Korea Kontext Search

A bit deeper than your average Korea news.

Analysis of South Korean politics, the economy, and society by Subin Kim, who has covered the two Koreas for a decade, including for the BBC.

  1. Pres Lee’s Red Guards turn on the chairman

    On Prosecution reform

    President Lee’s prosecution reform has outrun its sponsor. The hardliners he empowered now attack his own nominee as a “prosecution loyalist,” while his government moves to discipline the reformist prosecutor it promoted. A reform that treats a whole profession as the enemy will struggle to staff the agencies it has created.

  2. Pres Lee switches off the foreign policy autopilot and steers north

    On Foreign and security policy

    President Lee’s public feud with Kyiv says less about a broken confidentiality pledge than about a president who, with his ratings sinking, has switched off the autopilot that kept Seoul’s diplomacy on its default, Western-aligned course. His ministers still sign...

  3. A serenade to Pyongyang, drowned out by a mine

    On Foreign and security policy

    Pyongyang answered President Lee’s UN overture with empty seats, and a blast from a suspected North Korean mine drowned it out at home. Getting tough could win him the center, as it did Park Geun-hye in 2015, but Mr Lee...

  4. Pres Lee’s press conference: the floor gave way in a day; Han Dong-hoon’s harder job

    On The Lee presidency

    President Lee’s press conference was meant to put a floor under his approval before Chuseok. It held for one day. With his ratings now below his own party’s and no national election for 18 months, Minjoo has both the motive...

  5. President Lee is starting to sound like ex-Pres Yoon

    On Lee Jae-myung’s legal battles

    As President Lee’s approval sinks toward Yoon Suk-yeol’s, his party is discovering it cannot afford his legal self-defense, and both are reaching for illiberal tools: he for a social-media mirror that shows him a reactionary plot, Minjoo for a rulebook...

Threads

Running stories, each followed across several pieces.