To understand our current political conjuncture involves understanding the neoliberalist trajectory that nurtured global value chains and how it triggered the current backlash culminating in Trump’s tariff extortion. Contrary to the claims of its proponents, neoliberal globalization was never about free markets. It always involved state intervention on behalf of corporations and investors. Through the IMF, WTO, and World Bank, the US-led global north empowered multinational corporations to exploit workers and resources in the global south by shielding them from democratic control, while dismantling the post-World War II social welfare gains within its own borders.  

If you look at the news, the media treats the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum more like a gala than a policy forum about regional economic policies. Despite high level meetings having occurred between the government and business interests (i.e., the APEC Business Advisory Committee), despite two senior official meetings having taken place, the media has done a negligible job of bringing the agenda and discussions in these meetings to public consciousness or debate. Instead, it has mostly focused on who will be there — K-pop megastar G-Dragon was named APEC Ambassador — or whether the accommodations and infrastructure are adequate. Little is mentioned about the specifics of the mostly closed-door discussions and decisions in the meetings and gatherings that will continue to take place between government ministers, experts, and corporations all the way up to the Leaders’ Summit on 30 October to 1 November in Gyeongju.

Given the increasing pressure to attend NATO, it’s likely Lee will attend. Lee’s initial reasoning that now is the time to focus on the recovery of Korea’s economy rather than on attending the NATO summit is pragmatic for Koreans. As a way of stepping out of the US led war drive in the region when we should be diffusing rather than exacerbating the world’s crises, it is also pragmatic for the world. 

December 3, 2024 marks the 32nd International Day of Persons with Disabilities, which was officially designated in 1992 to commemorate the adoption of the global disability action plan by the 37th United Nations General Assembly (December 3, 1982). 31 years ago, the first International Day of Persons with Disabilities began with people with disabilities all around the world seizing the microphone from politicians on the stage and trying to make their voices heard. It was meant to reproach politicians for having looked the other way in relation to the rights of the disabled and to resist widespread attitudes embodying mere pity taking.

On December 3, 2024, the Korean disability movement will have a 2-day long protest. December is a crucial political month in Korea because this is customarily when important discussions around the government budget and legislation happen. They call for the enactment of seven disability rights laws (Act on Guarantee of Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Act on Promotion of the Transportation Convenience of Mobility Disadvantaged Persons, Special Act on Supporting Jobs Focusing on Disability Rights, Act on Persons with Developmental Disabilities, Act on Guarantee of Rights of Independent Life of Persons with Disabilities, Act on Life-long Learning of Persons with Disabilities, Act on Special Education) to achieve institutional changes, and demand a commensurate budget for those laws to ensure their full implementation.

• US Military Alliances: The United States is using its post-World War II military alliances to contain China, leading to regional instability and the formation of a China-Russia-North Korea bloc.

• Regional Hotspots: The US is involved in various regional conflicts, including the Taiwan Strait, the Korean Peninsula, and the South China Sea, often through military exercises and defense agreements.

• Taiwan Tensions: Taiwan’s separatism, influenced by historical US and Japanese interventions, is a major point of conflict, with the US pushing Taiwan towards a potential war with China.

• Peace Movements: Activists advocate for peace through inter-regional solidarity and oppose US military actions that destabilize East Asia.

The only way to stop the ongoing genocide is for the citizens of the world to stand together in solidarity and fight for Palestinian freedom, and this is an important task for all those who stand in solidarity with Palestine.

We are approaching the one-year anniversary of the Israeli offensive that devastated Gaza. Civil society in South Korea is also planning a national action on October 5. Let's work together to end the colonization and liberation of Palestine, for freedom and justice in Palestine, and for the future of Palestinian children.

The shock of real-life sex crimes in our everyday lives is shaking the country as the full extent of the spread of deep-fake pornography is coming to light. Deep-fake sex crimes have been exposed everywhere in women's lives: in universities, middle and high schools, the military, clubs, and families.

The writer traveled to Venezuela from July 23-29 as an international observer for the presidential election. The writer received an overview of the election process and visited five polling stations in Caracas to observe the voting process in person. Voting was taking place in a free and peaceful environment. After the election, the writer participated in the announcement of the results and witnessed the Venezuelan people gathered in front of the Presidential Palace in Caracas to celebrate the results. The writer also saw the violent protests that took place in Caracas the day after the election.

On July 28, Venezuela's presidential election was held, and the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced that total voter turnout was 59%, with President Nicolas Maduro receiving 51.95% of the vote (6.4 million votes) and Edmundo Gonzalez receiving 43.18% (5.3 million votes) of the nine opposition candidates. As a result, incumbent President Nicolas Maduro will begin his third term in January 2025. However, the results of Venezuela's presidential election have been under debate for a month now, both within the country and around the world. 

Venezuela is currently undergoing a revolution that challenges the U.S. unipolar order in favor of a multipolar world. Despite facing issues like corruption and economic difficulties, the Bolivarian Revolution—a 25-year-old initiative of direct democracy that empowers the people—has bolstered communes and continues to secure basic human needs through social programs, including free healthcare and housing missions.

Moreover, the Bolivarian process encourages regional cooperation in Latin America. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America—The People's Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) remains committed to promoting trade and cooperation based on solidarity. This commitment explains why the majority of Venezuelans have supported the current government for 25 years and why Latin American and Caribbean nations stand in solidarity with Venezuela.

As South Korea strengthens its alliance with the U.S., Venezuelan news is often reported through the lens of mainstream Western media. For instance, the media labels Nicolas Maduro as a “dictator” simply because he is serving his third term. Nonetheless, it is crucial to observe the Bolivarian Revolution as it continues to foster direct democracy, social programs ensuring basic needs, and solidarity-based trade. These efforts symbolize hope for a society distinct from one dominated by capitalism, which exacerbates the wealth gap, views basic needs as individual burdens, and disregards the people's will in politics. I am writing from Venezuela, serving as an international observer for the presidential election, and I am keenly anticipating the results on Sunday (July 28).

This striving to be the best intensifies when you mix the West’s hyper-individualism–leading to societies that become free-for-alls. Individuals become obsessed with self-recognition and recognition from others in our Achievement Society which values titles, awards, and status. According to Han, the same obsession with increasing one’s “worth” is how positive power drives us to self-exploit into depression and burnout. Han particularly emphasizes that “freedom itself, which is supposed to be the opposite of constraint, is producing coercion”. When you combine the self-monitoring of positive power with capitalism’s "unlimited potential" ideology, you essentially self-exploit to achieve your goals. Symbolically, a pair of eyeballs that invade your psyche for productivity is bound to lead to burnout, shame, or depression. The inevitable “shortcomings” or “failures” will undermine your “value” or belief in accomplishing the impossible. 

Credit: Lee Nallalingham

When this incessant push for achievement and success becomes too much, individuals burn out and fizzle into depression. Understandably, nearly half (48%) of 18-to-29-year-olds said they feel drained compared with 40% of their peers aged 30 and up, while women (46%) reported higher levels of burnout than men (37%). To fail in this Achievement Society or otherwise not prosper is to “see themselves as responsible for their (shortcomings) and feel shame instead of questioning society or the system”. Because we operate as individual “projects” to be constantly improved upon, the self-exploitation of positive power turns our aggression against ourselves– leaving many of us inclined towards depression rather than demands for a social project for real change.

Nearly 200 years after Marx called for “workers of the world to unite,” internationalism is still a secondary priority for most of the left, rarely moving beyond handshakes between trade union leaders or statements by progressive parties. It’s ironic then that peasants, a class often denigrated as provincial and backward, have built the most successful international movement of the 21st century. La Via Campesina or “The Peasant Way'' started as a declaration by 31 peasant organizations and has now grown to 182 national affiliates and 200 million members. In her book, “La Via Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants,” Annette Aurelie Desmarais reveals peasant activists used international solidarity to fortify—rather than detract from—local and national struggles. 

As of April 2023, 18,997 pieces of space debris orbit the Earth. This debris includes spent rocket stages, defunct satellites, and other fragments from various space activities. The increasing number of satellite launches raises the likelihood of collisions between debris and active satellites. Such collisions would generate even more debris, which could significantly increase the risk of further collisions and potentially disrupt the satellites we rely on for communication, navigation, weather forecasting, and other essential services.

We thank Jun and Yolanda for sharing home care workers struggle to end sweatshop labor in New York City. Homecare workers are arguing that the attack on their rights will spread to other industries, but it’s also true that it’s spread to other countries, as we are seeing with the South Korean government’s attack on migrant care workers rights. Home care workers have shown that we must move beyond trade union consciousness to a genuine mass movement that organizes workers where they live and where they work, grounded with an analysis of US imperialism and global capitalism.

Every year on May 15, we commemorate the atrocities of the Nakba, Arabic for catastrophe, during which more than 750,000 indigenous Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homelands as a result of the Zionist pursuit of a Jewish ethno-state atop their homes in 1948. As Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, Zionist militias had been laying the groundwork for this ethnic cleansing by carrying out campaigns of terror against villages and cities across historic Palestine, leaving devastation and massacres in their wake, from Deir Yassin to Tantura. Those who fled this violence would become one of the largest refugee populations in the world, a population that continues to endure displacement today. As we mark these events amidst the backdrop of a seven-month-long genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, it’s more clear than ever that the Nakba never ended; its violence has persisted over the decades in the form of continued Israeli aggression and occupation, ethnic cleansing campaigns, house demolitions, the imprisonment of children, women, and men, and the persistent efforts to deny Palestinians any semblance of dignity, justice or self-determination. 

On the hundredth anniversary of Lenin’s death, the Tricontinental Institute of Social Research released a 21st-century update to Lenin’s monumental pamphlet, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. In its latest dossier, “Hyper-Imperialism,” Tricontinental explores how the United States, desperate to reverse its decline, is aggressively dragging the whole world into war, both conventional and economic. On March 9th, No Cold War hosted a panel of intellectuals, activists, and journalists from around the world to discuss how hyperimperialism has affected the Global South, from blockades in Latin America, to a militarized island chain in the Indo-Pacific, and bankrolling genocide in the Gaza Strip.

58th 'Commute by Subway' protest underway at Seoul Station Sound equipment confiscated, press conference dismissed before even beginningDirector Park Kyung-seok chains himself to an activist "to avoid being dragged away "Police and Seoul Metro employees strangle Park while attempting to cut chains

In other coconut growing areas outside of Thailand, coconuts are harvested using people or machines. Moreover, a group of Indian researchers developed coconut picking robots in 2020 though they still have a long way to go for the commercialization of the technology. Since the use of animal labor in agriculture has been around for a long time, we may be able to understand the use of monkeys as a traditional Thai farming method. However, looking at the scale and intensity of the labor, it is clear that this is exploitation rather than traditional farming methods. Why should it be seen as exploitation? Behind this, in addition to the animal rights issue, there is the systemic problem called capitalism.

So, what should we do for the survival of all humanity and the preservation of our ecosystems? There seem to be only two possible approaches. Either we gather our collective strength, engage in a struggle to wrest political power from the privileged, and invest capital to save the environment ourselves, or, even if we can't take away their power, we must at least compel the privileged to invest capital in saving the environment. In whatever form, we must stop the unbridled pursuit of capital for the sake of the survival of all humanity. Otherwise, we cannot guarantee the right to survival for all. 

What's even more frightening is the possibility that even if the Earth's environment is severely destroyed in the future, to the point where humanity is almost wiped out, some of the giant capitalists may continue to exist, utilizing the artificial intelligence and other technologies they monopolize. In other words, the colossal wealth may choose to ignore the existential crisis we feel.

The International Strategy Center (ISC) spent June and July hosting events and study groups on queer issues. We have had movie nights and book clubs centered around media representation, queer theory in the context of leftism, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the US. On July 28th, we concluded these two months with our Progressive Forum interviewing Holic, the president of the Korean Sexual Minority Culture and Rights Center.