Back in the summer of 2022, factional infighting in the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) had gotten so out of hand that interim party chief Woo Sang-ho suggested getting rid of insults such as the word “watermelon.” In South Korea, this is considered a significant insult, despite its seemingly minor nature. For instance, the term ’banana’ is sometimes used as an insult towards American or overly Westernized South Koreans, implying that they are “yellow on the outside but white on the inside.”…

During a ceremony held on January 6, 2024 to mark the 100^th anniversary of the birth of former President Kim Dae-jung, who led the country from 1998-2003, leading politicians from rival parties called for “unity and tolerance” to bring harmony into society deeply divided by “extremist politics”. “Politics is now mired in confrontation, antagonism and division,” National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin-pyo, co-chair for the event, said in his congratulatory speech. “What former President Kim would have wanted from us was, of course, national unity,” he said. Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who also serves as a co-chair, said the politics had partly instigated distrust and hatred, stressing that “national unity and solidarity” were the only way to overcome crises…

On April 15, 2024, parliamentary elections will be held in the Republic of Korea to determine the distribution of seats in the National Assembly for the next four years. This is a rather important feature of the South Korean political system as, to the extent that the President is elected once every five years, and the Parliament – once every four years, the Head of the State may work with the Parliament that was formed earlier and strictly opposes him. This is in particular occurring in the current National Assembly…

On November 28, the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) held its meeting in Paris on the election of the host country of the World Expo-2030. Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), Busan (Republic of Korea) and Rome (Italy) were considered the main candidates. According to preliminary estimates, hosting the exhibition could earn South Korea 61 trillion won ($47 billion), attract at least 50 million tourists and create 500 thousand new jobs. A delegation of South Korean business representatives led by Prime Minister Han Duck-soo arrived to support the South Korean bid…

In his next article devoted to parliamentary parties in South Korea, the author wanted to write about the problems within the opposition Toburo Democratic Party, where dissatisfaction with its leader Lee Jae-myung is growing, and former Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon with his supporters have seriously decided to leave the party. But an incident occurred that mixed up all the cards and required urgent coverage. On January 2 at 10:27 a.m., Chairman Lee Jae-myung was stabbed in the neck while he inspecting the construction site of a new airport on Gadeok Island during his visit to Busan…

This is the second part of the digest on inter-Korean tensions, dedicated to the DPRK actions. See the previous article to learn what the United States and the Republic of Korea did during the same period. Early in the morning on September 2, 2023, “a missile launch exercise was conducted to simulate a tactical nuclear attack to warn enemies of an actual nuclear war danger.” The launch came two days after the US and the ROK completed their 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise…

We would like to bring to your attention the next digest of “moving towards red lines” on the Korean Peninsula. Since the articles should be kept concise, the author has to divide this narrative into two parts: first, with the South, then, with the North in focus. On October 5, 2023, during hearings in the US Senate, a well-known American expert on the countries of the Korean Peninsula from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Victor Cha, proposed to develop and adopt a new policy providing for prevention measures to neutralize the DPRK missile threat…

In early December, the Russian-language Internet was abuzz with the Washington Post (WP), which published a story on 4 December stating that indirect supplies of South Korean 155 mm artillery shells to Ukraine had made it a larger supplier of ammunition to Kyiv than all European countries combined. It has been claimed that Washington’s own production capacity for this type of ammunition is just over 1/10 of Ukraine’s demand, which reaches over 90,000 shells per month. In this connection, the US President’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan drew attention to South Korea…

The final text in the series on the North Korean satellite launch will focus on the military and political response of “the southern side”, which had several aspects. The first aspect is the strengthening of the US strategic forces. An aircraft carrier group including the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and the Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine Santa Fe (SSN-763) arrived in Busan before the launch and visited the Navy base on the Jeju-do island after it. It is alleged, that on October 23, in response to such actions, North Korea launched an unidentified ballistic…

NEO wrote about the possible termination of the inter-Korean military agreement (CMA, Comprehensive Military Agreement ) quite recently, mentioning that its zeroing will take place after the launch of the DPRK satellite. And so it happened. Recall that even before the launch, the Administration of the President of South Korea assumed that the CMA “could be suspended in the event North Korea goes ahead with its planned space rocket launch.” Conservative media…

On December 1, 2023, the KCNA reported that the DPRK had launched its first military reconnaissance satellite, Malligyong-1, into low Earth orbit, and that the adjustment procedure had been completed. And on December 2, the Satellite Operations Office which will act as an autonomous military intelligence agency, began to perform its tasks. The information received by the new Office will be reported to the relevant executive department of the Central Military…

Discussions that the DPRK’s attempt to launch a satellite will entail the rupture of the inter-Korean military agreement impel the author to remind the audience how the preparation process for this launch is going on. On May 31, North Korea launched its first military spy satellite, Malligyong-1, mounted on a new-type carrier rocket, Chollima-1. According to North Korean media, the rocket crashed into the Yellow Sea after the second stage engine malfunctioned. In July 2023, North Korean satellite debris was retrieved from the Yellow Sea, after which South Korean experts declared that…