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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   1761 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 4, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Korea

A few days ago there was an assassination attempt against the leader of the Korean opposition, the Democratic Party (which included the previous president Moon Jae-In). The current leader and 2022 Presidential candidate, Lee Jae-myung, was apparently stabbed in the neck on a trip to Busan, Korea’s second largest city. Fortunately he has survived. There is no information about motives or the background of the assassin yet.

Also, the Korean Supreme Court has ruled yet again to re-open the issue of reparations owed by Japan. I did a little writeup on the history here, but basically Japan paid reparations to the country, which they gave to the dictator Park Chung Hee who supposedly mostly spent in on industrial policy. But the courts later ruled that individuals should have the right to sue, which re-opened a seemingly settled matter of compensation. Only one person is even still alive from the original individual lawsuits that started this.

For now, both the Japanese and Korean governments seem to be ignoring it and hoping it’ll go away. Both Kishida and Yoon have extremely low popularity and patching up relations with each other is one of the only big successes they both have, so I’d imagine they don’t want to jeopardize relations.

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