In what is described as a close race, Yoon Seok-Yeol, is now the president-elect of South Korea.
This election also brings with it an air of gravity:
Fever dream or national TV? I wrote a thing about South Korea’s wild election graphics https://t.co/XcCnlp0tha
— Kevin Jiang (@crudelykevin) March 9, 2022
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While much of their coverage included more typical updates and analysis, surreal animated clips involving candidates were spliced between.
— Kevin Jiang (@crudelykevin) March 9, 2022
Like this (mildly terrifying) faceless bear the size of a building showing that rocket what-for.https://t.co/SdIoSnQa5C pic.twitter.com/3TC9Q6UCJw
In all seriousness, the animated clips might come off as silly to Westerners but Yoon cannot afford to be silly himself.
Running on an anti-corruption campaign and a stiffer stance against the country that once promised to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire", Yoon is hardly the sort to smile at a photo op in the middle of a war zone the way a certain coward who ran from truckers did.
But I digress .. :
Conservative People Power Party candidate Yoon Suk-yeol, a former prosecutor-general who had never run for office before, won in the closest election in decades after a bruising campaign marred by scandals and gaffes.
The close result, the fact the rival Democratic Party will still control the one-house National Assembly, and his vow to investigate the outgoing administration means Yoon will be hard-pressed to move beyond policy failures and political battles, analysts said.
"After a divided electorate has produced a divided government, Seoul may struggle to pursue policies of reform rather than politics of retribution," said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.
Yoon, 61, is also expected to take a harder line on North Korea though he says he is open to talks while boosting deterrence and “resetting” ties with China.
At the centre of the voter frustration that propelled Yoon to victory are soaring housing prices and growing inequality.
Polls have shown for months that South Koreans wanted change, as voters who helped centre-left incumbent Moon Jae-in win in 2017 grew frustrated with his administration's failure to curb runaway home prices and narrow economic divides.
South Korea's economy is forecast to expand 3% this year, the slowest in five years, while one in four young South Koreans are effectively jobless.
(Sidebar: did you hear that, snowflakes? You won't get jobs in this country.)
A fast-aging society is a growing threat to public finances when small businesses and families are demanding more government subsidies to cope with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Well, you probably shouldn't have locked down the country then.
Food for thought:
Whether Moon Jae-in's electoral shenanigans & secret dealings with Pyongyang should be investigated fully, whether they should be punished, & how, are separate questions.
— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) March 10, 2022
I'm ambivalent about punishment. But transparency, truth, & some form of accountability are non-negotiable.
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A provision patterned on Section 321 has since found its way into Section 3 of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which is a glorious thing. C4ADS has done characteristically excellent work investigating the supply chains for Uygur forced labor. Just as Uygur human rights activists have learned legal and legislative lessons from North Korean human rights activists, North Korean human rights activists can learn from how Uygur human rights activists trace supply chains to Uygur forced labor. Both can learn to combine their research with CBP’s petition process at 19 C.F.R. § 12.42, to effectively blacklist Chinese manufacturers that are known to use North Korean labor, and to ask CBP to apply enhanced NKSPEA 205 inspections to seafood and textiles from Dandong, except for those that have allowed transparent inspection of their work forces. The new law is likely to target cotton textiles made with Uygur slave labor. It would not surprise me in the least if the same Chinese sweatshops that use enslaved North Koreans also use cotton grown by enslaved Uygurs.
Let's hope that Yoon does something about this.
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