Asia

In a speech to the RoK Parliament on June 19, 2023, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, Lee Jae-myung, stated that he intended to renounce his parliamentary immunity in order to dispute the prosecutor’s allegations against him. Let us take a moment to reflect on what came before this really significant action. The former mayor of Seongnam, governor of Gyeonggi Province and main rival of Yoon Suk-yeol in the 2022 presidential election, Lee is a person of interest in several criminal cases: Corruption in the development of the Daejean-dong residential area, the main content of Seongnam Gate. Lee Jae-myung is suspected of causing 489.5 billion won ($375.4 million) in damage to the city by approving projects for the benefit of private developers who made 1000+% profit…

On June 22, the visit of the Speaker of the Parliament (State Great Khural) of Mongolia to the Russian Federation ended. It is important to note that this is the first top-level Mongolian visit to Russia since the start of the Special Military Operation; the country’s president last visited Russia on an official visit in December 2021, the foreign minister in the summer of the same year, and Parliament Speaker Gombojavyn Zandanshatar himself in 2019. Even though there was no meeting between the speaker of the parliament and the Russian president and foreign minister, the visit can be considered one of the most significant events in Russian-Mongolian ties in the last year. Gombojav Zandanshatar is a member of the Mongolian political elite who has personal memories of Russia; he was educated at Baikal State University…

Political statements made before and after elections frequently diverge drastically. To a casual observer, it may appear that we are not discussing the same country. This is not even a matter of internal politics, where candidates lavishly spread slogans like “power to the people,” “only the people are masters of the state’s fate,” “corruption is death,” “inflation will be defeated,” “life will become better,” and so on to the electorate. There are situations when the results of elections also partially change the foreign policy emphases of the winning politicians, although before the vote they had said quite the opposite with a menacing look…