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…

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…

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…

Prosecutors have reportedly prepared more than 1,600 pages of documents to support their criminal allegations that Lee should be arrested. During the voting in the National Assembly on Lee’s detention, Justice Minister Han Dong-hoon stated: “The case involving Lee is an orchestrated crime involving multiple individuals and has raised significant concerns about the potential for evidence tampering through coercion or pressure on accomplices and witnesses, given Lee’s political status and the investigation process.” The minister claimed that Lee Jae-myung and his group forced government officials…

On Sept. 26, a large-scale military parade was held in downtown Seoul to mark the 75th anniversary of the country’s armed forces under the slogan “Strong Armed Forces, Robust Security, Peace Through Strength.”  Military parades are usually held in the ROK every five years, but the last one was held in 2013 – in 2018, the Moon Jae-in government skipped the event due to its pursuit of inter-Korean reconciliation. The parade started at 4.00 pm local time and ran for one hour, in the area from Sunnaemun Gate to Gwanghwamun Square. Some 3,700 troops and more than 170 pieces of military equipment took part, including K2 tanks, K-21 BMPs, missiles…

The previous series of trials of the leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) ended with him indicating his readiness for trial; before that he had miraculously escaped arrest during the parliamentary vote. However, the prosecutor’s office began preparing a second arrest warrant as part of an investigation into the development of the Baekhyeon-dong neighborhood of Seongnam (as mayor) and the illegal transfer of funds to the DPRK (as governor of Gyeonggi).   We specifically covered the details…

On August 31, 2023 Lee Jae-myung, the head of the opposition Democratic Party of Korea, (or Deobureo Minjoo Party), pitched a tent in front of the National Assembly building and began an indefinite hunger strike to protest against the policies of the current government, which caused him to be hospitalized. The reason for it is President Yoon Seok-yeol’s approval of prosecutors’ request for his arrest on September 20, and the request has now been submitted to the National Assembly for further consideration. The prosecutor’s office has accused Lee of numerous offences, and, so as not to repeat them in future articles, we shall list them here for future reference…

On December 26, 2022, five North Korean small reconnaissance drones invaded South Korean airspace, and the South responded by sending its drones into North Korean airspace. As the drones could not be stopped and one of them breached the no-fly zone near the Yongsan Presidential Office, the South Korean media avidly debated the situation. The invasion startled authorities by exposing the inadequacies of Seoul’s air defenses and small drone detection systems. Meanwhile, the drones might theoretically carry lethal weaponry aimed at vital locations in the South…