Transparent coup d'etat attempt rumored to happen for months. The only option when the mouse is cornered. Approval rating in the <10% range, Japan whispering in his ear and pulling the puppet strings, crazy selfish wife abusing state resources, it is almost comically predictable if not for how serious it is. North Korea is always the convenient excuse... only hope Westerners don't get fooled by the rhetoric. Guy digging his own grave, only hope Koreans get off their complacent asses and take this guy down quickly. World cannot afford more instability.
>Japan whispering in his ear and pulling the puppet strings
I'm curious if you have some sources for this? I'm not that familiar with SK politics and I'm obviously biased since almost all info about SK I either get from English/Japanese sources.
Afaik he was pretty dovish towards Japan during his election, which goes against the decades long tradition of tit-for-tat during election between SK&Japan since "looking tough to the neighbor" win votes. I wasn't aware of any "Japan whispering in his ear" level embezzlement. He seems just more pro US, closer ties with Japan rather than "balance things between China/US-JP"
The conservatives tend to blame the liberals for being North Korean sympathizers. The liberals tend to blame the conservatives for being Japanese sellouts. They use these angles to inflame public opinion against the other party and distract from other issues.
I’d say anyone seriously thinking Japan has bought out the conservatives is just as foolish as someone that seriously thinks the liberals are North Korean spies.
That said, there is a contingent of South Koreans that genuinely consider Japan a mortal military threat just biding their time and waiting to attack Korea. And that North Korea is just a merely misguided misunderstood brother that is absolutely harmless despite their sabre rattling.
> The Republic of Korea (South Korea) is a liberal democracy that respects media freedom and pluralism. However, tradition and business interests often prevent journalists from fulfilling their role as watchdogs, and populist political tendencies stoke hatred of journalists.
When Hwang Woo-Suk was lying about cloning humans, his connections in the government allowed him to suppress the story by putting pressure on the network to cancel the second episode of "Producer's Note" that would have aired the rest of the allegations.
When the MV Sewol capsized a couple miles off the coast with 300 children actively drowning, the corporate control of the news channels allowed them to suppress the truth of the event, like how there was zero attempts at any rescue, and near zero survivors of passengers. Instead, the news spent a day reporting that all 300ish students had been rescued.
South Korea is controlled by just a few Chaebols and that includes its news media. The president during the MV Sewol incident for example was ousted at least partially due to the kinds of corruption and non-democratic influences that were uncovered after the sinking.
When most media is produced, financed, owned, operated etc by a couple hegemons with aligning goals, I don't care what economic system you operate under, you do not have "free" media.
Generally free + outlets like the NYTimes are based in Seoul.
Taiwan is more free than Korea but due its political predicament, it is not a candidate for the bureaus.
As for Japan, after a series of controversial bills were passed under Abe, their ranking dropped like a rock over the past decade and it is getting worse with so-called "press clubs" that are reluctant to criticise the govt due to how access is granted.
Seems to be something that kind of happens when someone in Korea rises to the top of political power. Remember the former president that was pretty much ousted for corruption a few years back? She had a confidant that would pull her strings.
Western politicians might pretend to take it at face value, as it's useful to fuel the foreign threat narratives, and help elites use similar excuses here too.
There’s not usually much space between consensus Western opinion (when there is one) and AP editorial stance, so if they think he’s a loon, it’s safe to assume most in the West will too. “Unsympathetic towards” does not mean “biased against”
His point was that Westerners aren't necessarily going to be fooled, with the example of the AP (Western) viewing his declaration of martial law unsympathetically.
I don't think the AP is the sector of the West the OP is worried might turn sympathetic towards him if he makes the right noises and does outreach to the right people.
Unclear if it’s better if they do or they don’t. On one hand it’s clearly against the interests of the country to support him, on the other hand democracies absolutely don’t want the military taking any domestic political role
When someone declares martial law, that means that they intend to use the military to enforce their rule. At that point the military has been told to take a domestic political role - it wasn't the military's choice.
Of course, the military could refuse. In the abstract, I think that might be ideal. (I don't know enough to say whether that would be ideal in this situation.)
> democracies absolutely don’t want the military taking any domestic political role
If they're actively fighting against the democratic principles (like enforcing martial law to distract from something rather than when really necessary) then yeah, I think we'd want them to take them down if they don't leave by themselves.
"Hierarchical work culture" is like the go-to blanket excuse to explain anything in East Asia that Americans don't like or think is bad.
If you've ever spent a few years at any decent-sized white collar company in the US (tech, finance, consulting) you know it's the same in the west. Especially FAANGs. All these mid-level engineers are just yes-men trying to suck up to their VPs to get in the next promo cycle. The western companies just have better marketing about "flat hierarchies" but it's all PR talk and lip service. Some PM or SVP drops some mandate and no one ever has the balls to question it, they just grumble and do it.
The saddest part is that these tech bros actually believe the marketing they are fed about their company cultures, and it breeds this shallow superiority complex and so whenever something negative about Asian companies comes up, you get comments like this citing this 'go-to' rationale about hierarchy.
It's actually kind of sad these guys don't have the self-awareness to critically examine what they are told vs. what reality is.
I've spent many years at large companies including FAANGs. I've had no problems or issues pushing back on unreasonable deadlines or being the bearer of bad news about vulns, bugs, or systemic flaws. I've also seen plenty of engineers do the same.
Yeah. People need to be more aware of who is funding what they’re reading.
Quanta naturally covers research that is funded by Simons Foundation. There have actually been many big news that Quanta has not covered or pretended didn’t exist when writing other articles. It’s a PR arm of Simons Foundation.
Also the writers are decent, but all of the scientific-to-lay explanations and analogies are coming from the researchers, if that wasn’t obvious. They are just paraphrasing since they can’t just write blocks of verbatim quotes or such.
Also yeah, the writers get access to researchers as a part of the funding.
