Two-and-a-half months have passed since the last parliamentary election threw South Koreans into a big surprise at the stunning leftist victory. During this period, suspicions of a rigged election persisted in diverse corners, on YouTube screens, social media dialogues and beer tables. The nation is now bracing for possible resurgence of the pandemic after the number of daily infections grew again from single digits to several tens through May and June. So it is about time to focus national ef

North Korea’s demolition of the South-North Liaison Office building in the border town of Kaesong this week was outrageous, but it also showed Pyongyang’s limitations in its actions against Seoul in the rising tensions between both nations. The shapely four-story glass structure was built as a symbol of a new era of detente in the inter-Korean relations supposedly starting with the signing of an agreement of peaceful cooperation by President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim

In the persistent condemnation of Japan’s wartime sex slavery, we have told the descendants of former imperialists to be sorely ashamed of the part of history that they share with Koreans. The recent episode, involving Yoon Mi-hyang, a key activist in the protest movement, brought shame on ourselves. Public complaints stoked when the leader of the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery of Japan became a National Assembly lawmaker on the ruling

South Korea, 12th in the world in terms of GDP ranking, has a defense budget of 50.15 trillion won for 2020, equal to or $42 billion. The nation’s defense spending has grown steadily these years to a level comparable to major states in Europe -- 84 percent of Russia’s, 84 percent of Germany’s and 72 percent of France’s in 2018. If the average increase rate of 6 percent over the past five years continues, South Korea will surpass Japan in defense expenditure by 2026. Supp

North Korean defectors Thae Yong-ho and Ji Seong-ho have got off to an uneasy start as freshmen lawmakers of South Korea, facing opposition from their liberal counterparts for inaccurate presumptions on the health status of Kim Jong-un. They need to perform their new jobs in a productive way if they want to pay back any special favors they enjoy here because of their unique backgrounds at this time, when many other refugees from the North are complaining of general public indifference borderi

On the day after the April 15 election, a lawyer friend of mine living in California sent me an SNS message, quoting French philosopher Joseph de Maistre: “Every nation gets the government it deserves.” Upon the news of the government party’s stunning victory in the latest National Assembly election here, he was telling me that Korean voters were never more reproachable than Americans who had elected Donald Trump in 2016. For the past week, experts wrestled with the question

　Liberty, democracy, peace, independence, progress, unification, justice -- these are words that have traditionally graced the titles of South Korean political parties over the past decades. 　What is regrettable about the Korean political environment today is that the actual performances of the parties here have little to do with the ideals adopted for their titles. After successive restructuring of parties and regrouping of politicians in recent years, the titles of Korea’s political

History shows that even raging wars do not restrain politicians’ fervor for power. The nation is now at war against the new coronavirus. Guns are not being fired, but so many warriors in imperfect protective gear are fighting an invisible but ubiquitous enemy while casualty numbers are updated on a daily basis. Despite the atmosphere of public desperation and panic, politics goes on in full vigor ahead of parliamentary elections. During the Korean War, President Syngman Rhee carried out t

Last week, the Seoul Appellate Court handed down a sentence of 17 years’ imprisonment to Lee Myung-bak, who was president of the South Korea from Feb. 25, 2008, to Feb. 24, 2013. The judge added two more years to the 15-year term the Seoul Central District Court had given him in October 2018. There are some possibilities of a change in his future. The Supreme Court may deliver him a different final verdict – if he chooses to appeal. The Justice Ministry may suspend the execution of

It is a crime story with enough sinister plots that Bong Joon-ho or even Martin Scorsese might be interested in making it into a movie. After several months of investigation, the South Korean prosecution under Prosecutor-General Yoon Seok-yul indicted 13 people, including current and former senior secretaries of President Moon Jae-in, for abuse of power and violating the election law in relation to the Ulsan mayoral election in 2018. Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae involved herself in the affair

Battles are underway on multiple fronts ahead of the general election this spring. Of course, noisiest are the demonstrations at Gwanghwamun and those in Seocho-dong, Seoul, by anti- and pro-government groups alike, though they are still abstaining from violence. Amazing yet saddening is the vehement contest between the two top authorities of law enforcement. When President Moon Jae-in appointed Choo Mi-ae as justice minister, the new minister wasted little time before transferring senior a

South Korea is a safe place to live. Walking home alone through a back alley at night, one does not have to be too scared, although there’s the chance of confronting a drunkard -- who usually is harmless, however. In daytime, the incidence of pickpocketing or taxi robbery has been remarkably reduced compared with a few decades ago. The ubiquitous CCTV in all parts of the country may have discouraged petty criminals from grabbing money directly but pushed them toward more sophisticated mean

South Korea’s political leaders are neither too old nor too young. Out of some 18 people so far mentioned in the media as presidential aspirants, 10 are in their 60s, seven are in the 50s and the oldest, Sohn Hak-kyu of the Bareunmirae Party, is 71. Lee Hae-chan of the ruling Democratic Party, not a serious contender, is 67 years old.Sorry to say this, but the news of Sanna Marin, 34, being installed as the new prime minister of Finland made the power contestants here, who are almost twice

Passing the halfway point in his five-year tenure, President Moon Jae-in’s approval rate hovers just above the 40 percent mark, half the level immediately after his election in May 2017. Woes grow among manufacturers, traders and consumers, security threats loom large and political groups are sharpening hostility. Amid rising discontent, the energy denuclearization policy has emerged as a top destabilizing issue.University students at nuclear science departments see no future in their chos

This article is based on recent writings by three respectable South Koreans on relations between Korea and Japan that I happened to read last week. The writers were Hwang Kyung-choon, former chief correspondent in Seoul for the Associated Press; Im Jong-kun, former president of the Seoul Kyungje business daily; and poet/essayist Lee Seung-shin, daughter of the late Sohn Ho-yeon, well known in Japan for her devotion to “tanka” short poems.“The ardent wish that I have is nation a

Concerns are growing here over the future of the seven-decade-old military alliance between the Republic of Korea and the United States that is apparently weakening. Signs causing such concerns are abundant.Annual joint exercises of the allied forces, some involving trans-Pacific deployment of troops from the continental US to any part of the Korean Peninsula, have been reduced in scale and duration or outright cancelled. US President Trump called them “provocative” and “waste

On a tour of Mokpo and islands off the southwestern port last week, I paid a visit to the Kim Dae-jung Nobel Peace Prize Memorial located in Samhakdo islet. Most impressive there was a picture on the wall showing the former president standing side by side with four of his predecessors during a reception in the Blue House. Roh Tae-woo, Choi Kyu-hah, Kim Dae-jung, Chun Doo-hwan and Kim Young-sam were posing comfortably accompanied by their wives. The photograph was taken right after Kim Dae-jung&r

The fall of President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating down to the 40 percent mark made headlines last week. The Korea Gallup figure was the lowest since the May 2017 election, which he won with 41 percent support in a five-way race with two conservative contenders, one centrist and one progressive. The rating had been over 60 percent after the dramatic summit talks with North Korean chief Kim Jong-un in the border village of Panmunjom and the North’s capital of Pyongyang last year. A s

The air over the Republic of Korea remained clear through this summer, thanks to the southeasterly winds blowing from the Pacific Ocean. As the cooler season approaches, we are again worried about seeing gray skies full of fine dust from China -- in addition to the political, economic and security problems that are already affecting the nation and seem unlikely to go away anytime soon. Externally, relations between Seoul and Tokyo have sunk to their worst level since normalization of ties in 196

A star is born, one too bright to behold without wondering how long it could burn. Yoon Seok-yeol, South Korea’s new prosecutor-general, has already led investigations into “past evils” for two years as head of the Seoul Prosecutors’ Office amid claims that President Moon Jae-in was carrying out a political vendetta. Until the meteoric rise of his career, one rarely seen in the nation’s history of law enforcement, he had moved from one remote provincial prosecutors&