Fearless Speech Index

I recently joined Heterodox Academy which encourages academics to support a diversity of viewpoints.  This week's newsletter highlighted an op-ed by professor Adam Grant at Wharton who encourages more arguing and fighting at home which helps train kids to grow up to be more creative and open minded. 

In that post, a quote struck me as consistent with my own observations and experience: "Universities—ideal homes for constructive disagreement—can now be places where students and professors alike often feel silenced." Results from a survey tracking a "fearless speech index" can be found here. Researchers are trying to determine to what degree students feel comfortable speaking about the following topics in class, and the reasons why they do/don't speak up about 3 issues: race, gender politics. There's a "control" category for comparison. The topic of race generated the most discomfort, and criticism from  other students (not professors) ended up being the biggest concern/reason for not speaking out. As an Asian-American, race is not as uncomfortable for me, but as a conservative Christian, gender is probably the hardest. 

A Century of Communism

It's been 100 years since Communism came into power. The Washington Post's Will Englund presented a cool graphic timeline or the "Red Century." Until I read this brief account, I had never considered the Communist Revolution as a social movement with major implications for world politics. But of course that's exactly what it is. It's not a single movement of course, even though there was an international organization (Comintern) set on expanding communism globally. But the Revolution has all the makings of a social movement if one considers mass mobilization, the challenge to authority, and the diffusion of ideas. The puzzle for me is why and how communist movements/parties/governments virtually everywhere turned to authoritarianism and repression, especially if communism in its pure form was an ideology which was to bring equality.

Anyway, this is a mental note to consider the Russian Revolution and the spread of communism as an example of social movements transforming world politics. I might also use the Red Century in my Intro to IR class next semester to educate students about Cold War history.

Nobel Peace Prize Goes to anti-nuclear group, ICAN

This year's Nobel Prize went to the International Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a group made up of more than 450 civil society organizations in some 100 countries around the globe. To give some background on their campaign from their webpage:

"ICAN began in Australia and was officially launched in Vienna, Austria in 2007. Our campaign’s founders were inspired by the tremendous success of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), which a decade earlier had played an instrumental role in the negotiation of the anti-personnel mine ban convention, or Ottawa treaty. Since our founding, we have worked to build a powerful global groundswell of public support for the abolition of nuclear weapons. By engaging a diverse range of groups and working alongside the Red Cross and like-minded governments, we have helped reshape the debate on nuclear weapons and generate momentum towards elimination."

Source: http://www.icanw.org/campaign/campaign-overview/

I was a bit surprised that a diffuse transnational umbrella organization like ICAN would receive this year's peace prize, which usually resonates more strongly (in my opinion) when its awarded to a single individual or organization, rather than a campaign. When the International Campaign to Ban Landmines was awarded the prize in 1997, it was jointly awarded with its founder, Jody Williams. Perhaps the Nobel Prize Committee felt the issue of nuclear disarmament was especially important this year given the North Korea crisis and the potential unravelling of the Iran nuclear deal. But other "political" reasons may include the trouble/controversy of giving the award to an individual who may not deliver, as noted by the growing criticism against Nobel winner Aung Sang Suu Kyi and her silence in the face of the Rohingya crisis. Or perhaps there was a lack of clear consensus or frontrunner for the peace prize this year. Finally, it may just be a nod to large scale transnational campaigns like ICBL which won the prize two decades ago, and to give an idealistic movement like ICAN extra credibility and symbolic leverage in the fight to bring about a nuclear free world.


If I were still doing research on transnational campaigns, I would explore how activists from ICAN learned from and emulated the experience of ICBL. For my current research on the politics of peace, I would probably want to interview a number of ICAN activists and study their profile to understand how and where their beliefs about nuclear disarmament come from and how they engage proponents of nuclear deterrence.

Rohingya Crisis

Since my wife's work portfolio includes Bangladesh, and may soon include migration, we've both been following the mass flight of the Rohingya people from Burma to Bangladesh. This article in the Washington Post provides a concise background to the history of the Rohingya plight (there's a video terrorist group), but also deep seated historical ones. Ethnicity, religion, and resources are part of the equation. The Rohingya are seen as illegal immigrants in Burma, and are not recognized by the government (hence arguments that they are a stateless people). Their original roots are probably Bengali, but they haven't lived in what would today be Bangladesh for centuries. 
here too). It's hard to understand why there's so much hatred against the Rohingya, who are Muslim, in a predominantly Buddhist country. There are immediate reasons (i.e. militant Rohingya groups who've attacked Burmese police and been labeled a Islamic

Controversy over School for Children with Disabilities in South Korea

My wife had mentioned this story to me last week as she watched a video with concern about local opposition against building a school for children with disabilities. This week, Sejong Society's news digest included a story on this. I'm pasting it below verbatim since it's a good summary. In essence,  parents pleading with other local residents to permit officials to build a school for their children with disabilities were shouted and jeered at. Allegedly, residents fear that building such a school would lower their property value. 

While such not-in-my-backyard protests are common occurrences, this one really struck a nerve (or the heart) as it involved children with disabilities. I watched the impassioned speech/presentation of one of the parents. It was heart-wrenching to hear her plead with the audience to permit her child to go to school. She asked if they too don't understand as a parent how important education is. After they started cursing at her, she responded by saying she would take their verbal abuse and beating, but she could never give up on the school. The video ends with parents on their knees (a common gesture of humility in Korea when begging/pleading) receiving more verbal abuse. 

This episode is probably not representative of Korea, which I think has made great strides in raising disability awareness and making their society more handicap accessible. But the episode does lead to some interesting questions about the disability rights movement in Korea?

- What is the history of disability rights in Korea?
- Has it been relatively easy or difficult to frame disability rights issues in the Korean context. 
- How advanced is Korea when it comes to disability access/awareness
- And in the specific episode in Gangseo district, why was there so much opposition against the school and how (a)typical is such a response? Would this have occurred in Kangnam (a much wealthier) district, and if so, what would it imply about the relationship between wealth/status and attitude towards 

 The Sejong Society news digest post is below:


Special Needs Education in South Korea

Andrew Jung

On Sept 13, 2017, South Korea’s Education Minister, Sang-kon Kim announced that 18 new special needs schools will be built over the next five years to accommodate children with disabilities. This is seen as a breakthrough for South Korean students with disabilities and their families as more special needs schools were urged to be built as many regular schools were inadequate in meeting their needs. 

The announcement came amid calls for more special needs schools becoming vocal after a viral video earlier in September showed parents kneeling before the residents in Gangseo District located in western Seoul, begging for a special needs school to be built while some of the residents jeered at them (See the full video here in Korean). The video came from a hearing by education officials on Sept 5, 2017, discussing a potential construction project. The parents of the special needs children wanted a special needs school built while other residents opposed it, pushing for a traditional medicine school. The residents were worried about their real estate value further declining and some accused the parents kneeling for “theatrics.”

According to disability advocates, the incident shows the difficulties of having special needs schools built in various areas in South Korea due to local residents fiercely opposing them and increasing pressure on their elected representatives to intervene. However, the recent incident increased public sympathy and support with over 80,000 people signing a petition for the special needs school to be built. Education Minister Sang-kon Kim in announcing the plan to build the new schools commented “there still seems to be a lot of prejudices and misunderstandings regarding not only disabled people in our society but other social minority groups such as multicultural families and North Korea defectors,” South Korean lawmaker, Seong-yep Yu who chairs the education committee said that providing the appropriate education services should be guaranteed as a human right. 

According to South Korea’s Ministry of Education, there are 174 special needs schools nationwide that serve less than 30 percent of over 89,000 children with physical and mental disabilities. Only 29 of those schools are located in Seoul. Over 2,300 of those students often have to commute more than a hour to those schools. Gangseo District from the video is considered to be has some of the highest numbers of students who need special education, aging from early childhood to their 20’s and has disabilities ranging from physical to intellectual disability.

Disability advocates said that many regular schools lack the resources to assist disabled students, such as physical therapy and counseling. The students can also be susceptible to bullying. According to Eun-ja Lee of Korean Parents’ Network for the People with Disabilities, special needs schools can help those students improve their livelihood and increase their independence by providing individualized vocational training.

Charlottesville, Protests, and Reflections on Racism and Free Speech

Last weekend white supremacists ( including alt-right; neo-Nazis, etc...) held a rally to protest the removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee, one of the most revered and respected military commanders of his time - something acknowledged even by Union soldiers. By most historical counts, Lee was a noble man, but he also supported the Confederacy, thus leaving a heavy stain on what would likely have been a distinguished career had he chosen to side with the Union rather than bind his loyalty to his beloved home state of Virginia (Arlington National Cemetery in VA is actually situated on land formerly owned by Lee). I briefly read his bio on Wikipedia, and its unclear to what degree he supported slavery. He certainly had his own slaves, but he also made several statements which put into question the morality of slavery.

Unfortunately, clashes between white supremacists and anti-fascist, anti-racist (or whatever label you want to assign) counter-protesters resulted in violent clashes, and a tragic death when a white supremacist plowed his vehicle down an ally hitting at least a dozen bystanders.

My own views on this protest have evolved. Without knowing the back story, I thought defenders of the Lee statue, racist or not, had the right to protest their cause. But in the aftermath and post-analysis, it's clear that many of those on the alt-right, and particularly the pro-Nazi folks were of despicable character. This does not exonerate violence from the counter-protesters, but clearly when one brings firearms to the protest, and deliberately breaks negotiated agreements with the police on where to protest, one is basically asking for a fight.

I'm sure no one would accept a statue of Hitler in Germany. Does General Lee evoke similar reactions among African-Americans? If perceived symbols of hatred inflict pain (and painful memories) to some groups, should they be removed altogether? Are there good reasons for why they should remain? That's the debate which is unfolding, and based on the turn-about of both MD and VA governors (both probably for politically expedient reasons), the answer seems to be yes. This isn't a recent phenomena. Confederate statues have been targeted for removal in recent years, but are accelerating after Charlottesville. Just today, Duke University removed a statue of  Lee after it was defaced. The tension surrounding first amendment rights, hate, and racism as embodied in Confederate monuments is an excellent case for studying the evolution and contestation of public norms as Americans continue to further debate this issue.

Two final thoughts. The Washington Post had an interesting article based on research in social psychology on why people are racist. Unsurprisingly, their answer is social rather than biological. Here's an excerpt:

People learn to be whatever their society and culture teaches them. We often assume that it takes parents actively teaching their kids, for them to be racist. The truth is that unless parents actively teach kids not to be racists, they will be,” said Jennifer Richeson, a Yale University social psychologist. “This is not the product of some deep-seated, evil heart that is cultivated. It comes from the environment, the air all around us.” 

“An us-them mentality is unfortunately a really basic part of our biology,” said Eric Knowles, a psychology professor at New York University who studies prejudice and politics. “There’s a lot of evidence that people have an ingrained even evolved tendency toward people who are in our so-called 'in group.'”
But how we define those groups, and the tendency to draw divisions along racial lines, is social, not biological, he added. “We can draw those lines in a number of ways that society tells us,” he said. 

“But when people come into contact with an organized ideology that valorizes or glorifies an intergroup struggle like a race struggle — that scaffolds from people’s everyday prejudices into something altogether more violent,” he said.
White supremacist groups promote a “siege mentality” among their followers, Knowles said — rhetoric that aims to lend legitimacy to people’s racial and ethnic fears. He pointed to the slogans shouted by participants in the Charlottesville rally: “You will not replace us” and “White Lives Matter.”

Additionally, today's WaPo featured a profile on the "road to hate": how a few white supremacists who participated in the Charlottesville protests ended up embracing their movement. Again, life experiences, shaped by socio-economic as well as identity issues (i.e. finding a sense of belonging) mattered. I'm taking mental notes for future studies on how actors come to adopt particular worldviews/beliefs.

Second, my wife and I took a trip to Harpers Ferry the day after the Charlottesville protest. This city is a real gem and must see - only an hour from Washington DC. Our visit was timely. Harpers Ferry is best known for abolitionist John Brown's 1859 raid on a federal armory in hopes of leading an uprising to end slavery. It was put down by the U.S. military, led by then Colonel Robert E. Lee. There was also a small museum telling the story of the little known Niagara Movement in the early 1900s led by WEB Dubois. Ironically, the movement was undermined by other black intellectuals such as Booker T. Washington who preferred a more quite approach of conciliation and accommodation (with privileged whites) to raise the status of blacks. Like today, there was much debate regarding the best strategies and tactics for promoting racial equality and justice. Finally, there was a museum dedicated to the historically black Storer College which existed from 1865-1955 in Harpers Ferry. Clearly the school holds great significance for its alumni despite its now defunct status. Among the many things which struck me as fascinating about Storer was its religious curriculum and its support from Freewill Baptists in New England.  Christians (and evangelicals in particular) get lumped these days with the alt-right or as Trump supporters. The media recently hammered the point how Trump's evangelical advisory board had yet to disband.  It was a nice personal reminder, however, that the Gospel message is not one of hate and  discrimination, but of love and acceptance - and for those reasons New England Baptists believed in and supported Storer College. The lesson here for social scientists is that movements, factions, groups etc... are much more complex than we assume.
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Update:

Calls to remove all Confederate statues may in some cases been a knee-jerk reaction to disassociate from white supremacists. VA governor Terry McAuliffe stated moving the monuments are unlikely given the costs of their removal. Instead, adding more "context" might be an alternative way to address them.

A theater in Memphis, TN decided to pull its screening of "Gone With the Wind" over the film’s "sanitized portrayal" of the Civil War-era South and African-Americans, to which one writer in the WaPo questioned:

But just because it’s not educational television doesn’t mean that “Gone With the Wind” should be shunned entirely, just as the Confederate statues that are coming down around the country should be preserved and curated, not destroyed. Both types of period pieces are valuable historical artifacts, not of the events and people they portray, but of previous generations of Americans’ efforts to figure out how they feel about the Civil War.

On both the film and the monuments, WaPo film critic Ann Hornaday responds:

The perfunctory removal of the monuments might have been wise from a political and public-safety standpoint, but it was at odds with the transparency and moral reckoning that are necessary for accountability and healing. And it did not comport with the recommendations of a review commission, convened by then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, whose 2016 report suggested that the Confederate monuments be re-sited or richly re-contextualized but never simply removed and forgotten...“It is not the responsibility of each generation to judge past generations,” the commission concluded. “It is, however, every generation’s responsibility to clear the way for truth to be heard.” 

I was more reticent about removing all Confederate monuments, although I've been telling others my opinion is that they should be removed. But was my own opinion also shaped by public sentiment? On reflection, if we were to destroy/remove all monuments, would we also not be whitewashing history? Yet the purpose of monuments/statues in public spaces is to commemorate and glorify, not necessarily educate and learn. Putting Confederate monuments in museums might be one answer. Or perhaps putting signage with more context? Striking a healthy balance is tricky with the shifting times.

North Korea Updates and Hong Kong Travel

(Note: this post was drafted in late June). I returned last week from conferences, talks in San Diego, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Some brief thoughts and take-aways

I spent  24 hours in San Diego focused on North Korea. Much transpired in the two weeks afterwards, including the release and eventual death of American tourist Otto Warmbier which re-opened debates about engagement with North Korea, resulted in an expedited push for a tourist travel ban, and on the eve of  first the Trump-Moon summit, has created a lot of anxiety on the direction US-Korea policy will take. I weighed in on people-to-people engagement on the Peter Institute's Witness to Transformation blog, based on a longer academic study published in Asian Perspective. But the timing was (un)fortunate as it appeared the wee Warmbier was released. Here are a couple sides to the debate:

The case for engagement
- helps ordinary North Koreans, in the case of humanitarian oriented initatives
- permits contact between North Koreans and Americans for better understanding
- brings information to North Koreans about the outside which can have a trickle-down effect and longer term consequences (i.e. erode regime legitimacy)

The case for ending engagement and sanctions
- aids the regime
- engagement has not facilitated any meaningful change over twenty years
- signals displeasure at North Korea's actions and that bad behavior has consequences

Travel Ban
Otto Warmbier's death has sparked a debate about passing


Hong Kong was a somewhat of a disappointment and not what I had expected. This was partly a result of bad weather having arrived at the peak monsoon season which meant 100% rain and humidity. But at the risk of sounding like a colonial sympathizer, it was a lot less "Western" than I anticipated, meaning less English, having to rely more on cash, and feeling more of just another major city in China (like Shanghai) rather than a city controlled by the British for over a century. I couldn't help but wonder if this was partly a result of China's increasing perhaps inevitable reach into Hong Kong affairs despite the arrangement of relative Hong Kong autonomy reached with the British before the 1997 handover to China. Today's article in the WaPo summed my thoughts up perfectly:

What we are seeing now is the mainlandization of Hong Kong. It’s the gradual absorption of Hong Kong by the new sovereign. It’s the slow erosion of the separate culture and norms that have set it apart. And it’s the incremental marginalization of Hong Kong in the Chinese economy...Since the Occupy protests, China has shown an increasing propensity to meddle directly in Hong Kong’s affairs...What few predicted was Hong Kong’s slow-motion mainlandization. Hong Kong and China have been converging — just not in the direction many of us thought.

In a postscript to this, turned out many other observers had similar reactions in light of the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to China. The New York Times published a great piece, "Once a Model City, Hong Kong Is in Trouble." Here are a few other pieces:

• New York Times: Xi Delivers Tough Speech on Hong Kong, as Protests Mark Handover Anniversary
• New York Times op-ed by last governor of Hong Kong: Chris Patten: Did Beijing Betray Hong Kong?
• Victoria Hui  on WaPo MonkeyCage on an excellent run down of issues on Hong Kong at the 20th anniversary: 20 years ago, China promised Hong Kong ‘1 country, 2 systems.’ So much for promises.

Social Movements in the U.S.: Recent Headlines in the Washington Post

For a blog with the title "social movements" there's admittedly a paucity of postings. However, a couple articles in the Washington Post Sun. (May 8) edition about recent protest movements jive with academic theory on social movements.

The first is about Black Lives Matter, which has reportedly "entered a new phase — one more focused on policy than protest." With Trump now in office, activists are taking a different strategy moving from the streets to the halls of government. Quoting Stephen Zunes, the Post article elaborates on the importance of transitioning from formal to informal politics:

Black Lives Matter’s transition from street protests to policy is not unusual, said Stephen Zunes, a University of San Francisco professor who studies social movements. It’s through such work that a movement’s priorities — like mandatory use of officer body cameras — can become national standards, he said.

“That’s actually the way effective social movements often work or behave,” Zunes said, pointing to the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in the wake of the financial crisis as a counterexample. “What the Occupy people did not learn, or by and large do, is go do the lobbying, the organizing to make change happen. They wound up fetishizing the ‘occupy’ part, and then, by and large, it fizzled.”   

The second article focuses on Dana Fisher's (from U.Maryland) work on protests movements. Some of her findings on recent protests movement in DC: the women's march, march for science (see Michael Heaney's observations here), climate change include the following:

• They are overwhelmingly people who voted for Clinton in the last election
• Marchers are well educated with over 75% holding a bachelor's degree
• Many first time demonstrators were present, and many cited Facebook as a source for finding out about the protest
• The motive for coming out to protest are variegated (i.e. it's usually not a single issue area like labor, environment, peace etc...)
• Trump's victory is a motivator for showing up, even though protest organizers state protests are not anti-Trump events

Pyongyang University of Science and Technology

I know or have met several people associated with the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST). Two weeks go, they detained Tony Kim, a U.S. citizen who had been teaching accounting at PUST. Now they've detained another American, Kim Hak-song. Both are alleged to have committed "hostile acts" against the regime. This bring the total number of Americans held captive in North Korea to four.

photo: Ian Wells, PUST websiite

My own thoughts about PUST have always been ambivalent. The people I know who've taught at PUST have shared really amazing stories about their time at the school which demonstrate the human (and for Christians, the Holy) spirit at work, and the potential for people-to-people exchanges with North Koreans. But at the same time, PUST as an enterprise which is 100% funded by foreigners, raises so many questions about the status of an overtly Christian school operating inside a repressive regime. 

Suki Kim, who worked as an undercover author posing as an English teacher, penned an op-ed questioning whether PUST is propping up the regime. Kim has offered measured criticism against PUST, even implying that PUST may be providing students technical skills which can be transferred for military purposes (which I think is way off mark). 

But she also writes in her op-ed, " Yet there is also a positive aspect to PUST. From living with these foreigners on such an intimate basis, these young, isolated North Koreans are exposed to the glimpses of the outside world and its freedom, which might eventually provide hopes for North Korea’s future."

I wish PUST the best, but news of recent detained citizens connected to PUST is certainly troubling, both from a human rights standpoint, and also for the future of PUST. 

Security and Human Rights in Trump's Foreign Policy: US Alliances and Autocracies

Every U.S. administration in the postwar period has grappled with the tensions between security and human rights and our relationship with autocratic rulers. No place has this been more obvious than in the Middle East these days. The assumption is that the Trump Administration will care less about human rights, particularly if he sees various foreign relationships as transactional. We may be seeing the first signs of his willingness to turn a blind eye to human rights and democracy in favor of preserving strategic ties. Two recent examples come out of the Middle East.


Andrew Harnik/Associated Press

1. Egypt. President Trump invited Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sissi to an official White House visit this week (post-visit analysis is here). As the Washington Post notes:

"Sissi’s arrival at the White House marked a reversal of U.S. policy after President Barack Obama refused to invite him, because of concerns about human rights violations. Trump and his aides did not mention human rights ahead of Sissi’s visit, suggesting that the issue would be raised in private, if at all. Instead, Trump and Sissi appeared focused on security, and they sought to demonstrate warmth, shaking hands during their brief remarks to reporters."

In an op-ed, Bob Kagan and Michelle Dunne referred to U.S. ties to Egypt as a "dysfunctional relationship" suggesting that there may not even be that much security value to relations with Egypt. They advocate cutting ties, much like Christine Fair and Sumit Ganguly have recommended for Pakistan.

2.  Bahrain. The Trump administration agreed to resume arms sales, specifically a $5 billion sale of F-16s, to Bahrain, something the Obama administration had halted because of human rights violations against activists and Shiites. Of course, Bahrain hosts the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet, and during the Arab Spring, human rights groups criticized President Obama for ignoring the crackdown against protestors.

As reported again in a WaPo article, these decisions are "the latest signals that that the Trump administration is prioritizing support for Sunni-led countries seen as critical to opposing Iran’s influence in the Mideast over human rights issues that Obama had elevated."

As an Asia scholar, I continue to wonder what parallels and lessons might exist with current U.S. support for authoritarian regimes and U.S. relationship with Asian dictators in the 1970s (Philippines, Korea, Taiwan) which were ultimately seen as "successful" in a post-democratic society. Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey are a few contemporary examples worth exploring.

Is North Korea Irrational?

No. For decades academics have been  writing on the rationality of the Kim family (and autocratic survival more generally), but journalists find it easier to sell a story when you can pitch North Korea as a land of crazies. David Kang's earlier academic piece in International Security, his interview on NPR yesterday, and an article from Anna Fifield in the Washington Post all reiterate this point.

If the goal is regime survival, than North Korean actions are indeed rational and successful. Nuclear weapons, strict control of information, and curtailment of freedoms, corruption, deification of regime...all these things are intended to keep the Kim family in power.  North Korea does not play by international rules, it regularly violates norms, and many of its actions are inviolable if not despicable (this is probably true to some degree of all governments). North Korea is certainly and may appear to play by its own rules and logic. But that doesn't make it irrational.

South Korea Post-Impeachment Round-up

I haven't been able to keep up, much less write about the South Korean impeachment, but I'm posting some analysis and discussion for later reading written by friends and colleagues here.

I begin with the Asan Institute's biweekly newsletter, Asan Korea Perspective which gives us a barebones explanation of the grounds for impeachment and outcome of the South Korean Supreme Court's decision to impeach President Park Geunhye. There's also public opinion data related to the impeachment with 77% approving impeachment.

Charges and Court's Ruling. Source: Asan Korea Perspective Vol 2, no.6)

The Washington Post provided a video summary of the impeachment.

Celeste Arrington provides her thoughts at the Monkey Cage and the next steps for an election in which a progressive candidate is assumed to win.

Many praised the Court's ruling as a win for democracy and  South Korea's own democratic process. This included the editorial board of the Washington Post, but they also reminded us that the impeachment itself doesn't solve Korea's many domestic and foreign policy problems. Darcie Draudt also reminds us that several dimensions of South Korean democracy (most notably freedom of speech) the past few years have been in decline. She asks whether the impeachment will actually lead to longer reaching domestic institutional reforms to reduce corruption. And Kathy Moon weighs in with a provocative, but dead center quote in Quartz, "I find worrisome this glorification of South Korea’s protests. If governance structures were working properly then citizens normally would be channeling their concerns through institutional processes—reaching out to their elected leaders, going to the courts. Spilling out into the street is a sign of political dysfunction.”

Anna Fifield provided a barrage of reportage on the effects of the impeachment on everything from North Korea-China relations to the joy and images of celebration of Park's impeachment.

North Korea and Revolutions

Here's a piece by Andrei Lankov evaluating the possibility of revolution in North Korea based on five indicators in James DeFronzo's book “Revolutions and Revolutionary Movements” whether a society is ripe for a revolt. It's overly simplistic, and you can't just check boxes - the causal conditions and antecedents (both structural and agent-driven) are probably more complicated. But it's still worth going through this thought experiment.

South Korea-China Relations and THAAD

Very briefly, this 38 North report is the best run-down of THAAD deployment and the tensions it has generated between the ROK and China. As the author states:

When the decision was originally made, the ROK government anticipated a negative Chinese reaction to THAAD deployment, but went ahead with it for several reasons. First, its anxiety about security and lack of missile defenses had increased significantly in response to the acceleration of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile development. Second, the ROK government needed to manage the risk of Washington abandoning the US-ROK alliance. In doing this, it considered THAAD to be one means of filling security gaps and securing conditions for the stable presence of US forces. Third, Seoul understood the system’s effective radar detection range to be limited to the Korean peninsula and is oriented solely to detect North Korean ballistic missiles. Fourth, Seoul needed to demonstrate that it would not permit China to exercise a veto over its right to deploy a system to defend its national security. Fifth, the ROK government dismissed the fear that a THAAD battery in its territory would become integrated into the US ballistic missile defense system as groundless.In addition to these factors, opponents of President Park Geun-hye’s conservative administration won a majority of National Assembly seats in the subsequent general election, raising the prospect that deploying THAAD would have become less politically feasible with further delay.

However, China holds a very different view of the South Korean decision. First, Beijing believes that one THAAD battery can neither deter North Korea militarily nor compel Pyongyang to change its behavior. Second, it thinks the system’s detection range could later be changed to suit US needs, enabling THAAD to potentially target Chinese assets, including strategic missile systems and forcing Beijing to spend more on defenses for its coastal missile bases. Third, Beijing is aware that a long-term goal of the US rebalance to Asia is to check or block China through security cooperation with South Korea and Japan. Fourth, it expects an additional strategic burden from changes to the regional “power balance,” such as new Russian defenses against THAAD that Beijing will also have to take into account.

On a related note, CFR published a study on South Korea's option in Northeast Asia in response to the China factor.