Tone Deaf
NEED TO KNOW
Tone Deaf
SOUTH KOREA
Former South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong Hyun attempted to commit suicide while in jail for his role in President Yoon Suk Yeol’s decision to declare martial law and the resulting political crisis earlier this month.
According to the Associated Press, Kim allegedly recommended that Yoon make the declaration and send troops to the National Assembly parliament to prevent lawmakers from voting to overturn the declaration – he faced political challenges in implementing his agenda and thought this way he could overcome them.
In an address to the nation on Dec. 12 – the first since lawmakers overturned his declaration – Yoon claimed that he needed to suspend civil rights – he attempted to shut down the free press, too – because the opposition-controlled legislature was undermining the country’s “liberal democratic order,” wrote National Public Radio. He described the small contingent of troops that he sent to the National Assembly as a “symbolic gesture,” and worried about how lawmakers were “helping North Korea.”
Lawmakers don’t accept his reasoning. On Saturday, the National Assembly voted to impeach the president for the second time in two weeks. This time, they were successful. Thousands gathered outside parliament to cheer.
That’s because Yoon’s political party, the People Power Party, which had previously boycotted an impeachment vote initiated by opposition lawmakers in control of the legislature, this time joined in to oust the president, CNN reported. They have already voted to impeach Yoon’s justice minister and the head of the national police force.
That doesn’t mean the turmoil is over.
After initially saying he would step down if asked, Yoon backtracked last week and said he would fight “to the end,” Reuters reported. Now he believes the courts might help him. But that’s another delusional gambit, say analysts.
“No wonder why people call him a blind swordsman: He thinks he can overcome any challenge through his own bold initiative, no matter how crazy people may think it is,” Kyung Hee University political scientist Ahn Byong-jin told the New York Times. “He will launch a battle for public opinion ahead of a ruling at the Constitutional Court.”
Relying on public opinion is magical thinking, analysts added, pointing to opinion polls showing his support at 11 percent – they were low before the coup attempt because of scandals involving himself and his wife.
Mass protests have also broken out since his declaration and still continue, with angry demonstrators calling for Yoon to resign, an Al Jazeera video explained. In a sign of how condemnation of Yoon has gone viral, many protesters have carried light sticks popular with K-pop music fans, saying they make the events less “scary,” added Reuters.
Even so, the lingering political turmoil is having an impact on the economy, and diplomatic and security relationships, the Washington Post wrote.
Meanwhile, analysts say Yoon miscalculated. He seemed to forget that South Koreans vividly remember the military coups that rocked the country in the 1970s and 1980s. The protests, defiant lawmakers, and other checks and balances that stymied Yoon’s martial law declaration are signs of how many Koreans don’t want that bygone era to return, said South Korean opposition lawmaker Wi Sung-lac, writing in the Economist.
“The country is deeply polarized, but its living memory of military rule strengthens its commitment to democracy,” he wrote. “(Even so), as political polarization deepens globally, South Korea’s experience serves as a reminder that no democracy is immune to such threats.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Bring Them Back
ISRAEL
Thousands of Israelis protested across the country over the weekend, the latest demonstrations calling for a comprehensive deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages still held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip after more than 14 months of war, Agence France-Presse reported.
On Saturday, protesters gathered at key locations, including outside the army headquarters in Tel Aviv, where families of the hostages accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of stalling negotiations for political reasons.
They called on Netanyahu to prioritize bringing the hostages home and accused his far-right coalition of derailing negotiations to pursue settlement expansion in Gaza.
Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is a hostage, declared Netanyahu had “no intent” to bring back her son, and vowed to hold him accountable if he returned in a body bag. Other speakers emphasized that a phased deal – prioritizing women, children, and elderly captives – would abandon those left behind.
Hamas is holding 96 hostages in Gaza, though that number includes 34 that the Israeli military says are dead. It took more than 250 hostages during its attack on southern Israel in October 2023.
Saturday’s demonstrations follow reports that Israel is entering “decisive days” on a potential deal with Hamas, which could include a temporary ceasefire and a phased release of hostages. In return, Israel would withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt, the Times of Israel wrote.
Mediators, including Qatar and Egypt, are reportedly pressing for an agreement, though disputes remain over the number of hostages to be released in the first phase.
US President-elect Donald Trump’s special envoy for hostage affairs, Adam Boehler, is set to visit Israel next week to push for a deal. Meanwhile, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi hosted US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and envoy Brett McGurk to discuss a ceasefire and hostage exchange.
The war, sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack, has killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and more than 44,900 in Gaza, according to Gaza health officials.
Who’s To Judge?
BOLIVIA
Bolivians on Sunday voted in a unique election to choose top judicial officials, a process met with both widespread apathy and criticism from voters who say the system has turned courts into political battlegrounds rather than neutral arbiters of justice, the Associated Press reported.
The elections, which occur every six years, are meant to bring transparency and a democratic process to the judiciary, but many Bolivians remain skeptical, with some voters admitting they will flip a coin or spoil their ballots due to a lack of information about the candidates.
Bolivia remains the only country in the world to hold elections for top judges, with Sunday marking its third judicial vote since the system was introduced in 2009 under former President Evo Morales.
This year’s partial election will fill only four of nine seats on the constitutional court, leaving the remaining five judges in place – a scenario critics say favors allies of President Luis Arce, who has been locked in a bitter power struggle with Morales over control of their ruling party ahead of the 2025 presidential race.
The judicial elections were initially supposed to take place in late 2023, but the constitutional court – stacked with Arce’s allies – postponed the vote, citing political gridlock.
Opposition politicians and Morales’ supporters decried the move as unconstitutional, accusing Arce of extending judicial mandates to maintain influence over the courts.
The controversy has also fueled debates about the effectiveness and legitimacy of electing judges by popular vote, with opponents warning that such systems politicize the judiciary.
Mexico recently adopted a similar judicial election system, in which federal and supreme court judges will be elected by popular vote – with the first vote scheduled next year, according to Reuters.
A delegation from Mexico’s National Electoral Institute is observing the elections, but analysts caution about replicating Bolivia’s approach.
The Crackdown
SWITZERLAND
Switzerland is planning to ban public displays of Nazi symbols, the government announced over the weekend, amid a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents following the start of the October 2023 Israel-Hamas war, Bloomberg reported.
The Federal Council, Switzerland’s executive body, said the new measure will ban the display of Nazi imagery in public, including the swastika and Hitler salute. The measure will also target less overt symbols associated with Nazi ideology, such as the numbers “18” and “88” – these signify Adolf Hitler’s initials and “Heil Hitler” respectively.
Violators will be fined around $224.
There are exceptions to the measure for use in educational, artistic, scientific, and journalistic purposes within freedom of expression limits.
Parliament is expected to vote on the bill in March 2025.
The move comes in response to a surge in antisemitic incidents across the country since the war in the Gaza Strip began more than a year ago. Last year, Intercommunity Coordination Against Antisemitism and Defamation recorded 944 incidents in French-speaking Switzerland, the Guardian added.
In German- and Italian-speaking regions, antisemitic cases increased from 910 in 2022 to 1,130 last year, the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities and the Foundation Against Racism and Antisemitism noted.
Switzerland’s current laws only penalize the active promotion of Nazi ideology, leaving loopholes for public displays.
The proposed changes align the country more closely with other European nations, many of which have had stricter laws against Nazi symbols for decades.
DISCOVERIES
The Norse Code
The Vikings: Tall, blond, merciless warriors and irrepressible explorers, who for centuries roamed the Atlantic and the Mediterranean on their longships, and created settlements in remote outposts such as the Faroe Islands and Iceland and even in the Americas, hundreds of years before Columbus.
It’s been long assumed they hailed genetically from a single group of humans.
But a new study shows they are far more diverse than initially thought, according to Phys.Org.
New genetic research led by Christopher Tillquist, an associate professor at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, studied the distribution of Y-chromosome haplogroups on the Faroe Islands known to have been colonized by the Vikings around the year 900 CE, and compared them with haplogroups in Scandinavia today.
“Here we provide strong evidence that the Faroe Islands were colonized by a diverse group of male settlers from multiple Scandinavian populations,” said Tillquist.
Using novel analysis methods, the geneticists revealed that the haplotype distribution in the Faroe Islands most closely resembled those in Norway and Denmark, but differed from the distribution found in Iceland. The researchers then concluded that a band of Viking men from Scandinavia colonized the Faroe Islands, differing in genetic makeup and thus geographical origin from those who settled in Iceland.
The scientists analyzed the Y-chromosome genotypes of 139 men from the Faroese islands of Borðoy, Streymoy, and Suðuroy, focusing on 12 specific “short tandem repeat”, or STR markers. They then assigned each man to the most likely haplogroup, comparing these genotypes with those of 412 men from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, and Ireland.
Advanced analyses showed that the range of Faroese samples resembled the range of genotypes from broader Scandinavia, whereas the Icelandic genotypes were distinct.
“Scientists have long assumed that the Faroe Islands and Iceland were both settled by similar Norse people,” said Tillquist. “Yet our novel analysis has shown that these islands were founded by men from different gene pools within Scandinavia.”
The study lead author also added that the researchers did not observe “any interbreeding afterward between these two populations, despite their geographic proximity,” indicating that “Viking expansion into the North Atlantic was more complex than previously thought.”