K-Bubbles
NEED TO KNOW
K-Bubbles
SOUTH KOREA
The Seoul Detention Center usually holds murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and even former high-ranking government officials and captains of industry in its small cells, laden with a thick blanket for the floor and a toilet in open view.
Now it holds its first sitting president.
“We have a diverse crowd of people,” Lim Wanseob, spokesman for the prison, told the Washington Post.
How it came to add to that diversity was a moment worthy of a K-drama.
Last week, the country saw a dramatic standoff with more than 3,700 officers surrounding the presidential residence and scaling the walls to detain President Yoon Suk Yeol on charges of insurrection, stemming from his attempt to impose martial law in December. Yoon’s gambit failed after opposition lawmakers defied the military, blocking parliament and entering the chamber to vote it down a few hours later.
Since that attempted coup, he has been impeached – but defied being questioned or detained, calling those moves “illegal.” He has taken refuge in the presidential residence in the capital, now reinforced with barbed wire, buses, and hundreds of his supporters to block police.
On Jan. 3, he failed to appear for questioning by the investigators from the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO), which had obtained a warrant for his arrest. That led to an hours-long standoff between police and the president’s guard.
He also failed to appear at the Constitutional Court last week, which is conducting hearings on his appeal of the impeachment charges. The proceedings are continuing without him.
Then last week, he backed down and allowed himself to be detained, saying he wanted to prevent any violence between his supporters and the presidential guard and police.
After his arrest, he refused to cooperate with investigators attempting to question him late last week, according to Yonhap, a South Korean news agency. Instead, his defense team filed a complaint against the police investigation chief, the head of the CIO, and others. He is accusing them of illegally entering the presidential residence and illegally detaining the president, arguing that this constitutes insurrection and other charges.
In this political and legal tangle, some wonder what could possibly come next.
In the short term, if an indictment is upheld against Yoon, a former prosecutor himself, South Korea will see a criminal trial that could lead to life in prison – or even the death penalty – for Yoon.
In the medium term, the constitutional court will decide by mid-June if the impeachment is valid. If it does, South Korea will have to hold new elections within two months.
Meanwhile, no one wants to consider a scenario in which Yoon is convicted of insurrection but not impeached, analysts say.
Regardless, all this means that South Korea, the fourth-largest economy in Asia and a key strategic ally of the West, could be in limbo for the next six months.
Already, the impact is being felt in the country.
The standoff between Yoon and the opposition has further polarized the country, wrote Le Monde. His supporters now say he’s right to be defiant and protest with signs saying “stop the steal,” referring to the country’s 2024 parliamentary election, which gave the opposition a majority. His opponents want him arrested. For weeks, both have taken to the streets in protests.
Though a majority of South Koreans still support Yoon’s impeachment, their numbers have declined by 11 percent to 64 percent in a month, the Strait Times wrote. About one-third of the polled respondents said he should be reinstated.
Meanwhile, the turmoil is impacting the country’s sluggish economy, too. The South Korean won has plunged to its lowest level against the US dollar in almost 16 years and the stock market has tumbled. The depreciation of the won is expected to push inflation higher, and weaken consumer confidence – which already dipped in December – and potentially discourage foreign investment.
As the Economist noted, following the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye in 2017, foreign direct investment fell by nearly 40 percent immediately afterward.
Now, even if the courts convict Yoon, that won’t stop the devastating polarization of one of Asia’s most model democracies that is causing so much turmoil on the streets and a threat to its hard-won democracy, analysts say.
“In recent political cycles, revenge against opponents has become a major feature of South Korean politics,” wrote Sun Ryung-park and Yves Tiberghien of the University of British Columbia, adding that part of the problem is an overly strong executive. “This phenomenon, combined with the discontent that followed the Covid-19 pandemic and rising inequality, has made political polarization particularly toxic. Each side is locked in a bubble on social media and sees the other as an existential threat.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Blaming the World
CHINA
China on Monday executed two men who committed deadly attacks that killed dozens of people in November, incidents that led to concerns over an increase in “revenge on society crimes,” the Associated Press reported.
One of those executed was Xu Jiajin, who killed eight people and injured 17 in a stabbing spree at his vocational school in the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi. According to the police, the 21-year-old student was frustrated with his poor academic performance and the low compensation of his internship, CBS News reported.
Xu’s attack came less than a week after another by Fan Weiqu, 62, who deliberately drove his car into a crowd outside a sports stadium in Zhuhai in southern China, killing at least 35 people, Al Jazeera reported. The man – executed on Monday – was upset over his divorce settlement, said the police.
Fan’s attack is deemed the deadliest in more than a decade, with officials and observers saying it was part of a trend of so-called “revenge on society crimes”: These occur when individuals feel treated unjustly by society and take their frustrations out on civilians, Al Jazeera wrote.
In 2024, officials said there were numerous incidents that fell into this category. For example, in October, a knife attack at a school in Beijing injured five people, while another stabbing incident in a Shanghai supermarket killed three. In July, a car deliberately hit pedestrians in the central city of Changsha and killed eight.
In an attempt to address the public outrage over these incidents, Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered local governments to work to prevent future such social revenge crimes, the Associated Press reported separately.
Meanwhile, as many Chinese netizens have expressed shock, fear, and concern over the incidents, the BBC reported, they have also expressed outrage over the government’s censorship of the posts on them.
Peace in Pieces
COLOMBIA
More than 80 people were killed in attacks by the National Liberation Army (ELN) in northeastern Colombia over the weekend, an offensive that came after the government suspended peace talks with the rebels, accusing them of war crimes, Al Jazeera reported.
The attacks began late last week in the Catatumbo region with the ELN targeting a splinter group of the now-defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia–People’s Army (FARC), which was disarmed after a peace agreement in 2016.
The attacks happened in several towns near the Colombian border with Venezuela. Among the victims are community leader Carmelo Guerrero and seven people who wanted to sign a peace deal, the Associated Press reported. Many of the victims were civilians caught in the crossfire between the two rebel groups.
Meanwhile, thousands of people have been displaced by the fighting even as the Colombian military scrambled to evacuate residents on Sunday, the AP wrote. The army said it sent more than 5,000 troops to the region to “reinforce security.”
The ELN and the former FARC rebels have been fighting over control of a strategic border region that has coca plantations.
The ELN has accused ex-FARC rebels of a number of killings in the area and warned the rebels that if they continued attacking the population, there would be an armed confrontation.
The deadly attack comes after the Colombian government suspended peace talks with the ELN for the second time in less than a year on Friday.
The ELN and the administration of President Gustavo Petro have tried to negotiate a peace deal five times, but talks continue to break down over a demand by the ELN to be recognized as a political organization.
Petro, who has been pushing a policy of “total peace” in the South American country, called off the recent negotiations with the ELN, saying “the ELN has no will for peace.”
Vested Interests
MYANMAR
Myanmar’s military and one of the country’s main ethnic rebel groups signed a ceasefire deal to halt hostilities in the country’s northeast, an agreement that highlights China’s push to stabilize its border regions and safeguard its investments after the breakdown of a previous truce, Reuters reported.
The deal, which takes effect this week, came after Chinese-mediated talks between the junta and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) in the southwestern city of Kunming, China over the weekend.
Chinese officials confirmed the deal Monday, saying that Beijing will provide peace-building support.
The MNDAA is one of the many rebel groups fighting for autonomy in Myanmar. It is also part of the Three Brotherhood Alliance which includes the Ta’ang National Liberation Army and Arakan Army.
The alliance launched a major offensive against the military junta in October 2023 near the border with China, seizing strategic territory and pushing toward the central city of Mandalay. The MNDAA had also taken control of a key military base near the border in July.
The new agreement comes a year after a January 2024 ceasefire – also brokered by China –collapsed after five months amid accusations of violations by the junta.
China previously responded by temporarily closing border crossings and cutting off electricity to rebel-controlled areas, the Associated Press added.
Myanmar’s army has been grappling with armed unrest since it ousted the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a February 2021 coup.
Analysts said Beijing’s involvement highlights its concerns about instability near its 2,000-kilometer border.
China has major geopolitical and economic interests in the Southeast Asian country, with observers noting that the violence would jeopardize its investments and cross-border trade.
DISCOVERIES
A Map of Meaning
Archeologists recently uncovered what could be the world’s oldest three-dimensional map at a French cave, dating to the Paleolithic era.
Found in the Ségognole 3 rock shelter south of Paris, the map, estimated to be 13,000 years old, was etched into quartzitic sandstone and offers a miniature representation of the surrounding landscape, blending geology, hydrology, and even mythological symbolism, the researchers wrote in their study.
The discovery sheds light on how Paleolithic humans understood and manipulated their environment: The sandstone showed artistic engravings of horses and female forms, as well as depictions of natural water flows and geomorphological patterns.
“What we’ve described is not a map as we understand it today – with distances, directions, and travel times – but rather a three-dimensional miniature depicting the functioning of a landscape, with runoff from highlands into streams and rivers, the convergence of valleys, and the downstream formation of lakes and swamps,” explained Anthony Milnes, a geologist from the University of Adelaide in Australia and study co-author, in a statement.
Milnes and his colleague, Medard Thiry, suggested that the prehistoric people shaped the sandstone to promote specific rainwater flow paths, which may have served both practical and symbolic purposes.
The study also highlights how the shelter’s sculpted sandstone mirrors the female form, with water infiltrating fractures and outflowing at the base of a pelvic triangle, according to Popular Science.
“The fittings probably have a much deeper, mythical meaning, related to water,” said Thiry. “The two hydraulic installations … are two to three meters from each other and are sure to relay a profound meaning of the conception of life and nature, which will never be accessible to us.”
The authors believe the ancient map challenges earlier notions about prehistoric mapping, adding that it highlights the ingenuity of early humans in blending functional and symbolic designs into their environment.
“These are exceptional findings and clearly show the mental capacity, imagination, and engineering capability of our distant ancestors,” added Milnes.