Space Bunny is a bilingual comic about a bunny who always wanted to explore the stars — but now that he’s out in space, living on a space colony, Mufftopia, full of alien bunnies, he’s more interested in finding new ways to be lazy and drink his favorite cola, Bulpsie! Featuring many quirky characters, including: Space Bunny, his sidekick (or is it side table?) Pinkan from the Pink Planet, their mad scientist boss Liam, and Space Bunny’s aspiring chef sister, Spice Bunny.  

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To be continued in “Space Bunny ~ vol. 2” folder…

The post The Adventures of Space Bunny ~ vol. 1 appeared first on Korean Quarterly.

Korean American-themed romance novel deals out real talk on living one’s own life despite parental expectations

(Canary Street Press, Toronto, 2025, ISBN #978-1-3354-0252-3)

Review by Joanne Rhim Lee (Summer 2026)

Julia Song is the founder and CEO of Starlight Cosmetics, a brand new K-beauty cosmetics company. Only four years after she started the company at age 26, Starlight is thriving, thanks to its clean, organic ingredients and savvy marketing campaigns. Julia is passionate about her career, and it seems as though she is living the Korean American dream.

However, according to her Korean immigrant parents, she is missing the one thing that means success at age 30 — a husband. Over the years, her friends, colleagues, and family members have tried to set her up on dates, to no avail. Though she is excellent at coming up with business plans and pitching ideas to potential investors, she is admittedly terrible at small talk, as she is very blunt and doesn’t waste time with niceties. One former boyfriend declared her “undateable.”

Julia has never seen her single status as an issue, but this all changes at her grandmother’s 80^th birthday party, when she learns that her beloved halmoni is having some health issues, and that her dying wish is for Julia to find a nice man and get married. In addition to being a successful, independent career woman, Julia is also a very dutiful daughter and granddaughter, and she agrees to go out on three dates of her parents’ choosing. And though she is whip-smart, she is also clueless in the art of flirting and dating, so hijinks ensue.

If this plot summary of Julia Song is Undateable, Susan Lee’s first adult romance novel, seems like Netflix’s latest rom-com, it’s because it would indeed make an excellent Asian American romantic comedy, in the same vein as Crazy Rich Asians or Always Be My Maybe. Lee has also written several popular young adult romance novels, including Seoulmates and The Name Drop, so she knows what works.

Now that Julia’s parents have been given the green light, they quickly get to work on lining up three Korean super-suitors. They have to be smart, successful, and most importantly, tall. The search radius is not limited to southern California, but can involve airline travel, even crossing the international date line. Doctors and lawyers get bumped to the top of the list.

There is also the cute son of the Songs’ next-door neighbors, Tae Kim, who is definitely not on the list of super-suitors.  Julia used to babysit for him when he was little, and Tae is now the local handyman. He has recently come home to help his parents after his father was diagnosed with cancer. Tae helps out Julia’s parents and many other families with random tasks, and knows about Julia’s three dates through the “Korean Gossip Network” (or KGN), through which every Korean family in the Irvine area knows everybody’s business.

Tae is also quite the ladies’ man, and has a reputation for dating women who then go on to find their future husbands right after his relationship with them ends. Julia’s halmoni knows this, so she asks Tae if she can pay him to date Julia, so that Julia will find her future husband right after her relationship with Tae ends.  

He is horrified at the idea of being paid to date someone, especially his former babysitter, so he declines the offer. Instead, he offers to be Julia’s dating coach, to show her how to behave on a date with a potential suitor without making them cry, how to make small talk and ask questions without looking bored, and how to navigate a Korean BBQ restaurant as a vegetarian.

Julia doesn’t speak Korean, but Tae is fluent, so when one of the scheduled dates is with a doctor from Korea, Tae offers to serve as her translator. He also gives her a quick tutorial in K-pop music, as one of the suitors is apparently a Korean pop star. These dates are hilarious and cringy, and would translate well on the big or small screen.

Still, Julia Song is Undateable is not all light, frothy rom-com fun. Beneath the breezy dates-gone-wrong premise, Lee weaves in sharper questions about generational expectations, cultural identity, and what it really means to want a different life than the one your parents envisioned for you. After a few duds, Julia finds that she is indeed dateable, and Susan Lee’s first adult novel is indeed readable.

The post Rising entrepreneur, dud date appeared first on Korean Quarterly.

In a fit of pique, Donald Trump recently scaled back the big annual military exercise between the U.S. and South Korea. He would have canceled it altogether if the 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield training hadn’t already started. The U.S. president cited as the reasons for his action the cost of the exercise and that it was “totally inappropriate and hostile” toward North Korea.

Trump also rationalized his show of disrespect for South Korea — or, at least, for the South Korean military — by complaining that Seoul hadn’t given him enough support for the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. Back in April, at a press conference where he lambasted NATO for not sending warships to help open up the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said, “Who else didn’t help us? South Korea.”

Of course, neither did North Korea. In fact, Pyongyang quickly sided with Tehran after the initial attacks, denouncing the “illegal and reckless act of aggression” and adding that “the growing acts of U.S. hegemony witnessed by the international community are a clear example of its destructive role in undermining world peace and stability and the grave consequences that follow.”

Although accurate, Pyongyang’s statement was not exactly the basis for a warm relationship with an American president.

The strong bond North Korea has with Iran and the ritual anti-Americanism in Pyongyang’s official statements didn’t stop Trump from once again proclaiming his undying friendship with North Korean leader Jong Un Kim. Nor did the two ballistic missile tests that North Korea just conducted across the East Sea seem to have any effect on Trump’s affections. Just before the decision to scale back the military exercises with South Korea, Trump posted that “Kim Jong Un and I get along GREAT!”

Trump’s moves immediately elicited outrage among policymakers and commentators. “China and Russia are watching how easily this president abandons America’s allies, and they will remember it the next time they test us,” declared Senator Jack Reed, a top-ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. “A handshake with Kim may make compelling television,” writes Jae-yun Shim in The Korea Times. “A weakened alliance with South Korea would leave a far more dangerous legacy.”

No one should be surprised by Trump’s moves. During his first term, he consistently bent over backwards to make a deal with North Korea and frequently berated South Korea for not spending more on its alliance commitments. In the end, not much changed. North Korea didn’t give up its nukes, and U.S. military exercises with South Korea continued. Frustrated by the lack of a win, Trump refocused his attention on other less intractable conflicts.

This time around, the South Korean government is in the hands of a progressive, Jae Myung Lee, who is also eager to mend fences with North Korea. Indeed, the Blue House’s response to Trump’s declarations has been remarkably positive. The president’s office “hopes that the friendly relationship between the U.S. and North Korean leaders will lead to meaningful dialogue between the two countries, opening discussions aimed at advancing peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula,” according to a press statement.

Lee has pushed hard to improve inter-Korean relations. He has acknowledged North Korea’s nuclear capabilities even as he has outlined a three-stage process of denuclearization. He has renounced any path to reunification that involves the absorption of North Korea into South Korea. With no signs of progress in bilateral discussions, Lee has gone so far as to call for the resumption of a multilateral approach in his National Liberation Day speech on August 15.

Trump’s statements would seem to encourage such steps forward in reunification. His reduction of U.S. participation in military exercises could also function as a good-will gesture to coax North Korea back to the regional discussions that Lee proposes.

But none of this speculation takes into account North Korea’s perspective.

The bottom line is that the North Korean leader no longer seems to trust either the U.S. or South Korea to live up to their promises. From Pyongyang’s perspective, democracies are inherently untrustworthy because different parties rotate in and out of power. The commitment of the Clinton administration to the first nuclear deal — the Agreed Framework of 1994 — was eventually undercut by a Republican-controlled Congress. The deals negotiated by South Korean leaders Dae Jung Kim and Moo Hyun Roh were diluted by their conservative successors.

Compared to the U.S. and South Korea, Russia and China are reliable allies. Vladimir Putin has been in power for more than a quarter of a century, and he has delivered on his promises of economic and military assistance to Pyongyang. Xi Jinping is effectively leader for life in China, and he too has been more-or-less consistent in his support for the North Korean system (despite frustrations concerning Pyongyang’s nukes and its refusal to follow the Chinese version of economic reform).

Don’t judge Kim’s intentions simply by his proclamations, like when he promised earlier this year to completely destroy South Korea if it threatens the North. His administration has destroyed virtually every symbol and initiative of peaceful reunification negotiated with South Korean leaders, from the Arch of Reunification that once stretched across the “Reunification Highway” in Pyongyang to the inter-Korean liaison office that once stood in the ancient capital of Kaesong. Thanks to Kim, the North Korean constitution no longer mentions peaceful reunification and identifies the South as a permanent enemy.

Meanwhile, despite all the love Donald Trump has shown the North Korean leader, there’s no indication of reciprocity, at least not since the three summit meetings during Trump’s first term went nowhere. Trump, of course, has insisted that Kim has responded positively to his overtures, but he has provided no proof.

On top of the general unpredictability of U.S. policy, there’s no reason for Kim to think of Trump as reliable. The U.S. president has threatened allies like Canada and Denmark. He has gone back and forth in his attitudes toward adversaries, lambasting the Maduro regime in Venezuela and then elevating Maduro loyalist Delcy Rodriguez to the leadership. Trump has repeatedly changed his mind about helping Ukraine, resolving the conflict in Gaza, and handling the ongoing war with Iran.

As for President Lee, North Korea has seen its share of progressive leaders come and go. What hasn’t changed in South Korea is a sizable and powerful hardline constituency that demands reunification exclusively on South Korean terms. For their part, progressive leaders have routinely presided over significant increases in military spending that the North sees as threatening. Also, these South Korean leaders have almost always deferred to U.S. military decisions, as required by alliance commitments.

Lee, for all the perspicacity of his policy recommendations, has had little effect on inter-Korean relations. And Donald Trump is largely irrelevant to developments on the Korean peninsula. The tenor of the relationships — across the peninsula and between Washington and Pyongyang — is determined largely by North Korea. And right now, Kim prefers the predictability of Moscow and Beijing to the policies of hot and cold coming out of Washington and Seoul.

That could change in the future, but it won’t likely result from anything that Donald Trump says or does, no matter how fervent his social media posts or the “love letters” he exchanges with Kim. The North Korean leader is not going to give up his nuclear deterrence just because his number one American fan asks him to do so.

The post Is Donald Trump good for the Korean peninsula? appeared first on Korean Quarterly.

So great is the presence of Buddhism in Korea that it is impossible to discuss Korean history and culture without considering its influence, including on Korean art.

Buddhism has a unique place in Asian history as the single shared experience of most people living on the continent. No other cultural influence comes close to the degree to which Buddhism has affected Asian history and culture. Before the emergence of communism in China, Buddhism was the largest religion in the world.

In Korea, 23 percent of the population identifies as Buddhist, yet over 70 percent of the country’s national treasures are Buddhist artifacts. These treasures are designated by the government and officially recognize Buddhism’s influence on Korean culture. Even non-Buddhist Koreans follow many customs of Buddhist origin and remain influenced by Buddhist philosophy, even in their practice of other religions. There is an inextricable link that continues to shape Korean culture and art today.

My father, a Southern Baptist minister, had an open-minded attitude toward learning from other religions and cultures. To him, Buddhist art was so beautiful he felt it surely must be imbued with deep spirituality.

I recall sharing many images of Korean Buddhist art with my dad, and talking about how extraordinary it is. I remember in particular the deeply contemplative Pensive Boddhisatva (Korean National Treasure number 83), one of the most beautiful works of Buddhist art in the world.

It is not only a technical accomplishment, with its advanced bronze casting methods, it is a supreme artistic accomplishment. At a time when more ornate Buddhist sculpture was predominant, the artist conceived a bare-chested and barely adorned Boddhisatva. Stiff formality is abandoned for a posture that is natural and relaxed. The soft curves add to the feeling of calm and the slight bend forward draws one in to partake in the subject’s contemplation. The folds of the lower garment do not follow the schematic of Buddhist sculpture. Instead, they flow in undulating waves of varying shape. The hint of a smile we so admire on the Mona Lisa appears here in serene satisfaction a thousand years earlier. This type of naturalistic rendering was influential on later works in both Korea and Japan.

The first time I saw the Pensive Boddhisatva, also known as the Gilt-Bronze Maitreya in Meditation, my shoes became glued to the floor and my eyes fixed to the sculpture. Nothing before had whispered to me so clearly, “Hey, stop and think. No, I mean really think, and feel. I mean examine, contemplate, and consider.” The Boddhisatva then invited me to unglue my feet and circle it to appreciate its fine artistry from every angle. It was an unforgettable and inspiring experience.

When the soul needs some exercise, a trip to the third floor of the National Museum of Korea can provide it. There one will find the Buddhist Sculpture Gallery, which always provides a healthy dose of inspiration.

This is the home of the Pensive Bodhisattva in its thoughtfully designed Room of Quiet Contemplation. Other examples of what makes Korean Buddhist art sublime await observation and appreciation in the surrounding galleries.

A contrast to the Pensive Boddhisatva is the imposing grandeur of the Iron Buddha, the largest of its kind. The Stone Buddhas of Gamsansa Temple has paradoxical and mysteriously soft renderings in the hardest material, granite. And of course, there is no missing the 10-story Gyeongcheonsa Pagoda on the first floor of the museum.

Exploring this museum gives the viewer a new eye toward influence of Buddhist art throughout the centuries in Korea. It is often subtle, and sometimes overt, but it is a constant thread throughout history.

The National Museum’s collection can be viewed online, which is a great opportunity for those who cannot make the trip. It is, of course, not the same as viewing the works in person, but it is enough to plant the seeds of wonder and exploration.

As an author and musician, I am always looking for inspiration. Of course, I can find it in literature and music. But sometimes I need to look beyond books and songs to find unique stimuli that help me look at the world more deeply and think differently. I often turn to the visual and performing arts to inspire me to see the world in new ways.

Inspiration through art can be helpful in many fields of work. Even in something like business, it is helpful to be a creative problem solver to invent work-arounds for various challenges or to take new approaches to marketing. Studies show that exposure to art can stimulate creativity and help us think more originally.

Many encounters with profound imagination are waiting in museums and galleries abroad and at home. Korean Buddhist art offers more than just innovation to motivate one in their field. Most importantly, engagement with the visual arts celebrating this ancient and practical philosophy provides encouragement for living a complete life full of wonder and beauty.

(Portions of this article are excerpts from Robert Turley’s upcoming memoir, Inktown.)

The post Inspiration from a pensive Boddhisatva appeared first on Korean Quarterly.

Debut novel describes a daughter’s search for understanding about her immigrant parents’ past and her isolated rural upbringing

(Pegasus Books, New York, 2026, ISBN #979-8-8971-0069-9)

Review by Joanne Rhim Lee (Summer 2026)

Anne Kim is a successful attorney in New York City who returns home to Edmonton, Canada after her father’s sudden passing. Even though she has an older brother Charles, who never left home, Anne has always been the responsible one, so she reluctantly returns to help her mother prepare for her father’s funeral. In doing so, she uncovers many family secrets and learns that not everything was as it seemed years ago, when she was growing up with her Korean immigrant parents.

This is the intriguing premise of Inheritance, Jane Park’s debut novel. Like her main character, Park also was raised by Korean immigrant parents who ran various small businesses in rural Canadian prairie towns. Park’s story is classified as fiction. Still, there are themes in the book which will ring true to many adult children of Korean immigrants, including having hard working, self-sacrificing parents who valued education above all else, and who suffered painful generational trauma from the Korean War and from their inability, or unwillingness, to process it.

When Anne first arrives home, her Gomo (father’s sister), who has just arrived from Korea, hands her a mysterious stack of envelopes. In one fell swoop, Anne learns two shocking facts — that her father was actually from North Korea, and that he had a younger brother named Maknae whom he somehow had never mentioned. Anne’s father and aunt escaped to the South during the war, but Maknae was asked to stay home to take care of their father. Anne’s father wrote dozens of letters to Maknae over many decades, addressed to his sister’s house in Seoul, but Maknae never received them. Gomo saved the letters and presented them to Anne.

Through flashbacks, we learn that there were many other pieces of information hidden from Anne and Charles while they were growing up in Canada. As children, they often wondered why they ended up in a rural town in Canada with no other Koreans within hundreds of miles. Their father worked to become a welder. He would leave for months at a time for his job. Later, her parents bought a struggling grocery store in Crow Plains, a new rural town, despite having no experience in retail sales.

Anne’s name was originally Eun-ah, but she received a new name from her teacher on the first day of school. The kids at her new school made fun of the way the kimbap in her lunchbox smelled, so she left her Korean lunches at home under her bed, and then ravenously ate them after she came home from school. At recess, the girls called her “Chingaling Chan” and made up rhymes for her new nickname while she jumped rope.

The indignities continued — small wounds that would shape the woman she would become. At the first parent-teacher conference, Anne’s teacher told her mother that she was too quiet in class, and recommended that they start speaking English at home. That very evening, her mother declared that they would no longer speak Korean at home, even though she and her husband barely knew any English themselves. They began addressing each other by their new English names, and a new formality entered the home, creating distance between the parents and their two children.

In middle school, Anne finally made a close friend. Meredith was pretty, popular, and rich, and her parents often invited Anne over for dinner and sleepovers. Meredith’s father told her that his uncle fought in the Korean War, but Anne was confused. Was there a war in Korea? When she asks her father if he knows about this war, he answers vaguely, and she is left with even more questions.

In the present day of the story, Anne does not speak, read, or write Korean, and struggles to read the letters from her father to the younger brother Maknae.  How can one be raised by Korean immigrant parents who don’t speak English, yet bring up children who do not know the Korean language? This is a conundrum experienced by many second-generation immigrant children who were told to “succeed” at any cost, including losing their native language and their ties to their parents and culture.

Anne continues to push her mother for more information about her family’s history, but she gets a lot of push back. In her mother’s opinion, the past only contains pain, and it’s better to move forward. Her mother has lived a difficult life, including being married to a man with depression and anger. She has always carried a deep sadness, even as she tried to put on a happy face.

Anne’s week in Edmonton brings many new revelations, both about her family and about herself. What has she inherited from her parents? Their small plot of land in Crow Plains? Their generational trauma? Their strength and fortitude, despite all the odds against them?

Jane Park weaves many themes about the Korean immigrant experience in her brilliant debut novel, one that will have readers anxiously awaiting her next work.

The post The puzzles left behind appeared first on Korean Quarterly.

A non-profit group representing the rights of U.S. Korean adoptees to the South Korean government is calling for U.S. Korean adoptees and their parents, spouses, and other loved ones to participate in a project to submit video messages to the government, to be used for the first time at  the Adoption Truth International Conference to be held in Seoul in September.

The purpose of the videos, to be collected by the U.S. Korean Rights Group (USKRG) is to promote the voices of adoptees and their loved ones to an investigatory body looking into the nation’s past international adoption fraud. Participants will be asked to explain in their short video how the adoption investigation would personally affect them and their families, and how it may help adoptees find the truth of their own international adoption.

The USKRG has posted an invitation to the project, instructions and tips, subject-matter prompts, a waiver to allow use of the video for promotional purposes, and a link to submit completed videos. The invitation and instruction page is at this link.

Yuh Koppel, USKRG president, said her group is collaborating with a parallel Canadian group (the Canadian Korean Rights Group (CKRG)) in the video project, entitled Our Stories Matter.  Stories submitted early enough will be used in a collection to be shown at the September conference, but the recordings will also be used in other lobbying and communications efforts.  

Roots of the USKRG

The USKRG and other country-specific groups were founded by Korean adoptees in order to represent their rights after widespread and systemic adoption fraud was uncovered through a complaint filed by group of Danish adoptees in 2022.

The Danish Korean Rights Group (DKRG) submitted the original complaint, and the South Korean government agreed in early 2025 that adoption fraud constituted a human rights offense under South Korean law.  After that decision, Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) set up a process to accept files for investigation from any adoptees who suspect their adoption information was falsified.

The USKRG is the most recent country-specific group to form. Koppel is based in Chicago, and USKRG vice-president Rob Anderson lives in the Twin Cities.

The TRC’s investigation of international adoption is quickly becoming a large project. The current investigation assignment to the commission began in March and will extend for two or three years. 

In early 2026, the TRC asked adoptees to submit their individual adoption files and supporting information to the TRC investigation, and an enthusiastic response by Korean adoptees hit the headlines.

The purpose and reach of personal stories

Vice-president Rob Anderson said the USKRG staff and board are excited about the video project because it invites Korean adoptees to submit their own stories and thoughts to an important public forum in South Korea, and more broadly to the South Korean public. 

Until recent years, he observed, “it has been the adoption agencies and the adoptive parents that have been driving the narrative around transnational adoptions.” The videos will also give the TRC a better idea of the large and diverse population the USKRG represents.

The video messages collected for the Our Stories Matter campaign will be used in several capacities, initially at the annual Adoption Truth International Conference, to be held September 9 and 10 in Seoul.

The conference is targeted to Korean adoptees globally, and will include sessions to inform participants on the TRC’s ongoing work. The investigation is now in its third (two- to three-year) assignment to research and report on international adoption fraud.

Thousands of adoptees, particularly those placed for international adoption in the 1970s and ‘80s, have had issues with fraudulent records, which in many cases make reunions impossible between adoptees and their birth families.

Koppel said that members of the South Korean legislature, TRC members, and the press will be at the conference. An edited, Korean-subtitled collection of the messages will be part of the presentation, and will be used for a press conference.

The conference is free, and will also be streamed online, so that Korean adoptees everywhere can participate. 

Anderson said that, along with board members, he will be looking through the submitted videos to go into the edited tape to be shown at the conference.  For the conference tape, he said he is interested in “something that shows the human element of the story,” he said, rather than a message that, for example, quotes facts and statistics. Each message will be edited to a maximum of two minutes.  However, all the original videos will be preserved as part of the historical record of these times, he added.  

Pressure to step up the pace

Since many Korean adoptees whose adoption files were falsified are older adults, a second important message adoptees need to send, according to USKRG leadership, is one of urgency. It is important to push the TRC investigators to take action soon, so that older adoptees and their loved ones will be able to obtain needed information during their lifetimes.

“We are all growing older,” Koppel said, “and to do a meaningful reunification, they need to understand that, for many of us, time is running out. They need to put resources into this. And apologies are pretty hollow unless some action is coming to substantiate it.”

The latest third round of investigation (nicknamed TRC-3) started its work in late February, but still have not assigned all of its teams, Koppel remarked.  The USKRG is pushing for every case put before it to be appropriately investigated, so that adoptees have any available information to help them and their biological families to find each other, she explained.  

An optional tour for conference participants

In connection with the conference, participants can register for an optional tour to be held prior to and after the conference.

The tour is a collaboration with The Ties Program, which offers a variety of tours for adoptees. The Annual Truth DayInternational Conference and Korea Tour will run from September 6-13. It will include: The conference and conference-related activities, including a meeting with the TRC chair (September 7) and an opportunity for tour participants to turn over their files in person; a tour in and around Seoul on September 8, led by the Ties Program; the conference on September 9 and 10; and an overnight stay at a Buddhist temple to reflect and unwind after the conference (September 11-12).

The temple stay was added to the tour because, Koppel said, “last year there were some very raw stories. There were some frustrating things, and we wanted to have some kind of a support network for adoptees who went to the conference.”

Information and registration for the tour-plus-conference option is available at this link.

Building representation for U.S. adoptees

Since its founding in late 2024, the USKRG has worked to represent a population that is largely absent, in terms of what the South Korean government and the greater South Korean public can perceive.  Koppel noted that few adoptees have the means to travel to South Korea to lobby the government in person or as part of the USKRG group. 

The U.S. Korean adoptee population is twice that of any other country’s Korean adoptee community, and spread across a wide landscape. Yet in Korea, the level of official representation by and for U.S. adoptees on the adoption fraud issue has not been strong. The USKRG has been working on changing the script.

Notably, USKRG has developed several tactics to encourage participation of U.S. adoptees. These include regular Zoom update meetings on the progress of the TRC investigation, a comprehensive website, and an active USKRG Facebook group and social media presence.  The development of the personal video messages is the latest in a number of large-scale efforts to find U.S. Korean adoptees, listen to their needs, and inform them about the ongoing investigation.

This year, the number of U.S. Korean adoptees submitting files for investigation climbed, Koppel said, which is an encouraging sign, and raises the profile of U.S. adoptees in South Korea.  U.S. adoptees were the third-largest country group to submit files to the TRC in the past year, after the Denmark group (which initiated the human rights complaint leading to the investigation) and the Norway group, Koppel said. The TRC chair has agreed to meet U.S. adoptees separately prior to the conference, in part because of the surge of inquiries and file submissions by Korean American adoptees during the last year, she added.

Although the project is collaboration of USKRG and CKRG, Koppel said they are inviting any Korean adoptee, regardless of nationality, to participate in the video project, particularly people who cannot travel to the conference.

Including families of affected adoptees

There have been some questions about inviting adoptees’ family members to submit video statements to Our Stories Matter. However, USKRG decided that the voices of family members would both increase the type and diversity of statements, and serve to recognize the wider community as stakeholders in the records fraud crisis.  According to the USKRG website, children, grandchildren and other descendants of adoptees are also invited to submit video statements.

“We want to allow all to say something — especially what they are feeling about it,” Koppel explained. “I’m sure there are adoptive parents who feel they’ve been misled right now. We want to give them a voice to say that they stand with the adoptees and we feel that their own voices should be heard.”

Anderson said the collection of video messages will be ongoing.  For anyone who wants their message to be heard before the TRC, he said, time is short.  “But If you want to have your voice preserved as part of this  whole collection of voices and stories, then people can feel free to submit whenever,” he said. “We encourage people to submit videos when they are ready for it.”

Similarly, time is short for those who believe their files are fraudulent, and who want the TRC to investigate them, Anderson added.   The TRC could potentially have its investigation period extended either one or two years.  At this time, it is set to expire in early 2029, which means the commission will accept new files only until early 2028, Anderson said. The extensions are not automatic, so the TRC investigation of adoption fraud could be wrapped up by early 2029.

This means, he said, that the chance to submit files for investigation is “a moment in time” that will probably not be repeated or extended.  After the investigation time expires in 2029, “the TRC probably will not be assigned to investigate Korean adoptee issues again.”

Editor’s note:  See related KQ story on USKRG founding and outreach efforts, and the initial TRC investigation here.  A short article on reasons to submit a file to the TRC is included on the USKRG’s website at this link. The USKRG’s Facebook page is at this link.

The post A call for faces and voices appeared first on Korean Quarterly.

It has long been the dream of the U.S. foreign policy elite to bring Japan and South Korea into a tighter alliance.

Notoriously dismissive of history, American leaders don’t understand why the two countries can’t just overcome their past differences. For these Americans, the imperative of strengthened security in the region is so much more important than the legacy of colonialism, disputes over textbooks, or the territorial squabble over Dokdo.

From an outside perspective, Japan and South Korea do seem to have a lot in common. The two countries have military alliances with the U.S. Both are democracies. Both are worried about North Korea’s nuclear weapons and wary of China’s economic hegemony. They both have advanced economies and overlapping cultures of aeni/anime, manhwa/manga, and K-Pop/J-Pop. Even the languages share a huge number of Chinese-origin words.

It takes a very strong force to overcome the polarizing impact of history. Also, a very conservative prime minister is in charge in Japan and a liberal reformer is in his second year of power in South Korea. Those politics don’t mix.

But now a force seems to have come along that can unite Japan and South Korea.

That force is Donald Trump.

The U.S. president has made it clear that all traditional alliances are up for renegotiation. He wants U.S. allies to pay more for their own defense. He has slapped punishing sanctions on virtually all countries, including Japan and South Korea. And he has negotiated with adversaries — China, North Korea — over the heads of his supposed friends.

Trump, in short, is unreliable. In general, countries crave predictability and will go to great lengths to secure it. Only because Trump leads a powerful country do world leaders take him seriously.

As such, very few countries have openly defied Trump, for fear of higher tariffs or other forms of retribution. So, the leaders of Japan and South Korea have treated the U.S. president cordially despite his crudity.

But there are other, more indirect ways of responding to the erratic policies of the Trump administration. One of those is for middle powers to work together more closely to reinforce what remains of the rules-based order.

At the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos this year, Canada’s Mark Carney called on middle powers to adjust to the rupture in this rules-based order — which Carney implicitly blamed on the U.S. — and establish a measure of “strategic autonomy.” Although widely applauded for its candor, Carney’s speech was also dismissed as impractical in a world dominated by the U.S. and China. And, indeed, a Middle Powers Club has not emerged in the wake of the speech.

But new world orders are not conjured suddenly into existence by speeches, no matter how eloquent.

What has happened instead is a subtler shift in international relations. European countries, all of them certifiably middle powers, have begun to explore greater military, energy, and technological independence from the U.S. As a result of tariffs, powerful countries like Brazil are reorienting their trade away from the U.S. even as economic interactions within the Global South have been steadily increasing. African nations, too, have been hedging their bets by reducing dependency on the U.S. and relying more on regional integration.

Meanwhile, in Asia, Jae Myung Lee broke with tradition by visiting Japan before going to the U.S. Lee and Japan’s current leader Sanae Takaichi have now met four times in the last six months to discuss energy, explore ways of diversifying the supply chains of critical minerals, and play drums together.

Lee and Takaichi are not united by ideology. The Japanese leader has taken a much stronger pro-containment position toward China, and Korean progressives are unhappy with her efforts to rip up Japan’s “peace constitution.” But just as pragmatism dictates that the two countries coordinate their efforts in the face of tsunamis, the unnatural disaster of Donald Trump requires joint crisis management.

The U.S. foreign policy elite welcomes the meetings that have taken place between Japan and South Korea. But the consensus is the two countries should come together not to hedge against Trump but to unite against China.

This is a mistake, if only because China is relatively predictable and close while the U.S. is unpredictable and far away. As Trump presides over the global decline of the U.S. — its power reduced by wars, political corruption, self-inflicted economic wounds, and the destruction of the international system that has long sustained U.S. hegemony — China has steadily expanded its global influence. Korea and Japan ignore that reality at their peril.

But there are two Chinas. One China upholds the global order and exports renewable energy to the world. The other China clings to its fossil fuel imports and wants to absorb Taiwan and all the riches of the South China Sea.

Middle powers can nudge China in the first direction by collaborating on the rules of the road and research into new climate technologies. Middle powers by themselves cannot create a new world order. But by working together, they can gradually shift the center of gravity away from the unpredictable geopolitics of the U.S. and toward a more stable order.

It would seem, at first glance, that Korea and Japan are not the best middle powers to lead this effort. Both remain hesitant in their transition to clean energy. Both are increasing their military spending. Both are dependent on outside suppliers of critical minerals. But if they are now overcoming their historical differences to work together — in the face of Donald Trump’s unreliability — surely they can find common cause on clean energy, diversified supply chains, and non-military security.

Is this a pipe dream? Perhaps.

But if, just a few years ago, I’d written that the leaders of Korea and Japan would sit down one day behind twin drum sets and play pop music together, I would been called a dreamer. And yet Jae Myung Lee and Sanae Takaichi have done just that and more. Now it’s time for the two countries to take the next step and establish a middle-power compact to push the region much faster toward clean energy and cooperative security.

The post Japan and South Korea, an alliance of middle powers? appeared first on Korean Quarterly.

As the world turns its attention toward the FIFA World Cup, an even more meaningful soccer event recently took place in Korea.

Pyongyang-based Naegohyang Women’s Football Club faced Suwon FC Women in the semifinals of the Asian Football Confederation Women’s Champions League in South Korea, marking the first time North Korea has sent athletes to South Korea to compete since 2018. Some 200 South Korean civic groups formed a 3,000-strong cheering squad for the historic inter-Korean match, and South Korea’s government set aside 300 million won ($202,000) in government funds to support the cheering squad.

For many, this may sound like a niche sports story. But Korea peace activists recognized this as one of the most hopeful openings in years.

For decades, inter-Korean relations have been defined internationally through the language of crisis: Missile tests, nuclear threats, military drills, and sanctions. Diplomacy, meanwhile, has too often been treated as politically risky or naïve.

But history tells a different story

Time and again, engagement between North and South Korea has succeeded in reducing tensions and creating opportunities for dialogue. The last major period of inter-Korean diplomacy began not with weapons negotiations, but with athletes marching together.

At the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, athletes from North and South Korea entered the opening ceremony side by side under the Korean unification flag after a series of talks between then-South Korean President Jae-in Moon and North Korean leader Jong Un Kim. The image captured global attention and helped catalyze one of the most diplomatically active periods on the peninsula in years, including inter-Korean summits at Panmunjom and unprecedented U.S.-North Korea diplomacy.

Soccer, in particular, has long served as a bridge between the two Koreas. North and South Korean men’s and women’s teams have faced each other numerous times since 1946, even before the Korean War officially began.  North Korea also sent women footballers to compete in South Korea during the 2014 Asian Games, and North Korean athletes last traveled south in 2018 for an inter-Korean table tennis event. In its 1966 World Cup run, North Korea men’s team challenged Cold War stereotypes when it achieved a stunning upset victory over Italy’s team, an episode explored in the documentary The Game of Their Lives.

These exchanges allow ordinary Koreans to encounter one another, and the global community, outside the framework of hostility and forever war. Moments like this have the power to catalyze efforts for change.

Top of Form, Bottom of Form

As Korean American women advocating for peace in Korea, we have seen firsthand how engagement efforts can break through where militarized approaches have failed us repeatedly.

The Korean War never officially ended. Americans are often shocked to learn that the war was only temporarily suspended with a ceasefire armistice in 1953, making it the U.S.’s longest-running overseas conflict. For over 70 years, divided families and everyday people have borne the costs of this ongoing conflict.

Relentless sanctions and isolation by the U.S. have failed to produce any North Korean denuclearization; none of these hostile tactics have produced reconciliation or lasting diplomatic stability. Instead, they have entrenched mistrust, division, and forever war. In recent years, discussion about North Korea in the U.S. has become trapped between cynicism and alarmism.

This has all culminated in today’s bleak political landscape: Inter-Korean relations are deeply frozen. North Korea has renounced reunification, and under South Korea’s former administration, Seoul increasingly labeled the North a principal enemy. Communication stalled, tensions have escalated, and diplomacy has all but disappeared.

But political landscapes can change quickly. Following the impeachment of far-right president Suk Yeol Yoon and the election of Jae-myung Lee, Seoul has increasingly called for renewed inter-Korean dialogue with Pyeongyang, and Pyeongyang has indicated some willingness to engage.

That is why this soccer match mattered.

Of course, no single game or summit will solve the security crisis in Korea. But the game demonstrated the importance of engagement — especially during periods of deep political freeze. And importantly, this moment came through women. Women have consistently been at the forefront of peacebuilding efforts on the peninsula, from family reunification advocacy to feminist peace movements calling for a formal end to the Korean War.

These developments raise the question: Will Washington continue defaulting to the same failed approach of maximum pressure and isolation, or will it support the growing desire among U.S. voters who want an end to forever war and a path to peace with North Korea?

As Korean peace advocates, we know that openings are few and far between, and we cannot afford to miss this window of opportunity. Soccer may be a spectator sport, but people-led peacebuilding efforts require us all to participate.

Policymakers should build upon this moment to support initiatives that lower tensions, remove the threat of nuclear war, and expand opportunities for contact between ordinary people,including cultural exchanges, athletic competitions, humanitarian cooperation, and renewed inter-Korean dialogue. These initiatives should also include policy efforts toward threat reduction, for example,  ending the US travel ban to North Korea, which is up for renewal this August.

Peace is not built in a single summit or event, but gradually through relationships, trust building, and repeated acts of engagement. While the match in Suwon lasted only 90 minutes, if we are wise enough to recognize its significance, its meaning could endure far longer.

(This article originally appeared in COMMON DREAMS)

The post Forget the World Cup, the most important soccer match happened in Korea appeared first on Korean Quarterly.

New review of ancient Korean stories show their tenacity through history and into the present

(Thames and Hudson Press, New York, 2026, ISBN #978-0-5000-2766-0)

Review by Bill Drucker (Summer 2026)

Myths and legends, with their heroes, gods, goddesses and supernatural creatures, are not only memorable stories, they can also be the foundation for a nation’s culture.

The Korean Myths: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes and Legends, by father-daughter team Heinz Insu Fenkl and Bella Myong-Wol Dalton-Fenkl, explores how Korea’s ancient stories and characters are not only fascinating on their own; they are the source of key beliefs among Koreans today about their origins as a people.

The interrelationships of divine and human consistently prevail in Korean myths, and its many stories explain concepts as simple as fire and as complex as poetry, art, spirituality, identity and destiny.  The authors demonstrate how the ancient stories of Korean culture are not simply relegated to the history books; on the contrary, they are seamlessly incorporated into the cultural fabric of modern South Korean life.  

What’s a myth, a legend, a folktale?

The authors unravel the complexities of myth, legend, and folklore in this joyful read, which is complemented by numerous illustrations.  They define myths as stories of divine and other supernatural beings, along with fictional human heroes of extraordinary virtue.  Many myths are so old that their origins are as oral stories, passed down through the generations long before they were ever written down.  

Legends are a subset of myths; they are stories based on real events and people.  Some examples of Korean legends include: stories of the ancient King Jumong and his son Yuri; King Sejong, credited for inventing the Korean writing system; Queen Seonduk, an astronomer and Korea’s only female national ruler; and the military leader Admiral Yi who defeated the Japanese incursion with his armored turtle ships. These and other unique and heroic people are referenced as a source national pride and identity among Korean people today.

Folklore refers to shared values, collective traditions and identity of a cultural group. It appears in visual arts and crafts, such as statues, demon posts and masks, in performing arts like sung stories, folk songs, and percussion, and in clothing such as ceremonial dress.

Folk culture has been communicated through the generations by monks, shamans and itinerant musicians and performers.  For example, the folk song Arirang is so beloved and embedded in the culture that many regions have their own version of the song, while both Korean states embrace the song today as part of their national heritage.

How earth came to be

The authors explain Korea’s myths and legends with illuminating detail. The first chapter describes creation myths. Most cultures, including Korea, have myths of how order was created from chaos, how light came into the world, and how heaven and earth came to be. Korea’s creation story was told orally, then at some point ritualized in song, and eventually written as the Changsega (or Song of Creation).  

The earliest Korean gods of creation were Mireuk and Seokga, derived from Buddhist beliefs. Other stories revolve around two female goddesses, Grandma Mago and Grandma Seolmundae.  In northern regions, the story goes that Mago dropped mud from her skirt.  Where the mud fell, mountains and islands formed, Her bodily functions became rivers and hills.  Popular in Jeju, Grandma Seolmundae or Seolmago birthed 500 sons, who searched for food and hunted for game to feed their enormous mother.  The crater at Mount Halla served as Mago’s cauldron for her soup.  Sadly she fell in.  When the sons returned to eat the soup, they found her bones at the bottom of the crater. 

The Jeju squat hareubang statues (the serious-faced stone “grandpas” seen in many locations on the island), also have various divine stories attached to them.

The divine touches all

Surnames, also known as clan names, are imbued with divine connections, told in story form. For example, the name Kim (meaning gold) was the clan founded by a rooster crowing at a divine golden box, from which a boy emerges and takes the name Kim. 

The Jeju haenyeo (sea women) or free drivers, who make their living by diving for seafood in deep water, training themselves to hold their breath for long periods, are rooted in myth.  The story goes that a grieving wife who lost her husband at sea so moved the Sea Goddess, that she gave the woman power to breathe underwater in search of her husband.  The haenyeo are a close-knit women’s community that has existed for perhaps 1,500 years, with mothers teaching the craft to daughters and granddaughters. Some haenyeo are also practicing shamans.  There are few haenyeo left since modern technology has taken the place of the more dangerous free-diving fishing method.

The authors also explore the myths and legends associated with religion. There is a marvelous syncretism in combining native spiritual beliefs with myths.  Shamans extol the local spirits as well as appealing to Buddha in song.  Buddhist temples integrate the local deities of the mountains and rivers.  Buddhism, Shamanism, local animism, ancestor worship, Christianity and Taoism overlap. 

Korean shamans – revered and reviled

Unique to Korea are shamans, gifted individuals with access to the spirit world.  Historically, the shaman culture has been persecuted by the state, and ostracized by the community, but shamans have persisted with their rituals through the ages, and those rituals are now recognized and celebrated.  People from across the economic and political spectrum may seek out a shaman. The shaman may be called by a grieving parent, or by the mayor or even the president to offer blessings. Often, shamans are sought to deal with bad spirits, but they are also invited to joyful occasions and holidays, or even to give a blessing to a whole community.

Spiritual rituals permeate the Korean culture.  From Buddhism, the Bodhisattva Gwan Yin has become the patron goddess of mercy and a saint of womanhood.  In early Buddhist myths, Gwan Yin appeared as a male.  As a female deity, Gwanseum resembles the Catholic Mary, mother of Jesus.  Both share the virtues of compassion, and are often depicted standing with open hands and a gentle demeanor.  This shows how Korean culture recognizes a syncretic harmony among religions, even those that seem very different, like Buddhism and Catholicism.

Roots of superstition

The authors also look into ghosts, spirits and superstition, the non-religious aspect of Korean spirituality.  Korea has a long, complex history with the supernatural, and superstitious practices persist today. For example, many Koreans avoid giving shoes as a gift, because superstition suggests that the recipient could put them on and then walk away forever. Money is given as a gift on the lunar new year, and often a clan will buy a pig’s head for the family party and put rolled-up money in the mouth, nose and ears; this is because money is lucky and a smiling pig is also a lucky sign.

Some of the famous supernatural beings have names and their own virtues.  The Sanshin (literally “mountain spirit”) is affectionately called the Old Man (or Woman) of the Mountain and is probably Korea’s most depicted spirit in the indigenous religion. A gwishin or ghost spirit is created when a human dies with unresolved issues.  The gumiho or nine-tailed fox can shape-shift to look like a human and can feed on souls.  The dokkaebi is a malicious (but not evil) goblin that tries to trick humans. 

Spirit animals and healing plants

Animal myths are also plentiful in Korean myths and folklore.  The dragon is considered a magical and benevolent guardian. The tiger is a powerful spirit, often seen in the presence of mountain deities. The wolf is seen as a link between the earthly realm and the divine, and noted for its intelligence. The cunning fox and fox goddess are symbols of trickery.  The rabbit is beloved and descended as a pet of the moon goddess. Instead of seeing “the Man in the Moon” face that Westerners are taught to look for, Koreans see a rabbit shape on the full moon.

Plants, such as the Korean hibiscus (mugunghwa or Rose of Sharon) and ginger have their own mythological meaning as gifts from the gods. In tradition these and other plants are revered. Today, they are known for their medicinal powers, are sold commercially for their healing powers.  The Korean mugunghwa is South Korea’s national flower, symbolizing eternity.  The ginseng root is known for looking like a headless human body, with its beige color, and usually two roots for arms and two for legs. It is known to have some strong medicinal effects in recovering from fatigue and boosting immunity. Ginger is used widely in Korea in health drinks, herbal medicines, and as a flavoring.

The traditions of storytelling are also explored as part of the book.  Oral storytelling of legends and myths is a part of Korean culture.  As stories were written down, literary devices were added.  In western folklore, a story begins with “Once upon a time.”  In old Korean folklore, the story begins with “When tigers smoked pipes” or just “When tigers smoked.”  In Korean folklore, nature is depicted as intelligent, alive and communicating with the divine. Animals and trees talk to humans.  Gods and goddesses lived in the oceans, mountains, rivers and streams, as well as in the heavens.  Stories are intended to amuse and demonstrate morals, courage, cleverness and generosity. Stories also extol moral virtues of intelligence, honor and sacrifice.   

For example, the Korean classic love story, Tale of Chunhyang tells of a virtuous and steadfast woman who is true to the one she has promised her love. Chunhyang is so beloved for her unwavering heart that her story has been told and retold in books, songs, pansori, and even in K-dramas.

Myths that sustain the modern state

The authors also review how myths work in Korean society today, specifically the modern myths that have created and sustained North Korea.  The nation of North Korea was established in 1948, with its own ideology and legendary characters in the form of the three Kim rulers. In their legendary personas, the Kims are perfect, almost divine, uncontested.  Founder Il Sung Kim, knowing the power of ideas in the Korean tradition, developed an ideology, juche, the Korean word for self-reliance.

In its own mythology, North Koreans have used their independence and self-reliance to become a successful country in a competitive world.  In point of fact, the nation is poor and isolated, and needs to be more interdependent with other nations in order to thrive. Recently, its economy has faltered without the economic and political support of China and Russia.  Today, leader Jong Un Kim, grandson of the founder, is the figurehead of the government, and also the symbol of the central mythology of the nation.

In an inspired moment, the civilian South Korean President Dae Jung Kim crossed the Demilitarized Zone ( DMZ) between South and North on June 13, 2000 and entered North Korea for the Inter-Korean Summit, and the two Kims embraced.  This was the stuff of legends after many years of hostility and silence.   Koreans everywhere held their breath with high expectations that the two leaders could negotiate a path to reunification.  Sadly, hope was an elusive butterfly.  Detente remained, and dreams of unification faded.

Despite past pressures on North Korea to negotiate its nuclear status, and despite the imposition of sanctions by the U.S., and even threats of war under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, North Korea has pushed forward into the future. That, in itself, makes the little country legendary.

Myth meets hallyu

In the final chapter, the authors examine how Korea’s ancient stories and belief systems effect the modern country Korea has become. They show how, under a facade of modern technology and world class economics, South Korea is indeed steeped in its traditional roots of Buddhism and Confucianism, along with its indigenous shamanic belief systems of many characters – gods, goddesses, ghosts, demons, magical creatures and all the stories that give them life. The country itself is a constant reminder of the past, with its ancient structures, including many temples that are still functioning with its ancient texts with stories of everything from mythic creatures to actual kings and queens. Therefore, South Korean identity is complex, with many demands of the modern world and deep connections to the culture’s storied past.

In showing this connection, the authors reference South Korea’s most popular source of cultural information – K-dramas. Many ancient stories have come alive on our televisions because of the number of K-dramas that have adapted them. The Korean wave of popular culture (hallyu) sent K-dramas and K-pop across the globe, providing global visibility and an informal ambassador for Korean culture.

Since K-dramas were invented, writers have drawn on Korean myths as story lines, including: A series on the warrior king Jumong; a series on Queen Seonduk of the Shilla kingdom; one focused on the achievements of King Sejong; and a story about the mythical character Hong Kildong, known as Korea’s Robin Hood, among many others. Viewers have absorbed information about various (possibly fictional) versions of Korean history, geography, place names, traditional clothing, music, dance, and other cultural information through these stories.

This book is a small-size volume, and I wished when I was finished that it could be produced as a large coffee-table type format, to better show the beautiful photos and illustrations.  The authors have dug deep in research to produce this interesting and unique study; it is a lot of fun and provides some very informative reading in a small package. 

Korean American Heinz Insu Fenkl was born in Bupyeong, Korea, 1960. His interest in fiction began as a boy when he discovered serial graphic novels and comic books. He has become a familiar author, translator, and editor in America and in South Korea. He has also translated and produced several North Korean comic books as a series for Korean Quarterly.  Currently, he teaches creative writing and Asian studies courses at the State University of New York, New Paltz. 

Creative collaborator Bella Myong-wol Dalton Fenkl is an accomplished artist and photographer.  She is a translator of Korean literature and created the bi-lingual Korean/English comic series Space Bunny, for Korean Quarterly.

The post Myths and identity appeared first on Korean Quarterly.

Ever since North Korea suffered through the death of its first leader in 1994, a loss magnified by an economic collapse and a devastating famine, outside observers have likened the country to an airplane experiencing a serious malfunction. The major question they posed: In the end, would North Korea experience a soft landing or a catastrophic crash?

Perhaps a reformer would come along — say, a North Korean version of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev — who could right the airship of state and guide it toward the runway of reunification with South Korea.

More direly, the North Korean regime could collapse all of a sudden, like the Communist governments in Eastern Europe in 1989. Those were relatively peaceful affairs, but North Korea’s worst-case scenarios might involve violent power struggles, the return of famine, and a free-for-all scramble for the country’s loose nukes. U.S. analysts have gamed out the consequences of just such a hard landing — and so has the Pentagon with its OPLAN 5029 — and they all add up to a tragedy not only for North Koreans and the region, but also potentially for the U.S. and the rest of the world.

The North Korean government has, however, defied such scenarios by somehow surviving, while rejecting reunification with the South and turning up its nose at conventional versions of reform. Despite additional challenges — a sustained COVID quarantine, several distinctly hostile governments in South Korea, and a flatlining economy — the regime has so far avoided collapse and, if anything, tightened its control over its population. For the time being at least, the North Korean plane evidently has no intention of landing, much less crashing.

Today, in an improbable plot twist, however, Donald Trump’s U.S. is starting to seem ever more like an aircraft in distress.

After all, the present pilot of Air America, exhibiting signs of psychosis or perhaps dementia, has begun to dismantle the cockpit under the delusion that it’s his to transform into a ballroom. The crew — and indeed much of the supporting infrastructure on the ground below — has been decimated by budget cuts. The airline itself is fast taking on debt. Many of the passengers are praying for a soft landing and hoping that, if the plane does touch down for a risky layover, they will get a new pilot.

But another fear lurks in the background.  Given the state of the airplane — a malfunctioning altimeter, compromised landing gear — it might not matter who the pilot is anymore. Air America may well be heading for a crash landing regardless of who’s in charge.

Those of us on board, gripping our armrests in terror, are asking ourselves one question above all else: is it too late to avert catastrophe?

Trump’s Totalitarian Tendencies

North Korea has come closer than any country in the modern era to building a totalitarian state. Beginning with the country’s founder, Il Sung Kim, its leadership has eliminated all oppositional politics, suppressed virtually all signs of civil society, and tolerated no freedom of the press, speech, or assembly. Nor is there any freedom of religion, unless you count the personality cult attached to the Kim family leadership, which is now in its third generation.

But all totalitarianism is aspirational. The Soviet Union had its dissidents and underground samizdat literature. The Confessing Church movement attempted faith-based resistance to the Nazis. Likewise, the North Korean government’s control over the population is not total, as can be measured by rising levels of private enterprise and covert enthusiasm for South Korean culture.

So, too, are Donald Trump’s totalitarian tendencies aspirational. He would like to achieve total control, but he’s hemmed in by institutional limits. Still, he prefers to bypass Congress with rule by executive decree. He has attempted to control the media, rein in the power of universities, and tilt the electoral playing field to benefit his party. He has aligned himself internationally not with democrats but with autocrats. He has had a particular fondness for authoritarian leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Javier Milei of Argentina who consolidated their power within democracies. But he has also gotten cozy with the likes of Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, who doesn’t bother at all with elections.

The most inexplicable friendship Trump developed while in office is certainly with North Korea’s Jong Un Kim, the founder’s grandson. Having traded escalating threats during part of Trump’s first term in office, the two leaders grew closer after several in-person meetings and a raft of exchanged letters. “I was really being tough,” Trump explained in 2018. “And so was he. And we’d go back and forth. And then we fell in love. OK? No, really.”

Really, the only way to explain such an attraction of opposites — an elected U.S. leader and the North Korean dictator — is to point out that the two distinctly have something in common: Their desire for total control. Whether intentionally or not, Trump has applied some of the features of the Kim family playbook to his own governing style. In doing so, he has also damaged, perhaps irreparably, the very idea of America.

Different Beds, Same Dreams

One of the key elements of North Korean politics is the personality cult of the Kim family, which casts a long shadow over the country’s culture. Drawn in part from northern Korea’s earlier Christian heritage — through the development of a trinity of founding figures, the 10 commandments of Kimilsungism, and pervasive themes of sacrifice and redemption — that personality cult has generated so much fervor among many North Koreans that even defectors have spoken of their pride in founder ll Sung Kim and his ideology.

Trump, too, has tried to construct such a personality cult — by placing his name on public buildings (the Kennedy Center), putting his face on U.S. coins (the semiquincentennial dollar), inserting his image in future passports, and planning a golden statue of himself at his presidential library that resembles one of Il Sung Kim in Pyongyang. So far, however, outside of the MAGA faithful, his cult seems to have generated little more than ridicule.

Another aspect of Pyongyang’s governance that probably attracts Trump is its overemphasis on the military. North Korea devotes 34 percent of its gross domestic product to military spending (compared to Russia at 6% and the U.S. at under four percent). Although it hasn’t launched any wars of its own for more than 75 years, Pyongyang has dispatched thousands of troops to help fight Russia’s war in Ukraine. Since the 1990s, the government has spoken of a songun (translated as “military first”) doctrine to justify the sacrifices needed to maintain its huge standing army, a range of missiles, and a small but significant nuclear arsenal.

Similarly, the prevailing theme of Trump’s second term has been war and military spending. Despite his once-upon-a-time promises not to become involved in “forever wars,” particularly in the Middle East, Trump joined Israel this year in an attack on Iran, a conflict that cost over $11 billion in its first week alone. He has proposed an astonishing $1.5 trillion military budget, an increase of 50 percent over last year’s already bloated total, and that sum doesn’t even include the costs of the Iran War.

Then there’s Trump’s economic thinking, if you can call it that. He has repudiated the free market orthodoxy of his fellow Republicans to embrace a form of economic nationalism: High tariff walls to reduce trade imbalances, a focus on rebuilding American manufacturing, and the repudiation of international rules of the road (like the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea) in order to drive a dagger into economic globalization. In such respects, Trump’s approach resembles North Korea’s path of import substitution and defiance of the international rule of law.

In North Korea’s case, such an economic strategy has been partly born of necessity, given the economic embargo imposed on it after the Korean War of the early 1950s. Trump, however, is steering the U.S. economy into a tailspin without provocation. If you add together the costs associated with his kamikaze tariffs, the follow-on effects of the Iran War and boosts in military spending, the gutting of government programs investing in the economy, the watering down of environmental regulations, and reductions in government revenue because of tax cuts, Trump is guiding the U.S. toward the kind of triple whammy that hit North Korea in the 1990s, when environmental disasters and political criminality combined with rising energy prices to bring its manufacturing and agricultural sectors to a virtual halt, while killing an estimated one million people.

But, you might point out, Wall Street is still on an upward ascent. The U.S. economy is still growing, however modestly, and, while U.S. food insecurity is rising, famine isn’t on the horizon. To return to the airplane analogy, the in-flight experience has become more uncomfortable for those who can’t afford business class, but that doesn’t mean a crash is imminent.

Or does it?

A soft vs. hard landing

Whether he is consciously modeling his efforts on North Korea or not, Donald Trump wants to make an indelible imprint on the U.S. He aspires to fundamentally change the demographics of the country, the structure of the economy, and the nature of its politics. To do that, he aims to ensure that his MAGA personality cult, his anti-government crusade, and his self-defeating economic policies outlive his own tenure in office. That will certainly require a substantial dismantling of democratic safeguards given that such policies don’t attract majority support.

In other words, much as Il Sung Kim destroyed anything that could have challenged his authority — the church, the intelligentsia, landowners, rival political factions — Trump has now launched a scorched-earth policy to ensure that his successors can’t undo his damage. If the Democrats regain Congress in November and even the White House in 2028, they will inherit an enormous bill for Trump-era damages (and count on a chorus of Republican voices improbably blaming them for the disaster).

Any incoming reformers will face an uphill battle to convince the public to restore funding for infrastructure, whether green or otherwise. And they will have to deal with a terrifying erosion of faith in government, resulting from the incompetence, lies, and malpractice of the Trump administration. At the international level, U.S. allies will think twice about concluding any deals with this country, given the possibility of another political swing in subsequent elections.

Trump’s tactics, in other words, are designed to make a soft landing ever more difficult. An inveterate gambler, he is betting that his extreme approach will enable Air America to climb into the very stratosphere, even if he is far more likely to force an emergency landing.

Nightmare scenarios have long haunted American consciousness. The sheer size of the U.S. debt —  at nearly $40 trillion, it’s the highest absolute amount in the world — could put the country into receivership if the dollar slips from its status as the global currency. Default could tear apart an already polarized society. Such a hard landing could look like what analysts of North Korea have often predicted for that country.

But North Korea hasn’t collapsed. With its considerable resources, surely the U.S., too, can avoid such a scenario.

True, no one is going to make any money at Polymarket predicting the imminent fall of the Kim regime. But North Korea is not exactly following a recipe for long-term success either. Even if it limps along for another decade or two, with leadership passing to Jong Un Kim’s teenage daughter, any country that follows its policies of personality cult, autarkic economic policies, massive corruption, military-first approaches, and ruthless suppression of dissent is not likely to prosper over the long term. Just look at how Vladimir Putin has steered Russia into a terrifying nosedive.

Substantial reform could head off such a scenario for the U.S. If Trumpism can be likened to a devastating depression (which it could still precipitate), the obvious recourse for any successor would be to embark on an immediate course correction comparable to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Whatever it’s called — not a Green New Deal, given the irrational resistance of a large section of the U.S. electorate to anything “green” except greenbacks — such an American renewal plan would need to restructure the U.S. economy to favor the bulk of American workers rather than the current generation of robber barons. Implemented with a much better promotional campaign — led perhaps by future Chief of Reconstruction (and now New York Mayor) Zohran Mamdani — it would link concrete benefits to identifiable government programs and services. It would offer a striking real-life illustration of your tax dollars at work.

Such a reform plan would have to restore trust in government by punishing corruption, enlisting the public as watchdogs, and taxing the super-wealthy into semi-submission. By shifting away from war and aggressive military spending, such a project of renewal would also have to work with partners overseas to promote policies of cooperative prosperity and sustainability in order to restore a measure of trust in U.S. actions globally. Soft landings require soft power, leaving hard power to those determined to crash and burn.

The North Korean case is a reminder that awful policies may not, by themselves, precipitate collapse. Trumpism will not go away simply because it is on the verge of winning multiple Darwin Awards for its counter-evolutionary policies. Having hijacked American democracy, Trump and his cronies are under the impression that they are flying ever upwards, but they have not been blessed with a good sense of direction. Sheer inertia could keep Air America in the air — though with steadily deteriorating conditions on board (as in North Korea). Such a “MAGA ‘til we drop” option would not be much of an improvement over a hard landing.

In 2016, arch-conservative Michael Anton published a piece in the Claremont Review of Books arguing that it was Hillary Clinton and the Democrats who had hijacked America. In “The Flight 93 Election,” Anton imagined that Trump, aided by an energized electorate, could rush the cockpit — just like the passengers on Flight 93, hijacked on September 11, 2001 — and save the country. (It was certainly an infelicitous analogy, given that Flight 93 crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.) Trump’s 2016 victory, however, turned Anton into a dark prophet and vaulted him into the subsequent administration, despite (or because of) the absurdities of his arguments.

In yet another stomach-churning reversal, Anton’s analogy has now finally become all too applicable. Trump has gained the cockpit not once but twice. Having failed to crash Air America the first time around, he seems determined to put his Flight 93 doctrine of heroic self-destruction into practice today. There is no guarantee that a hard landing can be avoided either now or after his departure from office. But this country, its egalitarian ideals, and its democratic traditions (if not much of its dismal history) are certainly worth fighting for.

We’re losing altitude fast. Elections approach.

Let’s roll.

The post What can North Korea tell us about America’s future? appeared first on Korean Quarterly.