South Korea
The Burning Sun scandal that torched South Korea’s elites
A scandal that began with allegations that some of South Korea’s biggest male K-pop stars had drugged and raped women (The K-Pop sex and drugs scandal sweeping South Korea)…
Just why is the North Korean status quo so persistent?
Last month in The Interpreter, I argued that inter-Korean status quo is deeply persistent. US President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in have tried all sorts of…
The persistent status quo with North Korea
It is a commonplace in media treatments of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) to view the previous two years as remarkable. This is often premised on…
South Korea: has a female leader’s fall cost women candidates?
Do scandals change how the public views candidates? Take the example of South Korea. In the past three years, the country saw a sitting president, Park Geun-Hye, and her…
The limits of Moon Jae‑in’s shuttle diplomacy
Six weeks after the Hanoi summit, South Korean President Moon Jae-in is about to visit Washington in an effort to keep up the dialogue between the United States and North Korea.
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As South Korea and Japan pick a fight, don’t expect Trump to care
Relations between South Korea and Japan are spiralling downward – again. This is a depressingly regular event. Every few years, these neighbours slide into a serious spat, driven…
The K-Pop sex and drugs scandal sweeping South Korea
What started as a police investigation into a South Korean nightclub has since erupted into a national scandal, sweeping aside in the public mind at least all the international…
Women of influence in South Korea
Today is International Women’s Day. In South Korea, women have owned the past year, regularly uniting in their tens of thousands to rally in the streets against gendered violence…
Kim and Trump, again: North Korea’s drives the wedge
Despite inflated pre-summit expectations that US President Donald Trump and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un would sign a deal involving at least some sanctions relief, liaison…
The legacy of nationalism in Korea
South Korea has a national holiday on the first day of March to commemorate the start of the 1919 March First Movement. A century later, the legacy of the movement still resonates…