Fixing the Cracks: South Koreans Go to the Polls Hoping to Move On
NEED TO KNOW
Fixing the Cracks: South Koreans Go to the Polls Hoping to Move On
SOUTH KOREA
On Tuesday, South Koreans are voting to choose their next president. And after the ballots are counted, many hope that six months of rolling turmoil will come to an end, and that sanity will return to the country.
But will it? Analysts are not so sure.
The problem, some say, is that while the election may usher in political stability in the government, it won’t end the deep polarization of society that some believe led South Korea to six months of political chaos in the first place.
“South Korea’s political polarization is deep and can be traced to a combination of historical and institutional factors, such as decades of authoritarian rule, rapid democratization and economic changes…,” Min Seong-jae of Pace University in New York told Deutsche Welle. “But currently, the level of polarization seems to be the worst ever…That makes the future look tense and divided – not quite ‘grim,’ but definitely rocky.”
Tuesday’s snap election was called after President Yoon Suk Yeol of the conservative People Power Party (PPP) was officially removed from power after the Constitutional Court upheld his impeachment on April 4 for violating the constitution. Yoon shocked the country in early December when he declared martial law for the first time in almost four decades, claiming that the opposition-controlled parliament was threatening the country’s security. The declaration of martial law was overturned a few hours later by lawmakers.
Since then, the country has seen Yoon’s impeachment, arrest, and indictment on insurrection charges, as well as the impeachment of the acting president who replaced him. It has witnessed months of protests by Yoon supporters, some of whom have alleged election fraud in the last election, and his opponents. It has been led by four presidents in the past six months.
The political instability in the past six months has battered consumer and business confidence, pushing Asia’s fourth-largest economy to contract in the first quarter just as US President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on its imports, which would negatively impact future growth, wrote Bloomberg.
Now, the election “offers to be a potential turning point that either brings stability to the political realm and markets after months of chaos or deepens painful divisions within the nation,” it added.
Currently, Lee Jae-myung of the main opposition party, the center-left Democratic Party, has a wide lead in the presidential race, recent polls show.
Lee narrowly lost to Yoon in 2022, but enjoyed a majority in parliament that he used to stall Yoon’s policy initiatives. He has also been at the forefront of the effort to oust Yoon and see him impeached.
Lee, meanwhile, is fighting bribery and other charges mostly linked to a $1 billion property development scandal that had threatened to disqualify him from the elections. However, the courts agreed to push back hearings in the trials until after the vote. He denies all charges.
He was also recently acquitted of election law violation charges by an appeals court.
Coming in a distant second is Kim Moon-soo of the PPP, which has been tarnished by Yoon’s martial law declaration. Kim opposed Yoon’s impeachment even though members of his party supported it and also helped defeat the martial law attempt by the former president. The party, meanwhile, has had serious internal squabbles that spilled into public view, disappointing its supporters.
“The PPP is just a mess, they are self-destructing,” Lee Jung-ja, a 52-year-old voter, told the Guardian. “Even if they unite, it still won’t be enough. All they’re doing is fighting with each other.”
The spoiler for conservatives is Lee Jun-seok, a former PPP leader, who is running as the candidate of the recently formed, right-wing Reform Party. He is currently polling in third place.
Meanwhile, despite the dizzying political crises of the past six months, the election is still mainly focused on kitchen-table issues, such as addressing record-high youth unemployment, alleviating a housing and cost-of-living crisis, and reversing dismal economic growth.
Commentators say that it is time for South Koreans to unite and focus on these issues and others instead of “partisan reflexes” because the country has reached “an inflection point.”
“The next president will inherit more than a fractured government,” wrote the Korea Herald. “They will inherit the responsibility to restore institutional trust, re-anchor the economy, and navigate an increasingly volatile global order. The task ahead is formidable.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Polish Populist Wins Presidential Vote, Prompting Concerns Over Ukraine Aid
POLAND
Conservative historian Karol Nawrocki narrowly won Poland’s presidential runoff Sunday in a victory that has raised concerns about the country’s future relations with the European Union, support for Ukraine, and democratic governance, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The final tally showed Nawrocki defeating his pro-EU rival, Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, with 50.89 percent of the vote. The closely watched election also marked Poland’s highest voter turnout since the fall of communism in 1989.
Nawrocki was backed by the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party. His win represents a symbolic triumph for the populist right and is expected to complicate Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s reform agenda.
Tusk’s center-left coalition, which came to power in 2023, has been working to reverse PiS-era laws, such as restrictions on abortion and judicial appointments, and to repair ties with Brussels.
Although largely ceremonial, the Polish presidency carries veto power over legislation and can refer laws to the constitutional court.
Outgoing President Andrzej Duda, also a PiS ally, repeatedly used those powers to block government initiatives. Nawrocki has signaled that he will follow suit, particularly on EU-related reforms, according to CNBC.
The incoming president has also positioned himself as a staunch nationalist, adopting a more critical stance toward Kyiv and accusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of disrespecting Poland.
While Nawrocki says he is committed to helping Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion, he has pledged to oppose Kyiv’s NATO membership bid and the deployment of Polish troops in support of Ukraine’s war effort.
Nawrocki’s ties to US President Donald Trump were central to his campaign. He met with Trump in the Oval Office last month and received an endorsement from US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during the first Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in Poland.
His victory breaks a recent trend of liberal wins across Europe and beyond, including in Canada, Germany, and Romania, where voters opted for more centrist candidates over populists.
Analysts said that Nawrocki’s presidency could strain relations with the EU and slow Warsaw’s alignment with Brussels, and instead push Poland to prioritize closer bilateral ties with Washington.
Strong ties with the US remain popular in Poland, especially amid heightened fears of Russian aggression in neighboring Ukraine.
Poland currently spends more than 4 percent of its gross domestic product on defense – more than any other NATO member – and has expanded its military in line with Trump’s demands for greater European contributions to the alliance.
Bangladesh Starts Trial of Ousted Prime Minister
BANGLADESH
A special tribunal in Bangladesh began trying ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for crimes against humanity in connection with her harsh crackdown on protests last summer, demonstrations that killed hundreds of students and eventually forced her to flee the country, Al Jazeera reported.
Prosecutors from the Dhaka-based International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) said at the opening of the trial on Sunday that Hasina, who is being tried in absentia, orchestrated a “systematic attack” to try to stop the protests.
“The accused unleashed all law enforcement agencies and her armed party members to crush the uprising,” said chief prosecutor Mohammad Tajul Islam. He charged Hasina and two other officials with “abetment, incitement, complicity, facilitation, conspiracy, and failure to prevent mass murder” during the student-led mass demonstrations that took place last summer.
According to the United Nations, nearly 1,400 Bangladeshis were killed between July and August during Hasina’s brutal crackdown on the protests. She has been charged with crimes against humanity over these killings.
Hasina has denied the charges as politically motivated and is currently in self-imposed exile in neighboring India, where she fled last August after the protests ended her 15-year rule.
The ICT is also prosecuting former senior figures connected to Hasina’s ousted government and her now-banned Awami League party, Channel News Asia noted.
Hasina had set up the ICT in 2009 to investigate crimes connected to Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971. The tribunal tried politicians, especially from the Jamaat-e-Islami party, for crimes related to the nine-month war against Pakistan, the Associated Press wrote. However, it also handed down death sentences to several of Hasina’s rivals and became seen as a means for the former leader to get rid of her opponents.
In a separate proceeding on Sunday, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court restored the registration of the Jamaat-e-Islami, allowing it to run in the elections. Hasina had previously banned the party.
Sweden to End Foreign Adoptions After Investigation Exposes Abuses
SWEDEN
A Swedish commission on Monday called for a ban on international adoptions after an inquiry exposed a series of abuses and fraud dating back decades, including the abduction and trafficking of children, Deutsche Welle reported.
The investigation started in 2021 following a report by Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, that shed light on serious problems in the country’s international adoption system and found cases of “stolen children” from countries such as South Korea, China, Sri Lanka, and Chile, according to Euronews.
The probe showed “significant and systemic gaps” in the paperwork of international adoptions, including fake records about birth dates, parentage, and adoption circumstances. It revealed that thousands of children were adopted in Sweden without parental consent, after being falsely declared dead or put up for adoption by individuals who were not their legal guardians.
Anna Singer, the head of the Swedish Adoption Commission, said that other times parents agreed to the adoption without fully understanding the implications of it.
Investigators confirmed irregularities in every decade from the 1970s to the 2000s, and Singer said the government had been aware of these problems “very early on.”
Besides the ban, the commission recommends that the government acknowledge the violations of human rights that have happened, formally apologize to the people involved, and introduce long-term support for adoptees and their families.
Cases where children have been illegally taken away from their parents and sent to Western countries to supply the demand for adopted children have been exposed in many countries, particularly South Korea, which has sent about 200,000 children to the West in the past 60 years, the Associated Press noted.
Among the countries that are closing or reviewing their international adoption programs because of ethical concerns are the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and the Belgian region of Flanders.
DISCOVERIES
What Lies Beneath
In January, an iceberg the size of Chicago broke off from one of the vast floating glaciers attached to the Antarctic Peninsula, exposing a portion of the seafloor that had never been seen before.
Excited by the opportunity, a team of researchers on board the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel R/V Falkor (too) working in the Bellingshausen Sea off Antarctica quickly shifted gears and rushed to the site to explore the geology and biology of the newly exposed depths of up to 4,000 feet below sea level.
They were stunned by what they found.
“We didn’t expect to find such a beautiful, thriving ecosystem,” said expedition co-chief Patricia Esquete in a statement. “Based on the size of the animals, the communities we observed have been there for decades, maybe even hundreds of years.”
Little is known about what lies beneath Antarctica’s floating ice shelves, researchers say. In 2021, British Antarctic Survey researchers first reported signs of bottom-dwelling life beneath the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf in the Southern Weddell Sea.
After the iceberg, known as A-84 and with an area of 209 square miles, broke off, the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s remotely operated vehicle, ROV SuBastian, was sent to the ocean floor for eight days. It exposed flourishing ecosystems: Researchers identified large corals and sponges supporting a range of marine life, like icefish, giant sea spiders, and octopus.
Because of the significant biomass and biodiversity of the ecosystem observed, the team believes they have discovered new species as well.
Deep-sea ecosystems generally receive nutrients from the surface that slowly reach the seafloor, but these Antarctic ecosystems have been buried by around 500 feet of ice for centuries and received nothing from the surface. However, ocean currents also move nutrients, and researchers believe these currents may have played a role in sustaining life beneath the ice, even if scientists don’t exactly understand how.
The discovery of the rich biodiversity offers new insights into how ecosystems function beneath floating sections of the Antarctic ice sheet. The newly exposed Antarctic seafloor also allowed researchers to gather critical data on the past behavior of the larger Antarctic ice sheet, which has been shrinking and losing mass over the last few decades due to climate change.
“The ice loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet is a major contributor to sea level rise worldwide,” said expedition co-chief Sasha Montelli in the statement. “Our work is critical for providing longer-term context of these recent changes, improving our ability to make projections of future change – projections that can inform actionable policies. We will undoubtedly make new discoveries as we continue to analyze this vital data.”