a most unlikely candidate (YOON) that had no choice but to join the other side... Today, this party doesn't seem to have any future.

Meanwhile, to secure his own future, LEE Jae-myung managed to seize both the stick (full control of justice) and the carrot (direct control of finance). In the most Trumpian fashion, he's now enjoying the retribution time of his life, siccing justice even at OH Se-hoon, who had no involvement whatsoever in YOON's martial law disaster, but remains his number one target for the 2026 local elections. DP candidate CHONG Won-o is already catching up with the Seoul mayor.

On the diplomatic front, LEE has been very active and well beyond the long planned APEC 2025 summit in Gwangju. As expected, he reconnected with North Korea and China. He's visiting XI Jinping very soon, but KIM Jong-un is not as responsive as planned - probably vaxxed by earlier disillusions from the TRUMP I era, and most certainly not thrilled by the new POTROK's surprising request for a nuclear submarine from Uncle Sam (on the other hand, that OPCON transfer...). Also surprising: LEE cozying up with Japan. XI might ask him to chose sides wisely.

On the domestic front, a few good news: the demographic uptick started 16 months ago has not been disturbed by the domestic turmoil, the presidency returned to Cheong Wa Dae, and exports rebounded (Korean cosmetics rule, semiconductors had a good year...). But the Korean Won nosedived, protectionism returned, the household and national debts kept creeping up, costly gifts to stimulate consumption further damaged the balance, and Korea can't afford a Japan-style headlong flight.

But at least, Korea beat another Netflix record with Kedeheon / 케데헌*.

As much as I enjoyed K-Pop Demon Hunters' catchy OST and many references to the Korean culture, it felt visually closer to a manga or anime than to a manhwa. Even that big cat seemed to come straight from Studio Ghibli. But K-pop itself stole from all over the map, so let's not bicker and enjoy while it lasts.

 

Because the billions Netflix poured in Korea following Squid Game are coming to an end, and the platform is diversifying its sources across the region - expect a lot of BL from Thailand.

So yes, BTS will drop a new album in March, but other pillars of the creative industry are struggling (see "A Fade Out - Not 'The End'"), and the world will also want new stuff. If it wants to remain a cultural leader**, Korea will need to once more reinvent itself, to move out of its creative comfort zone. 

Seoul Village 2026
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* over 325M views for the first 91 days vs over 265M for Squid Game in 2021 (+22%, but the number of Netflix subs grew by 36% in the meantime).

** see "Can Korea sustain its cultural leadership?"

Business as usual

As usual in Seoul, real estate and urbanism are never far from the headlines, but let's skip topical stuff and limit to mere footnotes recent controversies (this Seoul city erection in front of Jongmyo*? that measure from the national government**?).

Let's talk shop. 

You see in with those 'for rent' signs, you measure it with the speed at which new stores tend to close: small businesses are really feeling the pinch***. Part of it is conjunctural - the Korean economy as a whole is struggling, and demographics don't bode well for the future. Part of it is structural - more than COVID, the labor reforms that preceded changed fundamentally the street experience for Seoulites: used to a city that never slept, they're now coping with last orders at 9 pm or restaurants closing for dinner altogether.

And of course, more and more Koreans are now ordering everything online. Not just these GenZ who don't cook and limit their IRL shopping experiences to retailtainment or browsing Seongsu-dong's pop-up streets like their parents did with fashion magazines. Yes, Seoul's last mile equation is not sustainable (and as much as I appreciate last minute, early morning, ultra fresh deliveries, I'm glad their social costs are being investigated), but the trend is global, and all cities have to adapt.

It's harder to adapt when the urban hardware is obsolete. 

You're less inclined to contribute to your neighborhood's vitality when 'proximity' shops and services are not so close and in Seoul, apartment blocks tend to cut citizens from their city.

In the old gen 'apateu' blocks, a building devoted to businesses was generally included near the main entrance, sometimes in secondary entrances. This 'open ring' was seldom complete, but everybody walked or drove by these shops every day, particularly since few parking spaces were underground. These businesses belonged to the community.

Some housing complexes are more blended with their surroundings, their edges consisting of mixed use buildings. Even if there's less often greenery to compensate****, pedestrians enjoy (functionally speaking) a better street experience from the outside (urban continuity, diversity...). On the other hand, the inside may seem more exclusive. 

By nature mixed use buildings, officetels usually include shops and services. But when those take too big a share residents can easily feel overwhelmed. Many exclusive, high rise projects with only a couple of buildings have a mall on the lower floors, a 'vertical buffer' that's de facto a separate building with a devoted parking to preserve the residents' quality of life. But then, since it takes anyway 10 mn to leave your luxurious apartment and reach an entrance that's far from everything, many prefer to take their car and shop elsewhere, and this vertical city can turn into a tale of two cities. 

Another tricky model is what I call the 'captive cluster'; very common in greenfield 'new towns' across the capital region and around major cities. In the middle (in best cases) or at the edge (too often) of a group of apateu blocks that can involve different developer brands, urban planners insert a low rise block of mixed use buildings with all the shops and services on the ground floor. Some can be relatively well done, making the best of what's left of a natural landscape (e.g. waterways), and you can almost enjoy a village atmosphere that changes from the dull tombstone collections around, particularly since each lot owner build their own. But too often these clusters fail because there are not enough candidates to open shop*****, or because they've been poorly designed. 

Instead of an open grid, some of these clusters (particularly recent ones) propose only one or two car entrances and force visitors into a full round along a conveyor belt before exiting. On purpose, like a journey in an Ikea store makes you browse the whole catalogue. Except people move by car because these new towns are humongous, and the streets and parking spaces are seldom as entertaining, well drawn, and planned. Sometimes, these clusters are even split into two independent halves that don't communicate directly. And this 'captiveness' is actually a sales argument to recruit new businesses... Needless to say, not very sustainable.

 

If Seoul's 'MOA Town' concept signaled an evolution from massive tabula rasa to partial redevelopment, allowing more diverse cityscapes and ecosystems (see "From Human Town to Gather Town"), the market remains dominated by big projects, New Towns that obliterate real cities. 

It's not its big blocks but its remaining villages that make Seoul special. If we neuter them, if we destroy diversity, city centers will die. If we do nothing they'll die out, even if a few local markets miraculously manage to thrive and warm up whole neighborhoods.

I've been advocating pragmatic approaches to revive decaying city centers. They all involve bringing back inhabitants, even if that means designing exceptions to the rules, for example by allowing mixed uses in low rise business areas, or small scale revamps that involve shared facilities or obligations (e.g. elevators, parking spaces). Some may be implemented, stay tuned.

Seoul Village 2025
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* ICYMI Seoul city decided to replace Sewoon Sangga with a park between Jongmyo and Namsan, but also to 'compensate' by allowing much taller buildings in the vicinity, which of course doesn't fit preservation or UNESCO Heritage guidelines:

 

Adieu #SewoonSangga. #Seoul to replace #KimSwoogeun landmark with a park between #Jongmyo & #Namsan. But bdg heights raised to 71.9m on #Jongro (+16.9) & 141.9m on #Cheonggyecheon (+43.2). Will #UNESCO accept? #세운상가 #urbanism (20251104 SeoulVillage on X)

** ICYMI the government extended Seoul's speculative zone from the 3 usual districts (Gangnam, Songpa, Seocho) to the whole city, which resulted in a freeze in transactions (except in the 3 districts that became relatively more attractive), and a hike in rental costs. Like previous reforms, the aim seems to be crushing further the middle class and making first purchases impossible (the guy in charge of the reforms was driven by his idea that first time homeowners tended to vote more conservative)....

*** Big players are not spared, but if HomePlus will yet again change hands (Carrefour, HomeEver, Tesco... WhatEver?), its financial trouble have a lot to do with MBK Partners' disastrous management.

**** Wangsimni New Town's Majang-ro 19-gil sets a better example with dense trees on both sides,  

***** yes, these new towns also include new schools, so it's not just dwellings that are in oversupply nationwide
 

Seoul Village on Substack

It's always the same story. I grow comfortable with a new medium, and another one pops up, ruining the affair and leading to further polygamic writing.

If you don’t know me, my name MOT means ‘word’ in French, and I define writing as my most embarrassing bodily function. I spare you the early www days but basically, there was a first shift from internet fora to personal sites (I opted for Geocities). Then I fell for another format, perfect for my short bursts: the blog. Vaccinated by the Geocities collapse, I picked a mainstream plaftorm, Blogger, and started spilling my ‘blogules’ all over the place, and soon spun off half a dozen active verticals in two languages on culture, on tech, or on Korea (enter SeoulVillage in 2007).

I really enjoyed posting on topics I loved, from culture and urbanism to politics and sports. In my hayday, I would commit several posts every day and reach millions of pages viewed every month. I even accepted to make a special blog on soccer and tech during the 2006 FIFA World Cup for CNET, who noticed that I had one of the most popular blogs on the game in French (the offbeat ‘footlog’), and a more serious one on innovation in English (‘mot-bile’).

I resisted SNS as long as I could before falling for the usual suspects. Facebook and Twitter were time consuming, but the ideal complement to the blog: the former to anchor it, the latter to pile up / browse through memos that didn’t deserve full posts. Of course, serving Zuck and later Elon became a moral hazard, and I tried alternatives that never picked up.

So far, I’d been resisting Substack because as much as I respected the vision, I’d maintained newsletters and I knew how demanding they can be, particularly for a guy who’d already all but abandoned most of his blogs and platforms, and dreams of devoting more time for his miserable fiction.

Yet. Following Blogger, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram*, Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, and probably others I forgot, I have to make sure that’s there’s a legit SeoulVillage on key platforms.

So this SeoulVillage Substack will be, as the name suggests, yet another stack, but also, who knows, a sub who could make the ineluctable end of the game a bit more fun.

Seoul Village on Substack: substack.com/@seoulvillage

 

Welcome to my Korean Errlines.

Stephane

Seoul Village 2025
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* yup that’s the personal Insta, but because Zuck’s UI sucks, I seldom post on the SeoulVillage one.

Summer of Saem

Too much water falling too fast. recent flood episodes claimed 18 lives in Korea, 135 in Texas, and more than 200 in Pakistan. The world over, communities brace for more extreme weather and downpours.  

Too much water staying too long in the air: Korea's dog days are just officially starting, this year's Chobok fell yesterday, so 'Sambok' 2 and 3 are scheduled for July 30 (Jungbok) and August 9 (Malbok).

But how about your own water level? Don't forget to drink a lot, to dress light, to eat light, and if you want to avoid the fate of the narrator of 'Sweat Dream'', to keep cool.

Gapyeong flood damage (News1)

How waterways and floods shaped Seoul: time to re-watch/read my lecture 'Flow and Order: Seoul Waterways: and other Urban Stitches')

Seoul Village 2025
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