The Legal Standard Courts Actually Apply A South Korean media outlet recently reported on a deepfake sexual abuse case involving a minor member of a girl group: someone had digitally superimposed her face onto sexually explicit content. In that ca…
Korea's Rising Non-Referral Rate: What the Numbers Show Over the past few years, I've noticed a clear pattern in South Korea: more and more people who file a criminal complaint end up receiving a “non-referral” notice from the police — mea…
Why a Stuffy Nose Can Make You Feel Mentally Foggy If you've ever crammed for an important exam while battling a bad cold or allergic rhinitis, you already know how much it can hurt your performance. The moment your nose gets blocked, your hea…
Mistaking Endurance for Real Strength This is a personal reflection on stress, dissociation, and the real difference between simply enduring pressure and truly knowing how to manage it, drawn from an experience of collapsing under stress in high s…
What Online Posts Get Wrong About Suicide Threats and Intimidation Online posts often claim that threatening suicide can lead to a criminal intimidation charge in Korea, but a closer look at the underlying cases tells a different story. This artic…
A New Law, and a President's Second Thoughts I recently came across a news report suggesting that President Lee Jae-myung had indicated, in effect, that how a company distributes its operating profits should not be a matter that labor disputes…
An Unexpected Audit Finding A recent report by the Seoul Shinmun brought to light the findings of a Board of Audit and Inspection review into how school violence committees in major school districts in Seoul, including Gangnam and Mokdong, keep th…
When Rules Exist But No One Follows Them I recently had the chance to give a lecture on internal controls. While pulling together materials for that talk, I noticed something that says a lot about how compliance actually works in Korea. The prob…
Confronting My Own Sense of Diligence I had long considered myself someone who worked quite hard. I devote my holidays to self-improvement, and on weekdays I spend nearly the entire day immersed in my work. I recall Dr. Shin Young-jun once remarki…
The Limits of Importing Western ESG Standards Governance discourse in Korea tends to hold up Western ESG cases as the gold standard, but the social and cultural conditions that shape governance in the West are not the same as those in Korea. This …
A Heated Debate Over Supplementary Investigation Authority South Korea's debate over abolishing the prosecution's authority to demand supplementary investigations has raised real concerns about the quality and reliability of police investi…
The Silence in a Crowded Room A crowded room where no one spoke to anyone, eyes fixed on smartphones instead of the speaker, set off a reflection on what Pete Davis calls our "culture of infinite browsing." Drawing on his own career choice…