Edward Howell

Month after month, it just kept plummeting. The South Korean birth rate last year earned the not-so-holy prize for being the lowest in the world. The demographic crisis faced by South Korea seems hardly the hallmark of the country’s self-proclaimed status as a ‘global pivotal state’. That said, the country’s fertility rate rose incrementally to a high of 0.75 births per woman in 2024, marking the first time in nine years that any such uptick has been seen. It is too early to say whether the tide is turning. Nevertheless, South Korea faces an unholy combination of an ageing population (with the over 65 year-olds accounting for 20 per cent of the country’s nearly-52 million people) coupled with a catastrophically low birthrate.

For a country that is notorious for its lack of connection to the outside world, North Korea is one of the world experts in cyberwarfare. Only this week, North Korean hackers managed to steal $1.5 billion from the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, in what is the largest cryptocurrency hack on record. The fact that the stolen money is just over 5 per cent of the country’s GDP does not mean the profits will be going to the North Korean people or economy though. After all, nuclear weapons and missiles hardly come cheap. There has been a deluge of North Korean cyberattacks in the 21st century.

If there’s one thing that a despot wants, it is to stay in power. North Korea’s totalitarian Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un, is no exception. Not only does he seek to maintain the survival of his ruling regime, but Kim also yearns for North Korea to be recognised as a de facto nuclear-armed state. But whilst revolutions are rare in the nuclear-armed hermit kingdom, Kim wants to ensure that even the slightest seeds of dissent fail to be sown. Whether military elites or the North Korean youth, everyone must be kept in check. And how better to do so than by drafting a 300,000-strong youth ‘shock brigade’ to reconstruct flood-damaged areas.

This year has commenced in an historic fashion for South Korea – albeit for all the wrong reasons. Earlier today, South Korean authorities arrested the suspended – but still sitting – president, Yoon Suk Yeol, on charges of corruption and inciting insurrection, after several weeks of the embattled leader evading this outcome. Today marks the first time in history that a sitting South Korean president had been arrested, plunging South Korea once again into unchartered waters. Domestic politics in Asia’s fourth-largest economy looks like it will only get messier. It has been a tempestuous month in South Korean politics.

It was only a matter of time before North Korea lit things up again. As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken embarked on a five-day sojourn to Seoul, the hermit kingdom welcomed the US official in the way it knows best – by testing another ballistic missile.  North Korean state media proudly announced that Monday’s missile launch was of its latest hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile system. For Kim Jong Un, now entering his 14th year in power, the test of the ‘strategic weapon’ – which flew 1,100 kilometres with an altitude of close to 100 kilometres – would ‘contain any rivals in the Pacific’ and demonstrate to its ‘enemies’ that it would be ‘fully ready to use any means to defend our legitimate interests’.

For those who loathed him, it was second time lucky – but only just. With South Korea’s national assembly passing the motion to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol today (with 204 votes in favour and 85 against), the stage is set for the country’s constitutional court to determine the president’s fate: whether to oust him from office or restore his powers. The streets of Seoul are filled with scenes of jubilation accompanied by fireworks and K-pop songs. But these same streets are also occupied by pro-Yoon protesters, outraged at his impeachment. The road ahead is long. And whilst in the wake of the result, Yoon announced that he would be 'temporarily stopping [his] journey', the future of South Korean politics looks to be anything but calm.

North Korea has long been infamous for its hyperbolic rhetoric. While there are some subjects – such as the locations of its nuclear facilities – that it has so far managed to keep quiet on, the ongoing calls to oust South Korean President, Yoon Suk Yeol, following his botched attempt to impose martial law last week has proved too irresistible for Pyongyang to hold back on for long. After all, in North Korea’s eyes, any attempt to delegitimise South Korea is one worth taking. North Korea’s week-long silence following Yoon's bizarre invocation and revocation of martial law in the South last week was unusual. Pyongyang did not even conduct any missile launches.

Had you have taken a direct flight from London to Seoul yesterday afternoon, by the time you would have landed you might have been none the wiser that anything had happened at all. At near midnight South Korean time, President Yoon Suk Yeol imposed martial law across the so-called 'land of the morning calm'. Only six hours later it was subsequently, and pointedly, revoked. As South Korean citizens continue with their daily lives, the political establishment has once again entered a period of precarity. Yoon has scored a significant own goal; its implications do not end there. It is no understatement to say that the decision by President Yoon to impose martial law in an unannounced television broadcast late yesterday evening caught the South Korean people and the world unawares.

Kim Yo Jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has long been confined to her brother's not-insignificant shadow. But, in recent weeks, Yo Jong has shown that she is far more than just her brother’s ashtray-carrying secretary. She has launched a series of fiery rhetorical attacks against South Korea, accusing “South Korean scum” of “polluting the inviolable territory” of the North by distributing “political and conspiratorial” material. The target of her ire is leaflets denouncing her brother’s regime, which have been distributed using balloons across the Korean border. Yo Jong's way with words shows that she is a chip off the old block.

It surely comes as no surprise to hear that North Korea does not like the United Nations. The hermit kingdom has long derided the organisation as espousing 'double standards' in what Pyongyang has believed to be an unfair demonisation of its 'sovereign rights' to test missiles, conduct satellite launches – a euphemism for testing ballistic missile technology – or blow up roads and railways linking the communist North with the capitalist South. So when North Korea’s sharp-tongued ambassador to the UN, Kim Song, announced yesterday that the country would accelerate its nuclear and missile development the timing was anything but random. The reasoning, he said, was the 'nuclear threat of [the] United States' against North Korea'.

When Kim Jong-un does not get what he wants, he makes his displeasure known far and wide. Over the past few weeks, one would have thought that Kim would be reasonably content. In return for sending artillery shells, ballistic missiles, and most recently, troops to Russia, North Korea has been receiving food, cash, and most likely, technological assistance, the latter which is what Kim craves the most. But instead of calming down, Kim has responded in the way that he knows best – by launching yet another intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) designed to hit the US mainland.

Labour’s first 100 days in power have been nothing short of a disaster. Whether the beneath contemptible decision to shelve the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act, or the disgrace that was the handover of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, the stage has already been set for five long years for domestic and foreign policy blunders. David Lammy's first few months as Foreign Secretary have faired little better. For Lammy, risible speeches to the United Nations have been combined with absurd claims from his boss, calling for the expansion of the institution’s sclerotic Security Council. Quantity does not equal quality.

Hermit kingdoms usually keep themselves to themselves, but now, North Korea is reinventing the moniker by which it has long been known. The country may have the world’s fourth largest military, numbering nearly 1.5 million – out of a population of 26 million – but when the first tanks invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, few observers would have anticipated North Korea’s actual involvement in the ensuing war. It is not only Ukrainian intelligence reports which, this week, raised the possibility that over 12,000 North Korean soldiers have been deployed to aid Russia’s war effort. Only a few hours ago, South Korea’s intelligence agency has confirmed this grim reality – troops have now arrived.

If you visit South Korea, you may be startled at the presence of road signs pointing towards Kaesong and Pyongyang: two destinations that many of Seoul’s visitors will rarely have frequented. The latter – informally known as 'Pyonghattan' for its high-rise buildings – needs no explanation. The former was once the capital of dynastic Korea from the 10th to 14th centuries. One millennium later, it would become a special industrial region of North Korea, and home to the infamous Kaesong Industrial Complex, a now-closed joint economic development with South Korea. Yet soon, the roads and railways linking the democratic South to the authoritarian North will be no more.

The sight of a grimacing Kim Jong Un on board an inflatable rubber dinghy is not what one would expect from the leader of a country which has repeatedly threatened to ‘annihilate’ the United States. As floods ravage across provinces along North Korea’s border with China, the North Korean leader has leapt upon the occasion to berate his officials for mismanagement, reinforce state ideology, and emphasise that under the protection of the Supreme Leader, all will – eventually – be well.  While the devastating flash floods of July and early August primarily affected areas in the northern part of the country, the consequences have been felt across the hermit kingdom.

When Vladimir Putin lands in Pyongyang today on his first visit to North Korea in 24 years, it will be the second time he has met his fellow dictator, Kim Jong Un, in under a year. Even if the summit simply brings more bright lights and signatures, it would be a mistake to dismiss the trip as mere showmanship. The message from the two leaders will be clear: an anti-Western coalition is not merely a fiction, but a worrying reality. Back in 2000, North Korea was six years away from conducting its first – albeit far from successful – nuclear test and struggling to recover from a devastating self-induced famine. Pyongyang was also feeling betrayed following the end of the Cold War in 1991.

North Korea has long been known for its rhetorical braggadocio. Most of the time, the regime’s bluster needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. But on occasion, we should be less quick to dismiss the threats emanating from it and its state-controlled media mouthpieces.  Earlier this week, North Korea launched over 250 balloons carrying bags of faeces, used bottles, and other waste across the inter-Korean border, subsequently dumping them on South Korean territory. In the words of Kim Yo Jong, the vitriolic sister of Kim Jong Un, the balloons were ‘gifts of sincerity’ to the South.