Under Moon Jae-in the country has weathered covid-19 and acquired global cultural heft
With just over two months left of Mr Moon’s single five-year term, none of this has come to pass. The president remains ensconced in his palace in Seoul’s northern hills. He has pardoned Ms Park and paroled Lee Jae-yong, the heir of the Samsung empire, from whom she accepted bribes. Other leaders of conglomerates have been reassured of their firms’ central place in the economy. Ordinary citizens are struggling with unaffordable housing and a continuing shortage of jobs for the young.
Mr Moon is likely to be remembered chiefly for the way he shepherded South Korea through the pandemic. Although it is currently suffering a surge in covid-19 infections from the Omicron variant, it still has the second-lowest number of confirmed deaths from the disease relative to population of any country in the, a club mostly of rich countries.
But Mr Moon set the train in motion when he called emergency meetings in January 2020 to persuade companies to speed up production of test kits. His decision to remain in the background of public-health management probably helped earn bipartisan support for the measures the authorities imposed. It has been maintained, and is reflected in ubiquitous mask-wearing and a vaccination rate of 86% of the population, one of the world’s highest.
Companies still have some catching up to do to accommodate these new habits. And the president’s commitment to improving life has waned at times: he has done little, for instance, to push his party to adopt fast-changing social mores on such matters as gay marriage and discrimination on grounds of sex, sexual orientation or health. Prominent political associates of the president have been embroiled in sexual-abuse scandals.
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