Lose at the Supreme Court, Then What? The Forced Four-Tier Judiciary Bill.

• The Court Reference Act (amendment to the Constitutional Court Act) passed the Legislation and Judiciary Committee. It stipulates imprisonment of up to 10 years if judges or prosecutors distort or misapply the law. The amended Court Organization Act also passed—expanding the number of Supreme Court justices from 14 to 26.
• Park Young-jae (Chief of the National Court Administration) agreed with the criticism that “citizens could fall into a litigation hell.” Lee Jin-soo (Vice Minister of Justice) noted that it “could undermine the stability of the judicial system and cause side effects like trial delays.”
• Newspapers show varying tones. JoongAng Ilbo headlined, “Unprecedented four-tier judiciary becoming reality,” while Donga Ilbo bundled it with the “law distortion crime” clause as “Three laws pressuring the judiciary.” The Hankyoreh opted for a drier “Speed war.” Kyunghyang Shinmun didn’t even cover it on the front page.
• In an editorial, Chosun Ilbo criticized, “It can only be seen as a political maneuver to pressure the Supreme Court that convicted Lee Jae-myung (President).”
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What Matters Now.

Today’s Meeting: Kang Hoon-sik Summons Jeong Chul-rae and Jang Dong-hyeok.

• “An open and candid exchange of opinions on all state affairs is expected,” said Kang Hoon-sik (Chief of Staff to the President). Both need consolation.
• Jeong Chul-rae (Democratic Party Leader) was reprimanded for nominating the wrong second special prosecutor candidate and halted merger talks with the Cho Kuk Reform Party. He clashed with the Blue House over supplementary investigation authority for prosecution requests, but yesterday said, “As it’s government legislation, I request that the party’s stance be reflected.” He has taken a step back.
• Jang Dong-hyeok (People Power Party Leader) demanded a dual special prosecutor system and staged an eight-day hunger strike, but withdrew without results. The dual special prosecutors were for the Unification Church and nomination bribery cases. Though he vowed, “I’ll fight harder,” he is feuding with Han Dong-hoon (former People Power Party Leader) and has yet to resolve internal party conflicts over whether to cut ties with “Yoon Again.”

“President Favors Merger,” Kang Deuk-gu Deletes Post.

• Kang Deuk-gu (Democratic Party Supreme Council Member) faced backlash over a Facebook post he later deleted. It described a conversation with Hong Ik-pyo (Blue House Political Affairs Chief) in which the President’s stance was said to be: after local elections, merge parties and hold a unified convention.
• Hong Ik-pyo actually made nearly identical remarks at a press conference. Suspicions erupted over presidential interference in party affairs.
• Kang claimed, “I mistakenly posted a message meant for Kim Min-seok (Prime Minister).” This fueled speculation that Kim opposed the merger contrary to the President’s wishes.
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Electoral Alliances Harder Than Mergers.

• Merging at least clears traffic, but electoral alliances require immense coordination over candidate unification.
• Cho Kuk (Representative of the Cho Kuk Reform Party) demanded, “Clarify what each—alliance and integration—means.”

Deep Dive.

Homeownership Delayed by 14 Years Compared to Parents’ Generation.

• Calculating the age of household heads who bought their first home in the last four years, the average was 46.4 years as of 2024.
• The parents’ generation 30 years ago purchased homes at 32.2 years.
• There are two causes: first, housing prices have risen, and second, young people are securing jobs later.
• Last year, the average age of college graduates entering the workforce was 30.7 years. In 1998, it was 25.1 years.
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“The National Assembly Is Too Slow to Function.”.

• Lee Jae-myung (President) said this. While the U.S. Investment Special Act is pending, other contentious bills are also endlessly delayed.
• First question: Even as the majority party, why can’t they push through? There was debate over whether ratification approval was needed, but since hundreds of trillions of won are at stake, bipartisan agreement is necessary.
• If placed on the fast track, it must sit for 180 days in the standing committee and 90 days in the judiciary committee. The fast track is not fast. It can be pushed through with more than two-thirds majority, but the Democratic Party (162 seats) alone cannot achieve this.
• Second question: Is the Assembly really slow? Yes. In the 21st National Assembly, it took an average of 615 days to process a bill. That’s over a year and a half. In the 16th Assembly, it was 273 days. The trend is worsening.
• Third question: Why is it so slow? First, too many bills are proposed. The 21st Assembly saw 25,858 bills, of which 2,963 passed. 89% were discarded.
• Even changing a single word is treated as a bill, and dozens of similar bills are often bundled. Worse, they are rarely properly reviewed.
• In 2020, the so-called “Working Assembly Act” mandated that standing committees hold at least two full meetings and three subcommittee meetings monthly, but almost no committee complies.
• In the 20th Assembly, each bill took an average of 6.6 minutes to process. In the 22nd Assembly, 15,285 bills have already been proposed.
• Fourth question: Is this common elsewhere? South Korea is overwhelmingly the worst. In Japan, each legislator proposes 1.3 bills and passes 0.6 over four years. In South Korea, 80.5 are proposed and 9.8 pass.
• Fifth question: Why does this happen? Bill proposals count toward lawmakers’ performance. In the 21st Assembly, Min Hyung-bae (Democratic Party lawmaker), who proposed 325 bills, saw only one pass. The remaining 324 were discarded.
• The real issue is not slowness but legislative paralysis from mass proposals.
• Park Hyun-seok (research fellow at the National Assembly Futures Institute) pointed out, “Legislative evaluation should shift from metrics like the number of proposals, processing rates, or passage rates—which demand ‘more legislation’—to whether ‘more socially significant legislation’ was carefully achieved through sufficient deliberation and review.”
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Yoon’s Three-Year Tax Cut: 46 Trillion Won.

• Analysis by the National Budget Research Institute. The Yoon administration is the only government to record negative tax revenue growth.
• Corporate taxes fell from 103.6 trillion won in 2022 to 62.5 trillion won in 2024, then rose to 84.6 trillion won last year.
• Income taxes dropped from 128.7 trillion won to 115.8 trillion won, then increased to 130.5 trillion won.
• Both corporate and income taxes actually decreased when adjusted for economic scale.
• Comprehensive real estate taxes fell from 6.8 trillion won in 2022 to 4.7 trillion won last year.
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Another Take.

“Anti-Discrimination Law? Moon Jae-in Bears the Greatest Responsibility.”.

• Moon Jae-in (former president) recommended Hong Sung-soo’s (professor at Sookmyung Women’s University) book *The Illusion of Not Discriminating* and wrote, “A legislative decision must be made.”
• Hong Sung-soo pointed out, “It was painfully regrettable that the Moon administration abandoned its ‘historical responsibility,’ and the situation continues to make it difficult to seize another opportunity.”
• Regarding Moon’s statement that “the failure to legislate so far is a political failure, and I am not free from responsibility,” Hong criticized, “As the person bearing the greatest responsibility, even if not repentance, he should have at least expressed regret or disappointment over failing to push it through during his tenure.”
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When Will the Anti-Discrimination Law Ever Pass?

• “The Anti-Discrimination Law has been proposed multiple times since 2007 but has always been discarded or withdrawn without proper deliberation.”
• Nam Ji-won (Khan Newspaper Gender Desk) has had to include this sentence in every article covering the Anti-Discrimination Law. Even in the 22nd National Assembly, the Democratic Party shows little interest, while bills proposed by Son Sol (Progressive Party lawmaker) and Jeong Choon-saeng (Cho Kuk Innovation Party lawmaker) remain pending.
• Nam Ji-won confessed, “I want to write a different sentence when this assembly term ends.”

Three Times Daily: Presidential X Check.

• Public officials have made checking the President’s X (Twitter) a daily routine.
• Top-down agility has increased instead of bottom-up deliberation. Sensitive issues like the sugar tax controversy and heavy capital gains taxes on multiple homeowners were settled on X.
• Opinions are divided: some praise the transparency in policy-making, while others worry about declining quality. While escaping backroom governance and real-time disclosure are strengths, one economic ministry director described it as “driving on the highway with the door open and no seatbelt.”
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Warning: The SIU Could Become a Monster Too.

• Lee Jae-myung’s proposed SIU would be a hybrid agency handling investigations, prosecutions, and trials.
• Jeong Hyo-sik (JoongAng Ilbo Social Affairs Bureau Chief) warned, “There’s no guarantee the SIU won’t turn into another Corruption Investigation Office.”
• The agency would employ 3,000 personnel—half the current prosecution’s investigative staff—with a far broader investigative scope.
• While prosecutors handle around 6,300 cases annually, the SIU aims for 20,000.
• “Can we guarantee the SIU won’t abuse investigative power? Moreover, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety’s command and oversight authority is unlikely to safeguard the SIU’s political neutrality.
• Are we willing to tolerate another monster just because we dislike the prosecution?”
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The Fix.

Dragons from Streams? First Make Streams into Rivers.

• For children born in the 1970s, the intergenerational income mobility index (RRS) was 0.11, but it jumped to 0.32 for those born in the 1980s. This means if a parent’s income rank rises 10 places, the child’s rank rises 3.2 places.
• Leaving one’s hometown boosts income rank by 6.5 percentage points, while staying behind drops it by 2.6 points. Moving from non-capital regions to the capital area had the highest rate of upward mobility.
• Children from the bottom 25% of parental income who moved to the capital area had a 63.3% chance of entering the top 50%, compared to 35.7% if they stayed in their hometowns.
• Children from the top 25% of parental assets were 43 percentage points more likely to move to the capital area than those from the bottom 25%—due to housing cost burdens.
• The Bank of Korea’s solution? Threefold:
• First, increase opportunities for non-capital region students to enter top Seoul universities.
• Second, make bold investments in regional anchor universities. A selective focus strategy is needed to match the competitiveness of top Seoul universities in specific fields.
• Third, balanced regional development centered on key cities is essential.
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Creating a Gangnam in Southern Gyeonggi.

• Pyramid structure with Gangnam’s three districts at the apex. First vertex: IT workers in Pangyo commute from Yongin. Second vertex: Pangyo apartment residents commute to Seoul. Third vertex: Near Samsung Electronics’ Pyeongtaek plant, new towns like Godeok have emerged—residents’ goal is still a Seoul apartment. Though good jobs have moved south, wealth and opportunity remain concentrated in Gangnam’s three districts.
• Jo Gwi-dong (economic columnist) proposed, “It’s time to relocate major corporate headquarters further south—to Yongin, Hwaseong, or Pyeongtaek, where actual operations are based.” The idea is to create a new central business district in southern Gyeonggi that represents Korea. By linking Incheon International Airport and Sejong City via a metropolitan transport network and clustering universities and convention facilities, a global high-tech hub could emerge.
• Jo Gwi-dong emphasized, “The notion that Pangyo is the southern limit for office workers and Giheung for engineers must be shattered for high-tech industries to truly decentralize.”
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South Korea’s Nuclear Power Density: Three Times France’s.

• This is calculated by dividing installed capacity (MW) by land area (㎢). South Korea will reach 0.31 by 2033. France was 0.11 as of last year, and the U.S. 0.01.
• South Korea will have 29 nuclear reactors by 2033.

40,000 Won and 820,000 Won.

• The maximum insurance premium support for vulnerable groups unable to pay National Pension contributions is 37,950 won. If these individuals fall into poverty and become basic livelihood security recipients, the monthly cost rises to 820,556 won.
• Kim So-yoon (The Hankyoreh Social Policy Editor) pointed out, “Actively supporting premiums to bring low-income local enrollees into the National Pension system is a profitable move.”
• South Korea’s elderly poverty rate is 40%, compared to the OECD average of 14%. Although the government has expanded National Pension premium support programs, eligibility remains limited to those earning less than 800,000 won monthly, and support lasts only one year.
• As of June last year, 2.76 million people were exempt from National Pension contributions.
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Should Medical Malpractice Be Exempt from Criminal Liability?

• Kim Yoon (Democratic Party lawmaker) proposed the bill. It prohibits prosecution if there is no gross negligence and compensation is provided.
• The Korea Daily criticized in an editorial, “It could incentivize doctors avoiding essential medical services to return,” but added, “It cannot escape criticism as a privilege granted only to physicians.”
• There are concerns that placing the burden of proof on patients’ families and restricting even criminal complaints could exacerbate harm.

ICYMI.

Zombie Chipmaker’s ‘Super Momentum’.

• The Financial Times thoroughly covered SK Hynix’s comeback story.
• These days, young Koreans reportedly prefer SK Hynix over Samsung Electronics. They promised to allocate 10% of operating profits as performance bonuses until 2035 and released 4.7 trillion won earlier this year. If projections of 150 trillion won in operating profit materialize, next year’s bonuses could triple this year’s.
• SK Hynix’s HBM market share exceeds 50%. The HBM market is expected to grow from $1 billion in 2022 to $87 billion by 2027. Kwon Seok-joon (Sungkyunkwan University professor) predicted, “Memory will become the bottleneck of the AI era.” Supply shortages will persist.
• As of Q4 last year, Hynix’s operating margin was 58% (higher than TSMC’s). Its market cap surged 340% in a year.
• When Chey Tae-won (SK Chairman) acquired Hynix for 3.4 trillion won in 2012, most speculated it would become a “Hynix curse.” Instead of dominating the “zombie company,” Chey empowered Park Sung-wook (then Hynix vice president, an engineer) by appointing him president.
• In his recent book *Super Momentum*, Chey wrote, “The underdog spirit of ‘going hard’ was the driving force that overcame crises.” A phrase once popular at Hynix was, “Go man go, is man is” (Those who leave, leave). Employees who stayed and protected the company built today’s SK Hynix.
• Hynix bet early on HBM. Though called “over-spec” like “putting a Genesis engine in a morning car,” the landscape changed when ChatGPT launched in December 2022. After enduring semiconductor winter in 2022—losing 2 trillion won per quarter—the AI spring arrived. In summer 2023, with debt ballooning to 32 trillion won, Hynix used its last bullet. It converted a NAND flash factory in Cheongju into an HBM plant and produced samples in six months.
• Was it just luck? Lee In-sook (director of Platform9 and 3/4), who wrote *Super Momentum*, quoted the movie *Moana*: “A true wayfinder knows the way? No. The real wayfinder makes a path where none have gone before.”
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BYD Overtakes Ford.

• Sold 4.6 million units last year. Toyota remains first, selling 11.32 million units.
• One of America’s Big Three being overtaken by a Chinese automaker is significant. GM (6.18 million) and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler, 5.48 million) held steady, but Ford fell to 4.4 million—surpassed by BYD.
• Geely, another Chinese automaker, ranks eighth with 4.12 million units.

How to Order Chinese Food Well.

• If everyone orders individually, you end up with similar dishes. “It’s better to have a ‘benevolent dictator’ harmonize the order,” advises Fuchsia Dunlop (author of *Stirfrying Water*). The sequence should be:
• Start with cucumber salad and coriander salad, followed by a dessert of lotus root stuffed with sweet glutinous rice as a starter.
• Build tension with braised pork belly, then soothe with silken tofu.
• After mild eight-treasure tofu and clear-steamed sea bass, numb the palate with spicy shredded pork, then cool it with clear cabbage dumpling soup. The key is rhythm: strong-weak-medium-strong-weak.
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Minister Kyung-hoon? The MSIT’s Anti-Bureaucratic Experiment.

• Baek Kyung-hoon (Minister of Science and ICT) is called Kyung-hoon-nim. Nameplates were changed to read “Baek Kyung-hoon-nim.” No more “section chief” or “administrative officer.” Everyone is ◯◯-nim.
• Producing 900+ nameplates took two weeks and cost just over 10 million won.

U.S. House Hearing on Coupang? Just a Routine Opinion Gathering.

• It’s not a hearing—it’s a closed-door deposition with congressional staffers.
• The JoongAng Ilbo cited diplomatic sources to analyze, “It’s likely a result of Coupang’s lobbying.”
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Worth Reading.

Revisiting Chung Chung-rae’s Apology.

• The Democratic Party’s recommendation of Jeon Jun-cheol (Gwangjang Law Firm lawyer) as a special prosecutor candidate touched a nerve. He is the lawyer who testified unfavorably against Lee Jae-myung (president) in the North Korea remittance case.
• Word has it that Lee Jae-myung (president) was deeply displeased.
• Kim Soon-deok (Dong-A Ilbo columnist) pointed out, “It was no different from publicly declaring that the most important issue for Lee Jae-myung is his own trial.”
• “Even though political neutrality is the highest virtue of a special prosecutor, the ruling party’s groveling apology for recommending a candidate displeasing to the president was pathetic. Do they not care about the citizens who elected them?”
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Black-and-White Chef Strategies in the AI Era.

• Knowing a recipe doesn’t mean anyone can cook the same dish.
• Lee Soo-hwa (Seoul National University professor) emphasized, “AI can create optimal recipes (how), but why we make this dish (why) and what value to infuse (what) stems from the chef’s worldview.”
• “Organizations fixated on ‘how’ will become obsolete. Only those providing trust and value judgment will survive. In times of upheaval, the winners are not the tech users but those designing strategy and philosophy.”
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One Solid Property Is the Key.

• An 183㎡ apartment in Apgujeongdong rose from 2.5 billion won in 2016 to 10.5 billion won in January this year. The capital gain is 8 billion won, yet taxes amount to less than 600 million won. Thanks to single-homeowner tax exemption and long-term holding deductions. The nominal tax rate is 45%, but the effective rate drops to 7%.
• Park Hyun (Hankyoreh Columnist) pointed out, “If the system distorts incentives, causing excessive real estate concentration and asset polarization, it’s a problem that can no longer be ignored.”
• If a single-homeowner buys a house for 1 billion won and sells it for 3 billion won after 10 years, the U.S. taxes 340 million won, Japan 250 million won, and the UK 480 million won. South Korea? 80 million won.
• Park Hyun emphasized, “We must confront the ‘one solid property’ phenomenon head-on.”
• Related Link.