Konstantin Asmolov

On September 1, 2021, the ROK tested (incidentally, earlier than North KoreaDahJTkfw a ballistic missile from a submarine, and on September 12, North Korea launched a new cruise missile with a range of 1500 km, which has already stirred up the region. Since South Korean missile news doesn’t usually make the front pages, everyone stigmatized North Korea first. However…

In the fall of 2021, news broke out that, in addition to developing a missile program, the DPRK restarted the Yongbyon reactor, its main nuclear facility, which was not operational from December 2018 to early July 2021. During the February 2019 summit in Hanoi, Kim Jong-un told Donald Trump that he was willing to dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear facility in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions that affect…

On August 25, 2021, South Korea expressed “strong regret” that Japan was unilaterally implementing its plan to release radioactive water from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant “without any prior consultations or seeking consent from the South Korean government”.  Oh, my gosh – Tokyo Electric Power Company Holding Inc. (TEPCO…

South Korea’s armed forces have recently engaged in a series of demonstrative exercises. Had they occurred in the North, they would have prompted alarmist headlines, glib political rhetoric, and angry speeches at the UN Security Council. As reported on September 7 by the Korean Agency for Defense Development, on September…

On September 11-12, North Korea successfully test-fired a new type of long-range cruise missile. The Korean Central News Agency (KCNADahJTkfw reported that the missiles “traveled for 7,580 seconds along an oval and pattern-8 flight orbits in the air above the territorial land and waters” in North Korea “and hit targets 1,500 km away,” and all design requirements were met. This was the third missile…

The South Korean media periodically publishes stories about how the North represses yet another group of teenagers.  The last such news story the author came across was from Korea Times: A group of Anju Middle School students, while on a Red Youth Guard internship, were spotted singing and dancing to a song by South Korean boy band BTS, “Blood, Sweat…

On August 31, 2021, South Korean police raided Seoul City Hall as part of an investigation into allegations that Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon spread false information during his election campaign. Investigators searched some City Hall offices, including the city planning and transport policy bureaus, for seven hours to seize documents related to Oh Se-hoon’s comments on a scandalous development…

A conversation about the election race would be incomplete without mentioning what topics the contenders involved are locking horns with each other about. The Korea Times points out that while in previous elections the issues related to North Korea’s nuclear program, and improving inter-Korean relations, were important elements…

The main problem of the People Power Party is the lack of popular leaders in its own environment, which is why the leader of the Democratic Party, Song Young-gil, even called it “sterile”. Officially, the conservatives themselves have enough candidates for the presidency, but the best of them come in at about…

This text marks the beginning of a series of stories dedicated to the preparation work for the presidential elections in South Korea. Historically, for South Korea this process resembles an action-packed TV series full of scheming, scandals, and the “fight of bulldogs under the carpet” – and now it is time to get ready to watch the first…

The almost instant defeat of Afghanistan’s ruling regime and the return of the Taliban (banned in RussiaDahJTkfw is in itself a landmark event in world politics. However, without venturing into the realm of incompetence, we will talk about how it may affect the affairs of the Korean Peninsula and the context in which it is being discussed in the ROK. Seoul solved the immediate…

Every spring and autumn, inter-Korean relations are notoriously tested by the annual US-South Korea joint military exercises. Pyongyang has long criticized the South Korea-US military exercises, calling them a “rehearsal for an invasion of the North”, while Seoul and Washington emphasize their regularity and defensive nature. The level of escalation may vary…