He'll be pardoned and released by the next election cycle, remember 2 presidents were even sentenced to death at one point.
I'm reading the comments here and surprised by the lack of depth of assessing Korea's history of prosecuting its presidents and most of you are just regurgitating what's reported in mainstream news that is echoed by Korean mainstream news which cannot give you a neutral impartial view on the situation.
Two Korean presidents were sentenced to death and were pardoned in the 90s. another two Korean presidents were jailed for decades and were released after a few years. All of this is just a quick pandering to voters for whichever side gets hold and I am willing to wager that the current and last President will also see the insides of a jail cell.
I point that democracies like American politics even when it gets ugly to the point do not engage in such tit for tat against the President to the point of sending them to jail, for obvious reasons.
ehhthing [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Yoon is quite politically toxic at the moment, I don't think he'll be pardoned any time soon. I also think that this would be a good moment for South Korea to reconsider its approach to corruption, especially since Yoon's actions represent a clear escalation in the history of corruption at the highest levels of government.
kube-system [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Yeah, I don't understand the comments praising Korea for this. A tradition of prosecuting political opponents and then pardoning all of them is a mockery of the rule of law, regardless of what they actually did.
miyoji [3 hidden]5 mins ago
If he's pardoned and released, sure, it's a mockery, but holding public officials accountable for their abuse of the public trust is necessary to the rule of law and democracy.
kube-system [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Yeah, but this story is not very indicative of that actually happening in the context of modern Korean history... they have arrested 4 prior presidents, and they've pardoned all of them. It's a pattern at this point.
tinfoilhatter [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Curious where in the world this happens (holding officials accountable for violating public trust). It certainly doesn't happen in the United States.
cookiengineer [3 hidden]5 mins ago
For more details on this, there's some really interesting documentaries on how the Chaebol system works.
In my personal opinion that's what the US is heading towards to right now, so might give you a hint on how to prevent it.
loudmax [3 hidden]5 mins ago
This is the correct way to handle a former president who tries to mount an anti-democratic insurrection.
somenameforme [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It also illustrates what a real insurrection attempt looks like. [1] He declared martial law, suspended and prevented their Congress equivalent from meeting (and directed the military to enforce such), ordered the immediate arrest of numerous high level politicians with a goal of arresting hundreds, issued a declaration that all media and publications had to be approved before publication, ordered the power+water for a news broadcaster be cut, and much more.
Just to be clear, ordering a violent mob thousands strong to march on the capitol and "fight like hell" to interfere with the peaceful transition of power is also what a real insurrection attempt looks like.
ninth_ant [3 hidden]5 mins ago
As does attempting to manipulate election officials to change the vote outcome. If not for one person rejecting this coercion the coup would have been successful.
frumplestlatz [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Even if he had done that, which he didn’t, that’s not what an insurrection looks like. He also told them to go home.
peyton [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Innocent until proven guilty.
wk_end [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Legally, yes. But everything was well-documented and publicized. As sentient creatures we can use our own eyes, ears, and judgement to come to our own conclusions in advance or lieu of a formal court ruling.
n1b0m [3 hidden]5 mins ago
According to the bipartisan House select committee that investigated the incident, the attack was the culmination of a plan by Trump to overturn the election.
Within 36 hours, five people died: including a police officer who died of a stroke a day after being assaulted by rioters and collapsing at the Capitol.
Many people were injured, including 174 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months. Damage caused by attackers exceeded $2.7 million. It is the only attempted coup d'état directed towards the Federal government in the history of the United States.
It was an insurrection, and he should have been barred from rerunning by the 14th amendment, but come on with adding deaths to the event that were not the one dumbass chick.
frumplestlatz [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The “within 36 hours” is dishonest sleight of hand to avoid the fact that only one person died that day — Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran that was shot by police.
blibble [3 hidden]5 mins ago
don't worry, I suspect there will be a 2nd attempt on Jan 6th 2029
hnlmorg [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I’m not suggesting things are as bad as a full on insurrection. But it’s not a great leap of imagination to compare the two either.
> He declared martial law
Trump has sent federal troops into states that voted against him.
He’s also frequently talked about “the enemy from within” to describe American citizens.
And then there’s ICE…
> suspended and prevented their Congress equivalent from meeting
Trump has shut down the government twice already.
The press just like to blame Democrats despite the fact that it’s the Republicans who are refusing to negotiate.
> ordered the immediate arrest of numerous high level politicians with a goal of arresting hundreds,
To be fair, Trump hasn’t gone that far (yet). But he has fired lots of people from government roles that should have been non-partisan and filled them with his own loyal supporters. Even when those people are clearly not qualified to be doing their new found appointments.
He’s also freed lots of criminals because they either supported him, or paid him.
> issued a declaration that all media and publications had to be approved before publication
Trump has been removing press from the White House and replacing them with publications that support him.
> ordered the power+water for a news broadcaster be cut
Trump hasn’t done that either. But he has sent the FCC to shutdown shows he dislikes. And sued the others into compliance.
ericmcer [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The overreach of executive powers is very concerning, but those are more long term attempts to influence the public and policy makers through shady tactics.
The insurrection everyone is referring to is definitely Jan 6th, which it is laughable to compare to an actual insurrection attempt. A few thousand unarmed people waving signs and wearing costumes break into government buildings and take selfies? What would the next steps be that would end in them overthrowing elected leaders?
woodruffw [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I think the thing that puts J6 in the "definitely an insurrection attempt" category is the fact that it happened while Congress was exercising its duty to formalize the electoral college vote. We don't have to reach for statistics about how many were armed or wearing costumes (a fact that seems immaterial in any case); the question is sufficiently answered by what they were attempting to stop.
frumplestlatz [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I’ll reiterate the earlier poster’s question:
> What would the next steps be that would end in them overthrowing elected leaders?
Larrikin [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Multiple protestors had weapons and the militias had weapons parked just across the border. There also would have been no reason to pardon anyone if no crimes were being committed. But you already know this
frumplestlatz [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Nobody said no crimes had been committed. It’s just simply laughable to call it an insurrection.
n1b0m [3 hidden]5 mins ago
According to the bipartisan House select committee that investigated the incident, the attack was the culmination of a plan by Trump to overturn the election.
Within 36 hours, five people died: including a police officer who died of a stroke a day after being assaulted by rioters and collapsing at the Capitol.
Many people were injured, including 174 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months. Damage caused by attackers exceeded $2.7 million. It is the only attempted coup d'état directed towards the Federal government in the history of the United States.
Enough members of the National Assembly managed to bypass the military blockade, get into the building, and vote to reject martial law. (Some had to climb over the fence to get in.)
Some of the orders weren't carried out, others were carried out loosely so armed forces were occupying their Congress but they didn't actually stop members from being in the building and voting down the martial law. If we're doing the Trump comparison, an obvious difference is that Trump already knew the military wouldn't intervene to take sides on who got certified as the winner (they'd actually taken the unprecedented step of issuing a statement to that effect) and had reason to believe some of his supporters would give it a go...
ThrowawayTestr [3 hidden]5 mins ago
That's all clearly on par with a few tweets
collingreen [3 hidden]5 mins ago
A few tweets! Lololololololololololololololol
tcgv [3 hidden]5 mins ago
One thing worth pointing out is that by the time Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on December 3, 2024, he was already one of the most unpopular presidents in South Korean history. After that his ratings declined even further. This makes for a much smoother enforcement of the law to make him accountable for his actions.
petre [3 hidden]5 mins ago
He'll eventually get pardoned like presideng Park and the Samsung crown prince, Lee Jae-yong. But he'll probably do 10 or 15 years anyway.
toomuchtodo [3 hidden]5 mins ago
He's 65, so that might be long enough to be for life (based on life expectancy).
tyre [3 hidden]5 mins ago
One interesting firestorm that he started was over doctors.
Yoon Suk Yeol did the basic math of “if our population isn’t having babies and people are getting older, how much medical capacity will we need?”
The results—due to artificial caps on medical students (like the AMA does in the US)—mathed out to: “oh, shit.”
He decided to raise the caps by a lot. The medical establishment freaked out, since that would lower salaries, and went on strike. Doctors, residents, and medical students didn’t show up for months. He had to call in doctors from the army to fill in.
Was a hostile takeover and subversion the right response to frustration over political obstacles? No. But he ran into some very real and frustrating realities (or collective refusal to admit to them.)
Not sure he needed to table-flip into full autocrat, though.
yongjik [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I can't believe I'm defending Yoon, but this was one issue where Yoon identified the correct problem, and all those doctors were clearly in the wrong. But because there are so few doctors, things like emergency rooms were always overfull, and doctors who worked there were always overworked, and when they said no there was nothing the rest of the country could do. So the doctors basically had the rest of the country by its balls, so to speak.
It will forever grate me that those assholes of Korean Medical Association could say "You see how hard we're working for all of you guys? That's why there should be no more doctors!" with a straight face and will never face any consequences for that.
(Of course, it didn't help Yoon that he attacked this problem with the finesse of a bulldozer, with disastrous consequences. But still.)
deepsun [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Yep, and similar thing went in Philippines. The craziest part is that public in general sided with doctors, and against their president on that issue. Even though public would certainly benefit from having more doctors.
South Korea is a very young democracy with fresh memories of what it was like under dictatorships. The people very much understand the price it took to get to that point and is not complacent in stomping out wannabe autocrats.
tyre [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Okay at the same time they had the daughter of one of those autocrats fairly recently as PM, who then resigned due to influence peddling by a religious advisor (and did crazy things like her daughter didn’t go to class yet got amazing grades because her teachers were made to do her work, which she posted about on social media.)
They’re very much not over those players.
krona [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Why is his favorability rating so high?
Waterluvian [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Also the King stepping aside as the commoners come to for his brother. Lots of recent examples demonstrating that none of these unprecedented moments are untouchable if you actually are a people who believe in the rule of law.
multjoy [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The King has made it very clear that he was entirely unhappy with Andrew's involvement for years, but had Andrew done the right thing and entirely disappeared from public life he might have retained a degree of protection.
He didn't and so he had everything stripped away which sent a very clear message to Government and the police that he was there for the taking.
giraffe_lady [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It's striking that the specific offense, misconduct in a public office, is exactly what the supreme court recently decided a US president can never commit. In at least one concrete way our elected leaders are less accountable than their royalty.
mytailorisrich [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It's not the King, it's the government, really. In any case, one of the reasons, if not the main reason, is that the scandal has unfolded very publicly so that covering it up is not an option as it might have been otherwise or previously.
anigbrowl [3 hidden]5 mins ago
How amateurish! Officials should have just deflected to talking about the stock market.
skrtskrt [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Crazy how it was clearly orchestrated by his wife whose family has had dreams of forcing war with North Korea for some time, but he's the fall guy.
b00ty4breakfast [3 hidden]5 mins ago
If you play quarterback, you take the blame when things go south even if the coach is the one scheming.
skrtskrt [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Oh yeah, I mean by all means he should receive consequences.
But he's not the chaebol, he's just a tool for people walking away unscathed to try again at a more opportune time.
layer8 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Last sentence: “Every South Korean president who has served a prison sentence has ultimately been pardoned.”
jjk166 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
For context, Yoon is the 5th south korean president to serve a prison sentence; and a 6th committed suicide while under investigation, which is 42% of all korean presidents.
brcmthrowaway [3 hidden]5 mins ago
How did Samsung allow this?
dotcoma [3 hidden]5 mins ago
This is how you do it, America!
RankingMember [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Seeing consequences for insurrection (or anything, really) is mind-blowing to me (you can guess where I live)
koakuma-chan [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It is mind blowing. I guess he didn't have enough allies in power? All the corrupt politicians around the world must be laughing at him right now.
renewiltord [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Continuing the proud trend of 50% of Presidents not properly completing all their terms in Korea.
gmuslera [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The last 10 years in Peru were a bit extreme in that category.
josefritzishere [3 hidden]5 mins ago
If only the US had done this.
user982 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Read to the end:
Every South Korean president who has served a prison sentence has ultimately been pardoned.
incomingpain [3 hidden]5 mins ago
>National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik announced he would convene a plenary session immediately to revoke the martial law order and called for all lawmakers to gather at the National Assembly.[11] All main parties, including the ruling People Power Party, opposed Yoon's martial law declaration.
Obviously this guy went off his rocker. His own party had to step in and oppose him.
I do wonder, it doesnt seem like he was trying to install himself as dictator; it seems to me like he may have just had a mental health break. Being a major world leader has to be immense stress.
We really just need to get humans out of the loop. Direct democracy where you vote on everything, or assign your vote to a trusted representative.
steveBK123 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Likewise fascinating seeing UK treat its royalty like regular people (Andrew arrested) while the US treats our oligarchs like royalty.
Royalty in name vs royalty in practice.
misnome [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I mean Andrew is an extreme case. If he weren’t as out-of-favour I imagine nothing would have happened, and this has been _entirely_ forced by external information.
I assume that otherwise they would have less of an issue. It’s not like he married someone slight off-white, that would be real grounds for excommunication.
mcphage [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> If he weren’t as out-of-favour I imagine nothing would have happened
But the trickling of Epstein news is why he's out-of-favor, isn't it?
Fnoord [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Andrew lost his title 'Prince' a while ago. At that point he wasn't a royalty in name anymore.
Took a long time though.
OutOfHere [3 hidden]5 mins ago
This is how justice actually works. Meanwhile, the US is comparable to a banana republic where you can count on lying and injustice, also a mockery of real justice, being the things that work.
epistasis [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Depends on what you mean by justice. In the US, the law is now merely a tool used to give privileges to the in-group at the cost of the out-group. For the in-group it protects them from harm but never constrains their actions. For the out-group the law never protects them from harm, but constrains them.
In the US, federal prosecutions are ordered by the in-group via public social media posts, rather than by professionals dedicated to the law deciding if there's enough evidence to support a case. Currently, federal prosecutions will never be pursued against the in-group, no matter the evidence.
I'd like the US to return to it's prior stance on what the law means and how it can be used.
coredog64 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
This era we'd like to return to, when did it end?
jalapenoj [3 hidden]5 mins ago
[flagged]
hypeatei [3 hidden]5 mins ago
So "political opponents" are just untouchable entities then that exist completely outside the law?
OutOfHere [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It depends whether the jailing and imprisonment is arbitrary or for cause. Any attempt of mounting an insurrection, however harebrained, 100% qualifies as valid reason for a lifetime sentence.
"In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should prioritize their conscience over compliance with unjust laws, asserting that passive submission to government authority enables injustice."
epistasis [3 hidden]5 mins ago
One of the bedrocks of a startup economy is that the rule of law applies equally to the powerful and to the less powerful.
We wouldn't have Apple, Netflix, or so many other Bay Area giants without the equal application of law.
I applaud South Korea for pursuing this conviction and achieving a suitable penalty for the breakdown of law at the highest levels. It's quite admirable, as admirable as the UK charging the King's own brother with crimes this morning.
When law breaks down against the powerul, billionaires turn into oligarchs, and all those startups that would have created the next big creative disruption in the economy get squashed, and we all lose out. Inequality of power is a massive risk for any economy.
adev_ [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> One of the bedrocks of a startup economy is that the rule of law applies equally to the powerful and to the less powerful.
That has nothing to do with startup and economy. Equality in front of the law is one of the most basic property of any decent democracy.
It is even the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Not to mention that these former startups are now the Navy, and they are almost all squarely on the side of the person who tried to overthrow democracy.
epistasis [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It has a lot to do with both! HN is largely interested in startup economies, so I focussed on that in my comment.
I would contend that a startup economy can not exist without decent democracy. It's not an either/or as you frame it.
dotcoma [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I disagree: TikTok, Alibaba, Deepseek, WeChat...
epistasis [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Interesting, I had not considered these the products of a startup economy, but then I haven't investigated their origin deeply, and now will. Thanks!
dotcoma [3 hidden]5 mins ago
There are many more: Baidu, Didi, Huawei, Xiaomi, BYD...
coldtea [3 hidden]5 mins ago
>One of the bedrocks of a startup economy is that the rule of law applies equally to the powerful and to the less powerful.
Yes, as the saying goes, the law equally forbids and punishes the poor and the rich if they sleep in the park or under a bridge.
>We wouldn't have Apple, Netflix, or so many other Bay Area giants without the equal application of law.
US has nowhere near "equal application of law", and yet it has these companies.
In fact, if it did have "equal application of law", those companies would have dead, as they get away with things that, if a smaller company or private business did, they'd have the book thrown at them.
We wouldn't have Apple, Netflix, or so many other Bay Area giants without the equal application of law.
seattle_spring [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Everyone else thinking what I'm thinking?
epistasis [3 hidden]5 mins ago
I notice a reticence for people to speak plainly about things these days, because certain topics must be danced around at the edges in order for there to be any productive conversation.
Canada's PM Carney spoke recently about the Power of the Powerless essay and the shared lie, when the Green Grocer puts up the "Workers of the world unite" sign. And I kind of fear that shared reticence to speak plainly is causing an even larger inability to talk about the matter at hand than trying to approach it delicately around the edges to convince those who are so hard to communicate with.
Herring [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It's been ~10 years. Everything has been hashed and rehashed to death. America knew exactly who he was on day 1. He came down the stairs calling Mexicans rapists.
elsonrodriguez [3 hidden]5 mins ago
He also came down the stairs calling Obama a secret Muslim Kenyan.
hax0ron3 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
No, he called some Mexican migrants into the US rapists.
Trump has done plenty of real things that are worthy of criticism. Calling Mexicans in general rapists is not something he did.
GrinningFool [3 hidden]5 mins ago
> No, he called some Mexican migrants into the US rapists.
It was more than that.
In his own words, 'some' of those migrants[1] are good people (/maybe/ - he's apparently never met one), but everyone else...
"They're not sending their best. They're sending people with lots of problems. And they're bringing those problems with us[sic]. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some - I assume - are good people."
[1] being 'sent' here, apparently?
Herring [3 hidden]5 mins ago
When a racist says "some" of group X are bad, he means all. And he wants you to fight amongst yourselves so that you make his job (ie damaging all of you) easier.
Latinos didn't get this the first time, but they seem to be slowly waking up now.
popalchemist [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It's because there has been a chilling effect because of the stochastic (and literal) terrorism of the state - YC's own Peter Theil uses Palantir services to pinpoint "domestic terrorists" (read: anyone who exercises their rights to protest or speaks dissent in real life or online) to ICE, who then extrajudicially disappear people.
steveBK123 [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Yes seems like a good precedent for democracies globally
andrewinardeer [3 hidden]5 mins ago
That it was a dodgy vindaloo that is causing these cramps?
auggierose [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Aiming for the bushes?
trueismywork [3 hidden]5 mins ago
Yes. I am surprised too
carabiner [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It's pretty much certain this guy is going to commit suicide within 5 years, right?
yorwba [3 hidden]5 mins ago
It's more likely that he gets pardoned after a few years. President Park Geun-Hye only served less than 4 years of her combined 32-year prison sentence.
lazide [3 hidden]5 mins ago
The reality is that presidents (in almost every system), like MPs, are representatives of some faction of entrenched interests somewhere or another, or they wouldn’t get to be president.
It’s the same for dictators, and well pretty much any singular leader.
The factions may fight back and forth, and counting coup by imprisoning the figurehead for one of them certainly has some attraction - but the pendulum swings, and nobody wants to end up really getting punished at the end of the day when it swings away from them.
That’s how you get murderous resistance instead of (relatively) sane transfers of power.
HN.zip
I'm reading the comments here and surprised by the lack of depth of assessing Korea's history of prosecuting its presidents and most of you are just regurgitating what's reported in mainstream news that is echoed by Korean mainstream news which cannot give you a neutral impartial view on the situation.
Two Korean presidents were sentenced to death and were pardoned in the 90s. another two Korean presidents were jailed for decades and were released after a few years. All of this is just a quick pandering to voters for whichever side gets hold and I am willing to wager that the current and last President will also see the insides of a jail cell.
I point that democracies like American politics even when it gets ugly to the point do not engage in such tit for tat against the President to the point of sending them to jail, for obvious reasons.
In my personal opinion that's what the US is heading towards to right now, so might give you a hint on how to prevent it.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Korean_martial_law_...
Within 36 hours, five people died: including a police officer who died of a stroke a day after being assaulted by rioters and collapsing at the Capitol.
Many people were injured, including 174 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months. Damage caused by attackers exceeded $2.7 million. It is the only attempted coup d'état directed towards the Federal government in the history of the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito...
> He declared martial law
Trump has sent federal troops into states that voted against him.
He’s also frequently talked about “the enemy from within” to describe American citizens.
And then there’s ICE…
> suspended and prevented their Congress equivalent from meeting
Trump has shut down the government twice already.
The press just like to blame Democrats despite the fact that it’s the Republicans who are refusing to negotiate.
> ordered the immediate arrest of numerous high level politicians with a goal of arresting hundreds,
To be fair, Trump hasn’t gone that far (yet). But he has fired lots of people from government roles that should have been non-partisan and filled them with his own loyal supporters. Even when those people are clearly not qualified to be doing their new found appointments.
He’s also freed lots of criminals because they either supported him, or paid him.
> issued a declaration that all media and publications had to be approved before publication
Trump has been removing press from the White House and replacing them with publications that support him.
> ordered the power+water for a news broadcaster be cut
Trump hasn’t done that either. But he has sent the FCC to shutdown shows he dislikes. And sued the others into compliance.
The insurrection everyone is referring to is definitely Jan 6th, which it is laughable to compare to an actual insurrection attempt. A few thousand unarmed people waving signs and wearing costumes break into government buildings and take selfies? What would the next steps be that would end in them overthrowing elected leaders?
> What would the next steps be that would end in them overthrowing elected leaders?
Within 36 hours, five people died: including a police officer who died of a stroke a day after being assaulted by rioters and collapsing at the Capitol.
Many people were injured, including 174 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months. Damage caused by attackers exceeded $2.7 million. It is the only attempted coup d'état directed towards the Federal government in the history of the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito...
Here's a news article from that time: https://m.koreaherald.com/article/10012328
Yoon Suk Yeol did the basic math of “if our population isn’t having babies and people are getting older, how much medical capacity will we need?”
The results—due to artificial caps on medical students (like the AMA does in the US)—mathed out to: “oh, shit.”
He decided to raise the caps by a lot. The medical establishment freaked out, since that would lower salaries, and went on strike. Doctors, residents, and medical students didn’t show up for months. He had to call in doctors from the army to fill in.
Was a hostile takeover and subversion the right response to frustration over political obstacles? No. But he ran into some very real and frustrating realities (or collective refusal to admit to them.)
Not sure he needed to table-flip into full autocrat, though.
It will forever grate me that those assholes of Korean Medical Association could say "You see how hard we're working for all of you guys? That's why there should be no more doctors!" with a straight face and will never face any consequences for that.
(Of course, it didn't help Yoon that he attacked this problem with the finesse of a bulldozer, with disastrous consequences. But still.)
They’re very much not over those players.
He didn't and so he had everything stripped away which sent a very clear message to Government and the police that he was there for the taking.
But he's not the chaebol, he's just a tool for people walking away unscathed to try again at a more opportune time.
Obviously this guy went off his rocker. His own party had to step in and oppose him.
I do wonder, it doesnt seem like he was trying to install himself as dictator; it seems to me like he may have just had a mental health break. Being a major world leader has to be immense stress.
We really just need to get humans out of the loop. Direct democracy where you vote on everything, or assign your vote to a trusted representative.
Royalty in name vs royalty in practice.
I assume that otherwise they would have less of an issue. It’s not like he married someone slight off-white, that would be real grounds for excommunication.
But the trickling of Epstein news is why he's out-of-favor, isn't it?
Took a long time though.
In the US, federal prosecutions are ordered by the in-group via public social media posts, rather than by professionals dedicated to the law deciding if there's enough evidence to support a case. Currently, federal prosecutions will never be pursued against the in-group, no matter the evidence.
I'd like the US to return to it's prior stance on what the law means and how it can be used.
"In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should prioritize their conscience over compliance with unjust laws, asserting that passive submission to government authority enables injustice."
We wouldn't have Apple, Netflix, or so many other Bay Area giants without the equal application of law.
I applaud South Korea for pursuing this conviction and achieving a suitable penalty for the breakdown of law at the highest levels. It's quite admirable, as admirable as the UK charging the King's own brother with crimes this morning.
When law breaks down against the powerul, billionaires turn into oligarchs, and all those startups that would have created the next big creative disruption in the economy get squashed, and we all lose out. Inequality of power is a massive risk for any economy.
That has nothing to do with startup and economy. Equality in front of the law is one of the most basic property of any decent democracy.
It is even the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
I would contend that a startup economy can not exist without decent democracy. It's not an either/or as you frame it.
Yes, as the saying goes, the law equally forbids and punishes the poor and the rich if they sleep in the park or under a bridge.
>We wouldn't have Apple, Netflix, or so many other Bay Area giants without the equal application of law.
US has nowhere near "equal application of law", and yet it has these companies.
In fact, if it did have "equal application of law", those companies would have dead, as they get away with things that, if a smaller company or private business did, they'd have the book thrown at them.
We wouldn't have Apple, Netflix, or so many other Bay Area giants without the equal application of law.
Canada's PM Carney spoke recently about the Power of the Powerless essay and the shared lie, when the Green Grocer puts up the "Workers of the world unite" sign. And I kind of fear that shared reticence to speak plainly is causing an even larger inability to talk about the matter at hand than trying to approach it delicately around the edges to convince those who are so hard to communicate with.
Trump has done plenty of real things that are worthy of criticism. Calling Mexicans in general rapists is not something he did.
It was more than that.
In his own words, 'some' of those migrants[1] are good people (/maybe/ - he's apparently never met one), but everyone else...
"They're not sending their best. They're sending people with lots of problems. And they're bringing those problems with us[sic]. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some - I assume - are good people."
[1] being 'sent' here, apparently?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump
Latinos didn't get this the first time, but they seem to be slowly waking up now.
It’s the same for dictators, and well pretty much any singular leader.
The factions may fight back and forth, and counting coup by imprisoning the figurehead for one of them certainly has some attraction - but the pendulum swings, and nobody wants to end up really getting punished at the end of the day when it swings away from them.
That’s how you get murderous resistance instead of (relatively) sane transfers of power.