South Korea | Impeachment of PM Overturned

Mulberry Heel

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South Korea's President has declared martial law, claiming that the main opposition political party is "sympathetic" to North Korea and is working to undermine the government. He stated that the opposition party is practicing clear "anti-state behavior aimed at inciting rebellion" and that they have “paralyzed state affairs and turned the National Assembly into a den of criminals.” The South Korean National Assembly has already voted to block his martial law decree. Democracy is under siege around the world, it seems.

Link: https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/martial-law-south-korea-intl/index.html
 
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Yeah, this was the guy who inspired the 4B movement. My Korean acquaintance is not worried about this, right or wrong. They think the guy signed his own political death warrant and will probably end up either with a huge sentence of a flight to exile.
 
Some background on how SK’s president was swept into power in 2022:

This also seems familiar (from the article): "Voters' top concerns are skyrocketing house prices, stagnant economic growth, and stubborn youth unemployment."

But let's blame it on misogyny because that is a heck of a lot easier to address than the real issues people are worried about.
 
It has nothing to do with that.

The connection is this: disgruntled young men will turn to other things when their economic needs aren’t being met. South Korea has very similar issues to the U.S. in this regard. That is, major economic issues facing young people.

One party says: your economic hardships are because of women taking away your opportunities.

The other party says: there actually isn’t an issue.

Which party are these disgruntled young men more likely to support?
That could potentially work for economic opportunities but the number one issue in South Korea was high housing prices. How is that connected?
 
You don’t see how neoliberal economics implicates housing? People’s ability to access and pay for adequate housing directly relates to their perceived economic situation.
Yeah. The actual 'price' of housing means nothing without context of employment and wages. My parents were appalled by what I paid for my house and I am appalled by what my kids paid recently for theirs. My parents would be aghast if they knew what my kids paid.
 
Would not surprise me a bit to see that conservative regime the US just swept in follow the same trajectory as the one SK swept in back in 2022: conservative gov't fails to fix anything, opposing party sweeps back into legislative power in midterms, so conservative president starts trying to exert unilateral authority and take it away from legislature.
 
It has nothing to do with that.

The connection is this: disgruntled young men will turn to other things when their economic needs aren’t being met. South Korea has very similar issues to the U.S. in this regard. That is, major economic issues facing young people.

One party says: your economic hardships are because of women taking away your opportunities.

The other party says: there actually isn’t an issue. (Or, like happens often, the other party concedes the point to the right wing and says women actually are a problem, which is what happened in SK and what happened in the U.S. re: immigrants.)

Which party are these disgruntled young men more likely to support?
The one that promises them the most free stuff.
 
South Korea's President has declared martial law, claiming that the main opposition political party is "sympathetic" to North Korea and is working to undermine the government. He stated that the opposition party is practicing clear "anti-state behavior aimed at inciting rebellion" and that they have “paralyzed state affairs and turned the National Assembly into a den of criminals.” The South Korean National Assembly has already voted to block his martial law decree. Democracy is under siege around the world, it seems.

Link: https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/martial-law-south-korea-intl/index.html
Yep, and was certainly dealt a blow over the weekend.
 
It has nothing to do with that.

The connection is this: disgruntled young men will turn to other things when their economic needs aren’t being met. South Korea has very similar issues to the U.S. in this regard. That is, major economic issues facing young people.

One party says: your economic hardships are because of women taking away your opportunities.

The other party says: there actually isn’t an issue. (Or, like happens often, the other party concedes the point to the right wing and says women actually are a problem, which is what happened in SK and what happened in the U.S. re: immigrants.)

Which party are these disgruntled young men more likely to support?
I mean it's not really true that Dems in the US have said "there actually isn't an issue" in response to the economic concerns of young and working class people - and I suspect that isn't what the liberal party in SK said to voters either - but I suppose it makes your framing better to pretend that's what they say.
 
You don’t see how neoliberal economics implicates housing? People’s ability to access and pay for adequate housing directly relates to their perceived economic situation.
As far as I know, the current housing crisis there has been the result of something akin to populism, not neoliberalism. I admittedly do not know all that much about the political economy of Korea, but my Korean students (i.e. mostly lawyers in Korea who came to the US to get an LLM degree) were not neoliberals at all. They were definitely among my most progressive students. That is, of course, a self-selecting population so take it for what it's worth.

Here's an article about it


And something a bit more scholarly:


I didn't know about the Chonsei system until just reading that article. It's kind of crazy, but I wonder if it isn't a bad system overall -- assuming that the landlords are sophisticated enough to account for interest rate risk
 
I’m in the market right now and my parents are appalled. A doublewide/modular in rural eastern NC, which is mainly what I’m looking at, is usually between 220,000-280,000 right now.
How much of that is just the cost of the construction? I just did a very quick google search and it seems that the bulk of the cost comes from the manufacturing costs. It's a competitive market, so one would think that relatively high cost reflects real expenses, and not mere scarcity or inflationary pressure on houses.

But I can easily quantify how much I know about doublewide modular homes specifically: 0.
 
This also seems familiar (from the article): "Voters' top concerns are skyrocketing house prices, stagnant economic growth, and stubborn youth unemployment."

But let's blame it on misogyny because that is a heck of a lot easier to address than the real issues people are worried about.
Yeah man that's why Trump' most successful ad was "Kamala is for they/them, not for us" and why Elon Musk posts nonstop about the "woke mind virus" and why Nancy Mace spit out about a thousand tweets in the space of a week about one transgender woman in the Capitol bathroom and why the current SK president campaigned heavily on eliminating the "Ministry of Gender Equality and Family." Because, you know, everyone is just focused on the real issues like inflation and housing prices.
 
The modular homes that I’m looking at aren’t new.
I will then go back to my second comment above. I won't say I know less about modular homes than any other subject, because there are lots of things that exist and I don't know they exist. I know about modular homes, and indeed even the word we use to refer to them. It's crazy to think that fact alone puts my knowledge of modular homes probably in the top half of knowledge about things. There is so much potential knowledge in the world.

But anyway, other than the existence and the name, I don't know much more than what I've seen in movies or TV, and I haven't even seen much of that so it doesn't matter all that much if they are realistic portrayals. Off the top of my head, I can remember two movies with important action taking place in a mobile/manufactured home: No Country For Old Men and Dancer In The Dark.

I'm going to assume that $200K+ for a non-new modular is pretty high.
 
Yeah man that's why Trump' most successful ad was "Kamala is for they/them, not for us" and why Elon Musk posts nonstop about the "woke mind virus" and why Nancy Mace spit out about a thousand tweets in the space of a week about one transgender woman in the Capitol bathroom and why the current SK president campaigned heavily on eliminating the "Ministry of Gender Equality and Family." Because, you know, everyone is just focused on the real issues like inflation and housing prices.
I don't really remember seeing a trump ad. I saw plenty of Harris ads but maybe they were serving them to me because they knew who I was going to vote for and they were just hoping to get me to the polls.

Pain convinced me that Republicans have done a pretty good job pointing to women and minorities as the reason their housing costs are high. He made a good argument.

I do think the Democrats have helped them quite a bit by focusing on things like transgender issues, affirmative action and female achievement. At some point, the best course is not to call someone a racist as much as it is to give them some ideas how they're going to help them get paid more by their employer.
 
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