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.

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?"

Teflon

On June 3, Korea will pick its next president. We already know that this president won't be a woman, because the nation returned to its usual 'manel' mode:

'Cherchez la femme'... 8 candidates, 8 men.

We also already know that this president will be LEE Jae-myung, bar some last minute surprise. LEE is not running any risks, behind a bulletproof jacket that has become a marketing gimmick ever since he wore one when summoned to court (look, I'm not a bad guy, I survived an assassination attempt, remember*?). 

There is no way PPP candidate KIM Moon-soo can catch up with his rival. Not because he failed to unite with LEE Jun-seop (a blessing in disguise: that toxic mysoginist would have torpedoed him like he almost sunk YOON Suk-yeol three years ago), but because he refused to unite with HAN Duck-soo, which doesn't look good when you aim at uniting a nation.

HAN Duck-soo could have defeated LEE. Like YOON in 2022, less for his own qualities than for the defaults of his rival. HAN would have easily collected the votes of never-LJM democrats: he wasn't the power hungry extremist LEE tried to depict; just a dull civil servant who put country over party, and also worked for KIM Dae-jung and ROH Moo-hyun.

Come to think of it, neither of the two leading candidates should be in this race today. KIM because HAN was not a political animal but a reluctant, suicidal candidate, and LEE because he was ruled guilty of an offense that should prevent him from running for five years, but the Supreme Court didn't go all the way and declare him ineligible. 

The institution simply stated that LEE was guilty and that the Seoul court had to change its ruling accordingly, blaming it on the way for many irregularities. Of course, that partisan court, which already drew criticism and an overrule for the way it dealt with YOON, postponed its own decision until the last moment, did nothing to fix its own misdeeds before the election. 

So just like TRUMP, Teflon LEE will survive a major judicial blow and cruise to victory. But this taint remains particularly embarrassing, and his teams already suggested a few extreme ways of removing it. Among others:

• create a new law to cancel ongoing cases against a newly elected president (his legislative majority already carved many exotic laws over the past years, but even TRUMP 1.0 couldn't pull that one)
• impeach the head of the Supreme Court
• double the number of Supreme Court justices (!)
• ending the Separation of Powers, a keystone of democracy 
• ... 

Not the best way to mend a nation traumatized by 'Martial Law' YOON Suk-yeol... The word 'dictatorship' has even been used to describe what Korea could become under an almighty LEE, should he prolong his legislative overreach of the past few years. Once elected, will he let bygones be bygones, or will he double down and go full TRUMP? Of course, LJM is much smarter and less egotistical than DJT, but there's little chance he will reduce a grip on justice he's been trying to strengthen for years. Korea has been in a constitutional crisis since 2020, and the balance of power is at stake.

Like for all his predecessors, LEE Jae-myung will have a right to make mistakes, but not on the fundamentals of democracy. This nation can't afford one more screw up (well that's what I wrote before the previous elections; and look what happened).

Of course, we'll also see how LEE will handle other hot potatoes such as:

• the economy: more business savvy and less ideological than MOON on the issue, LEE remains a populist, but there's no coffer left to plunder
• demographics: for the first time in a while, the national birthrate ticked up in 2024 - was it a flash in the pan? can Koreans grow more confident in these troubled times?
• North Korea: charged for instructing illegal transfers to Pyongyang and heading a party that suppressed laws against foreign spies, LEE will probably reach out across the DMZ. Also likely to step back from the close collaboration with Japan and the USA (which would profit China, even if he's not pitching that tune ahead of the elections).
• TRUMP: the anti-US LEE could get along very well with The Donald, and that's not paradoxical since DJT himself is pretty much anti-America. Furthermore, these two highly transactional people who totally reshaped their own parties to their image can find lucrative common ground. Expect fewer US troops in the peninsula.

Anyway, whoever wins, his predecessor YOON Suk-yeol will soon, along with his wife KIM Keon-hee, have more facetime with justice. Even though, the disgraced president managed to invite himself in the campaign by attending the projection of a conspiracy theory film about election fraud... 

Won't Korea's tragic comedy ever end? 

Seoul Village 2025
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* see 'Assassination attempt on LEE Jae-myung in Busan'

Seoul Village Season XIX

At long last, Korea's miserable month of December 2024 is over. You'd think it'd be hard to top two presidential impeachments sandwiched between two major disasters (YOON Suk-yeol's short-lived martial law and Jeju Air's tragic plane crash), but 2025 doesn't bode very well either for a nation on the ropes. 

Whoever is the next president will have a hard time rebuilding hope and trust at home as well as overseas, provided that's on their menu.

In the short term, acting president CHOI Sang-mok is unlikely to achieve anything significant and until the elections at least, the opposition is unlikely to contribute to reviving an anemic economy it's been undermining for years. As for the long term. this Dark December most probably annihilated that recent, timid demographic uptick (belated COVID rebound?) as radically as those politically motivated budget cuts sacrificing Korea's future growth engines (goodbye innovation and quantum computing).

Korea's competitive edge and survival are also at risk with the return of Trump to the White House.

In the 1991 blockbuster Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Arnold Schwarzenegger returned as a force of good in total contrast with a first opus where he pretty much destroyed everything. But that's fiction and in Trump's T2, The Donald is unlikely to fundamentally change characters. Actually, DJT already hired 'Dark MAGA' Elon Musk for the role of Robert Patrick: T-!000, a fitter, slicker, updated version of the bulletproof killing machine programmed to help Skynet / Space X control the World. Anyway, doomsday scenario or not, this sequel promises to be less boring than Kamala Harris' short-lived B2: Statu Quo.

Both sides of the DMZ are watching closely.

KIM Jong-un knows he can't trust Trump, and he's already busy with another transactional buddy, Vladimir Putin. With his 'Juche Line' and 'Sunshine Line' in tatters, KIM somehow balances the 'Beijing Line' with a 'Kremlin Line' that provides oil, currencies, and statesman credentials against disposables (weapons and cannon fodder). 

Whoever is in charge in Seoul, lines will change and the US military presence of South Korea will be reevaluated by a man who already proved he could betray and abandon brothers in arms (ask the Kurds and Afghans if they believe one second Trump's commitment to Koreans is ironclad). We know Trump wants to withdraw, and that Mike Pompeo advised him (as Mark Esper revealed) to delay such a risky move to his second term. We know that this time he'll be surrounded by incompetent yes-men in the White House and in a greater section of Congress. We also know that Marco Rubio wouldn't be okay with abandoning Asia to China, but that he won't be calling the shots...

Should LEE Jae-myeong become the next president, he could even accelerate the withdrawal process. And he certainly wouldn't compensate with a NATO style alliance with Japan and Taiwan, like the one floated here and there as a second Trump mandate looked inevitable.

But LEE himself is a very transactional guy, and he could sing Trump a different kind of serenade than the one YOON sang to Biden. 

Besides, Korea Inc have more than a few chips on the table. Samsung, SK Hynix and Co. also fear another kind of withdrawal: the subsidies guaranteed under Joe Bden's CHIPS act. CHEY Tae-won already warned SK might reconsider its massive investment in Indiana, where both senators are Republicans... like in Texas, where Samsung extends its Austin plant and builds a new one in Taylor...

At worst very conflictual, at best very transactional, this year of the blue snake looks pretty sneaky. 

Nonetheless, let's wish ourselves a happy new year 2025.

"#Trump returns. To #KyoboBookstore, #Seoul:" (20241129 post by Seoul Village on Bluesky)

Seoul Village 2025
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Seoul Village Season XVII

And so 2003 begins, the Year of the Rabbit.

 

Actually, the Year of the Water Rabbit, which should bring us extra inspiration.

 

A year full of cliffhangers, a year our turbulent neighbor up North will make sure we remember.

 

A year where we may not even need KIM Jong-un, a new pandemic, or a new war to be upset.

 

A year where Korea's unpopular, lame duck president YOON Suk-yeol, in spite of his lack of majority in the assembly, intends to push for even more unpopular reforms (welfare, pensions...).

 

A year of trials, errors, and successes.

Hopefully, a very happy new year to you, to the ones you care for, and to the ones no one care about.

 

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Asymetric War (Laissez-)Faire - Crouching Doves, Hidden Hawks

Hard to get some attention in 2022. North Korea's testing frenzy (over 40 missile launches so far) eventually paid off, but with another dictator with a bigger button, an itchy finger, and an actual, ultra violent war raging, KIM Jong-un and the KCNA had to beef up their storytelling.

Look what you've done

So as Putin shot missiles all over Ukraine in retaliation for the incident on his controversial bridge to Crimea, KIM had to mansplain that his recent shots were a simulation of tactical nuclear strikes, and a rehearsal for the wiping out of key infrastructures across South Korea. If no mock up Blue Houses were harmed during the shooting, that was clearly a few notches higher than the usual reactions to joint KOR-US drills, or VIP visits (VP Kamala Harris the other day).

Furthermore, the DPRK demonstrated yet new levels of readiness and stealth, making South Korea's failed test even more embarrassing. YOON Suk-yeol can say the neighbors upstairs have 'nothing to gain from nuclear weapons', calls for nuclear deterrence South of the DMZ keep getting louder.

There's always Uncle Sam's 'ironclad' support, and including on the ground, at a time when Joe Biden can't set foot in Ukraine, or even say what he wants about Taiwan. Besides, hawks are getting a little more subtle across the East Sea, and coordination becomes possible (though whatever LEE Jae-myung may say, the ROK is not heading for a 'pro-Japan defense'). Fumio Kishida and friends even received some help from Kyiv, where Zelenskyy declared that the Kuril Islands belonged to Japan, not Russia...

All eyes should be on a key player: after circumnavigating unusual unrest at home, and Putin's most urgent demands overseas, XI Jinping is about to become more officially ruler for life (at the XXth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party).

(Seoul Village on Facebook - 20221001) "China's 'Panda Diplomacy' in 2022 according to 阿塗 (IG @ah_to_hk). With North Korea supporting Russia's massacres in Ukraine, South Korea (NB Yoon?!?) composing with Xi Jinping Imperator, Japan restoring Imperial Japan, the mighty USA eagle a distant observer, one feather brushing Taiwan... Among countless details, China's Pandamic SNAFUs, its support of autocrat neighbors, South China Sea's floating borders, a few birds that managed to escaped post-democracy Hong Kong, or those powerless doves (EU / OZ / UK / CAN) in the corner..."

Seoul Village 2022
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Fire, fury, and de-escalation

As Seoul experiences its first tropical nights of the year, we're all wondering even more acutely how climate change will affect our daily lives in the peninsula.

First, climate change is already happening, and we already know for sure that global temperatures will rise higher than targeted during the Paris Agreement. Key tipping points have already been passed, from the ever-shrinking Amazon rain forest, now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs, to the vanishing glaciers and polar caps, to the geographically closer permafrost collapse.

Permafrost covers a quarter of exposed land surfaces on the Northern Hemisphere, releasing as it melts frightening volumes of methane in our atmosphere already saturated with greenhouse gases. If scientists have already estimated the ginormous volumes to come, it's very hard to predict how, at the local level, they will directly and indirectly disrupt currents that structurally impact (e.g. North Korea's colder seas, the Siberian air masses...). 

After a 20th century where Korea already underwent a rise of +1.8 Celsius in average temperature (more than the rest of the World), this one promises to go medieval: the 2020 South Korea Climate Change Assessment Report (Ministry of Environment and Korea Meteorological Administration) announced that by 2100, the number of heatwave days (over 33 celsius) would more than triple from 10.1 to 35.5 per year. Winters will be shortened by one whole month, and we'll experience more precipitations and extreme episodes.

 

Rise in numbers of heatwave days (business as usual scenario)

Over the past 30 years, I've seen Winters become not only less cold (e.g. the Han River seldom freezes beyond smaller patches), but also much drier, which probably contributes to wildfires that are more violent and difficult to tame (58% of them happen during the Spring, when the nation is at its driest). Mountain soils get washed away at the first rain, landslides and floods multiply, and as seas rise, whole ecosystems are bound to disappear (tidal flats, wetlands)...

Korea wildfires on March 5, 2022 (NASA)

The social, economic, political impacts of climate change can't be underestimated. Beyond competitiveness, that's a matter of survival, sometimes literally: the number of heat-related fatalities is expected to more than double by the end of the century, and diseases or pests that used to be contained to warmer climates are becoming endemic*.

Food security, highlighted by the war in Ukraine that exposed Korea's over-dependence on China for its sustenance, will become even more critical: by 2100, the production of rice will have dwindled by 25%. The stakes are even higher in North Korea, which relies much more on its own, ailing agricultural sector. In the region, logistics and geopolitics are already impacted by warmer seas (East Russia enjoys its own sea ports that don't freeze during the winters, new arctic routes emerge...). 

Korea destroyed its greenbelts, boosted its coal power, and crippled its nuclear power at the worst moment. In spite of a few significant projects, it's nowhere near it should be in renewables. Logically, the country scores very poorly when it should be setting the example:

Climate Action Tracker, Mars 2022

Water, biomass, and forest management is already a strategic challenge, particularly in a country where a lot of the trees share the same age thanks to the massive tree-planting campaign of the 60s. It would be nice to involve, once again, all the population in a collective effort that would benefit generations to come. 

Big cities, starting with Seoul, are already experimenting and benchmarking best practices, because everybody knows that when cities become the solution, differences can be made much faster. Obviously, a lot remains to be done. Making sure every new project should contribute to improving natural temperature control or water collection / management could help.

Korea tends to forget that its landscapes have been degraded far beyond urban environments, and again (see "From zombie maeul to seed village - from fake startup communities to real Communities-as-a-Startup"), the country must start reconsidering and rethinking its rural world as a key asset for the future.

Seoul Village 2022
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* BTW bad news on the pandemic front: experts expect a second massive wave of coronavirus cases from August as people will gather in confined, air conditioned area, and most of them will have lost a lot of resistance to the virus (most received their last dose of vaccine last year). 

YSY does it?

Every five year, I have the same dream: that Korea switches to a two-round system for its presidential elections, which would not only reflect more accurately the diversity of opinions, but also result in mergers much more transparent, fair, and based on policies. But no. As usual, we witnessed last minute, winner-takes-all mergers between individuals. And as usual, the dozen-plus roster boiled down to two heavyweights snatching 95% of the cake. 

I wish SIM Sang-jun had raised the issue during her otherwise perfect concession speech. She did claim 800k votes and AHN Cheol-soo at least one third of that even without running (judging by the 300k invalid votes due to last minute withdrawals), but both would have scored much much higher otherwise, forcing main candidates to move closer to the center before the second round.

If none of the polls that followed the YOON-AHN alliance* were made public because they were too close to the elections, they all put the opposition candidate ahead by two to seven points. Yet YOON eventually finished only less than 250k votes ahead of LEE - less than what he gained in Seoul alone:

The capital city confirmed its 2021 rejection of a ruling party that lost not only key strongholds there, but also 4 of the 5 assembly seats in play nationwide on the same election night (by a much wider margin than for the presidential election).

Absolutely not Trumpian on that one, LEE Jae-myung conceded very gracefully. He would have had a difficult time trying to contest the score after the troubling incidents in Seoul, Gyeonggi-do, or Jeju-do that cast serious doubts about electoral integrity. The nation could even have faced a major crisis if LEE had won very narrowly. MOON Jae-in and the controversial head of the National Election Commission NOH Jeong-hee did apologize for the 'incidents', but they involved officials who had to be more than aware of the existential threat their behavior represented for democracy, and they looked disturbingly consistent with the extreme episodes witnessed during the administration's attacks on justice.

Hopefully, this closer than expected final gap was mainly due to the ruling party's last ditch mobilization of its formidable turnout machine combined with a weakened motivation on the other side: AHN guaranteed YOON's win, why vote for such an uninspiring candidate?

By all means, YOON Suk-yeol, a reluctant politician, was not a good candidate. And he was far from always a candidate for good.

I disagree with many elements of the candidate's program, but I want him to deliver the goods on one key front: democracy, justice, the constitution.

Korea needs the YOON who, as a student under the dictatorship, led a trial of CHUN Doo-hwan.

Korea needs the YOON who, in 2013, was suspended for refusing to stop investigating the meddling of LEE Myung-bak's secret services into the 2012 presidential elections.

Korea needs the YOON who joined the team that prosecuted PARK Geun-hye.

Korea needs the YOON MOON Jae-in handpicked as his Eliot Ness to lead the nation prosecutors and justice reform, and who said no when MOON told him to stop investigating Cho Kuk or Cheong Wa Dae corruption.

Korea needs the YOON whom both the extreme left and the extreme right hate. 

And that YOON would better show up. Five years ago**, Korea needed the MOON who stood for democracy, and ended up with another one who undermined it. This divided nation can't afford another betrayal.

YOON's one mission as a candidate was to kick the ruling party out of Cheong Wa Dae, and that will be done when the transition is over. As a president-elect, his mission will be to gather a team that can inspire voters for the upcoming legislative elections, but also reach across the aisle, to moderates among a hostile assembly. 

Very transparent about his lack of experience as a politician, the man has a reputation to delegate a lot, to let pros do their job, and to take full responsibility. YSY does it. So casting will be key.

Candidate YOON needed the People Power Party to run and AHN Cheol-soo to win, President YOON simply can't succeed with the PPP platform. And clearly, there's no way he can unite the nation if he keeps including LEE Jun-seok's anti-feminist agenda. Ideally, that young lad should be the first one to be shown the door, and AHN Cheol-soo should lead the transition team.

I'm not forgetting another essential role of the President: representing and defending the nation in these very troubled times. And Russia's invasion of Ukraine already impacted the campaign and the region:

• not very good news for a nuclear-free peninsula: another motive for North Korea to keep its weaponry, another motive for South Korea to revive its civil program (MOON Jae-in even had the gall to say the nuclear energy he's been dismantling for years was strategic for the nation's future....)
• not very good news for Yankees-Go-Home cheerleaders: while LEE Jae-myung struggled with his base, YOON Suk-yeol could herald the alliance full throttle. Joe Biden didn't even wait for concession or acceptance speeches to congratulate his preferred (and fellow gaffe-a-day) candidate.
• not very good news for XI Jinping's plans to invade Taiwan. And now he knows bullies can be bullied. XI has yet to congratulate a man who made no mystery about where he stands between the US and China.
• good news for the Korea-Japan dialog: YOON sent clear, positive signals. Let's hope his sense of justice will make him nonetheless stand for the last survivors of Imperial Japan's sexual slavery system, who can't wait for another term.
  

Tensions are likely to exacerbate in the region because of Putin's war, but much of the ambiguity will be gone, which may paradoxically be helpful for some meaningful diplomacy (including why not with North Korea). Interesting to see how existing and new alliances evolve or take shape.

On all fronts, please, more pragmatism and common sense, less ideology (yes, that includes you, Milton Friedman).

Please, more transparency, more accountability.

As usual, I'll be keeping a critical eye on the rulers. With cautious hope.

Seoul Village 2022
Welcome to our Korean Errlines! Follow Seoul Village on Facebook and Twitter, follow me on Instagram.
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* see "AHN Cheol-soo joins YOON Suk-yeol"

** see "A new MOON Jae-in?"  

Seoul Village Season XVI

Happy New Year of the Tiger! Let's see how this young cub grows and roars.

And let's hope the pandemic will spare us another scary sequel...

As we've known from the start (see "Kudos to Korea's 4 Ts, but please no complacency"), we can never let our guard down while riding such roller coasters. This year, as expected, after failing to secure vaccines as early as other wealthy nations, Korea caught up very quickly once they arrived. But a populist decision to ease restrictions at the worst moment (during a surge and before year end festivities - not to mention an unexpected new variant) led to record cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Fortunately, the population started to react and the government to backpedal, so the last couple of weeks have seen a steady decline in the number of cases. Keep safe and carry on.
 

This year, barring more surprises (and we've had our share of those lately), the presidential election could be the most defining moment for a country where the balance of powers has been dramatically altered over the past few years.

LEE Jae-myung is now leading in the polls, with the help of YOON Suk-yeol (definitely not a seasoned politician), and of course MOON Jae-in. Interesting contrast: while LEE remains totally protected from any investigation around the Daejang-dong scandal, the controversial CIO has been spying the phones of campaigning opposition members in a local version of the Watergate...

In a brilliant lame duck move, MOON pardoned PARK Geun-hye, the equivalent to throwing an elephant into the opposition's already unstable porcelain store before the elections: now YOON, who investigated the scandals surrounding the former president and CHOI Soon-sil, will have an even tougher time getting votes from hardcore PARK supporters... 

That LEE Jae-myung could envision the White House in spite of his sulfurous reputation and the ruling party's unpopularity speaks volumes about the opposition's ineptitude. Character-wise, LEE is clearly closer to Donald TRUMP than to KIM Dae-jung - but at least, unlike the former POTUS, he's working very hard to change his image during the campaign.

Beyond securing the elections, MOON is focusing his final months on an intense lobbying to formally end the Korean War, which requires an agreement from other stakeholders. But unless Trump returns to power, the US will demand significant concessions from KIM Jong-un, and that is precisely what MOON wants to avoid.

MOON Jae-in's goal is to remove pressure on the North Korean regime and US troops from the Peninsula. South Korea's recent displays of weaponry and hikes in military budgets are supposed to prove that the nation can defend itself (should of course its leaders actually decide to defend it). Needless to say, both China and Russia would also love to see Yankees go home. 

Soft-power-wise, at least, Seoul can count on its Weapons of Mass Distraction, even if topping 2021 will be very hard for 'k-content' providers.

We'll need some cheering up to cope with real life drama (and at the macro level household debt, inflation, rising rates, overdue bubble bursts across the globe...).

Maybe we don't want that tiger to roar, after all. A cute yawn could be a welcome break.

Please be safe, but remain wild and playful. Have a great, full, and happy 2022.

Seoul Village 2022
Welcome to our Korean Errlines! Follow Seoul Village on Facebook and Twitter, follow me on Instagram.
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Seoul Village Season XV

At long last we managed to escape from 2020.

We're certainly not out of the woods yet: the beast is still striking all over the world, our economies have yet to fully experience 'long covid', and vaccination will take much longer than it should (particularly in Korea, where hubris led to an embarrassing failure to secure doses before the second half of 2021).

Beyond this mother of all crises, here's what I liked and didn't like in 2020, what to expect from 2021.

 

A positive cultural leader, a pro yet fun soft power... the new Korean cool!

Korean culture claimed mainstream recognition in 2020. Of course "Gisaengchung - BONG Joon-ho's existenchial Parasite" scored a perfect grand slam, of course BTS dynamited the charts, but Korean series surfed the wave far beyond the usual Korean dramas, and Foreign media started paying more attention to different beats, from indie music to trot to pansori. I just loved to see Leenalchi succeed at home as well as overseas; that's the Korea I love, and these guys brought priceless freshness and fun when they were most needed.

Respect is what this world needs to better heal, and Korean citizens showed the world how caring for each other and respecting the common good was the way to overcome together. Even Korean American Rep. Andy Kim contributed to this positive image when he humbly cleaned up the US Capitol rotunda after the riots. That's the spirit.

Korea acted as a cultural leader also by innovating in the management and the treatment of the pandemic. The country realized unprecedented breakthroughs in research and development, not just, as usual, at the product level, but at the platform level as well, including in medical fields. 

This is not just about a K-pop fad anymore. Korea proved it could be at the same time super-pro, and super-cool... just like SON Heung-min!

 

The Dark Side of the Moon

2020 should have marked MOON Jae-in's triumph, with the ruling party's landslide victory at the elections, surfing on a brilliant success against the first wave of coronavirus... but his handling of three key issues durably tarnished his legacy.  Actually the very same issues I spotted two years ago (see "Moon Landing - The Cheong Wa Dae Curse"):

- Economy: dogmatism over pragmatism, that's certainly not the way to think in this millennium, particularly when small businesses struggle to survive. This pandemic only constituted a second wave after reforms that already claimed a lot of victims among the weakest ones. And what to say of the real estate mess? The ayatollah in charge of the reforms even wrote a book explaining that the aim of the game was precisely to hurt the little guys, because studies show that when the middle class benefits from the market, they tend to vote more conservative... Simply put, this government deliberately betrayed the very ones he pledged to defend.

- North Korea: now the government doesn't even try to pretend anymore. Protecting the KIM Jong-un regime matters more than defending human rights, defectors who criticize him have become the enemy, and KIM Yo-jong all but dictates the laws (see "KIM Yo-jong Crash Landing On You"). Human Rights Watch and other international bodies have denounced this moral failure, but that's not even the worst that has happened last year.

- Justice: if MOON Jae-in's approval rates are nosediving, that's because his administration has betrayed the spirit of 2016, the democratic values they were supposed to herald, and yes, even the memory of ROH Moo-hyun. Now international media are starting to look at MOON through less rose-colored glasses, and even some hardcore stans find that they went too far. Because when it comes to undermining justice and separation of powers, this administration has out-trumped Donald TRUMP,  CHO Kuk and CHOO Mi-ae have out-williambarred William BARR, and the ruling party has out-GOPed the Republicans. The only person who stands on their path is the incorruptible Eliot NESS MOON Jae-in himself named to lead the prosecution reform. YOON Suk-yeol (YOON Seok-youl) refused to turn a blind eye on the corruption within Cheong Wa Dae and the ruling party, and decided to defend democracy and the Constitution instead of his party. By harassing him and his teams in the most outrageous ways even by trumpian standards, these thugs managed to turn a selfless liberal into a hero even for conservatives. YOON is now leading in the polls for the 2022 presidential election, but like Robert MUELLER, he's more interested in defending the integrity of justice and the soul of the nation than in a political career. 

What does 2021 have in store?

The race for 2022 starts this year, with key mayoral elections in Seoul and Busan. The ruling party should easily keep the control of the capital city, but its leaders lost a lot of credit at the national level (see above) as well as at the local level (between the lack of transparency in the controversial Sejong-daero project and the scandals surrounding PARK Won-soon suicide - see "Mayor Park to ground control"). 

After the moral collapse of the right and left wings, Korea seems ripe for a centrist, uniting figure, but no one emerges there. Because the ruling party betrayed its own values, there's an opportunity at the center right, and OH Se-hoon hasn't given up his grand national ambitions. He proposed AHN Cheol-soo to join the People Power Party and run for Seoul mayor in 2021, which would clear the way for OH in 2022, and for AHN in 2027. To the left, the future could belong to people like GEUM Tae-seop, a moderate who left the ruling party because he felt it lost its moral compass. Yet at this stage, no one is as popular as YOON. 

We will see which welcome pack KIM Jong-un prepared for Joe BIDEN, how long Yoshihide SUGA survives on top (anyway, whoever succeeds him, without or "With Yoshihide Suga, Nippon Kaigi remains in charge of Japan politics"), what kind of pressure China intends to exert on South Korea... 

We will of course keep an eye on the evolution of Seoul's cityscape, the 3rd Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, the impact of Sejong-daero revamping. 

And I might have a surprise or two in the fiction department. Thank you again, dear readers, for downloading my collection of short stories, 'Seoul VillageS', from all over the world. Your kind feedback brightened this dark year.

I wish us all a better year 2021, full of health and love. And if this year of the cow brings us another roaring tiger, let's not lose hope and let's not forget the power of laughter.

Seoul Village 2021
Welcome to our Korean Errlines! Follow Seoul Village on Facebook and Twitter, follow me on Instagram.
Download 'Seoul VillageS', the free ebook.

PS - ICYMI, the manual to 2020:

Parasite:

Stay safe and follow the instructions:

1) #stayhome while your government takes care of things: pic.twitter.com/baLsCGMMYl

— Stephane MOT (@stephanemot) March 20, 2020

2) keep informed by following trustable sources of information: pic.twitter.com/t2M30eMhZp

— Stephane MOT (@stephanemot) March 20, 2020

3) but remember to keep your distances and follow basic hygiene tips: pic.twitter.com/cgkShhrkE2

— Stephane MOT (@stephanemot) March 20, 2020

4) #WashYourHands and clap everyday to thank exhausted #health workhorses: pic.twitter.com/rIWjYg5SO4

— Stephane MOT (@stephanemot) March 20, 2020