The Korean Won is Breaking (Bad)

What happens when nothing works?

When you mumble the word Korea, what images pop up in your mind?

NewJeans? Black Pink? Twice? Parasite? Squid Game?

Or maybe, the impeachment of president Park who was accused of being controlled by a shaman which who’s father was also assassinated during his dictatorship that took place after a military coup, though led the economic miracle of Korea during his regime?

Or more recently, the impeachment of a president who was accused of being controlled by a shaman?

Stranger than Fiction is the name of the show.

Today, the parliament decided to impeach the acting president. Hankyoreh writes:

Korea’s National Assembly voted on Friday to impeach Han Duck-soo, the country’s prime minister and acting president. This is the first time in the history of the country’s constitutional government that an acting president has been impeached.

The legislature convened a plenary session at 3 pm on Friday, during which lawmakers voted on a motion for Han’s impeachment co-sponsored by the Democratic Party and five other opposition parties. All 192 lawmakers present voted in favor of the motion. The vote was carried out anonymously, in accordance with the National Assembly Act.

Prior to the vote, Speaker Woo Won-sik announced that the quorum necessary to pass the impeachment bill for Han would be a simple majority of lawmakers, or 151 votes.

“This agenda item is an impeachment bill for Prime Minister Han Duck-soo,” Woo argued. “As such, it may be passed by a simple majority of total members of the National Assembly, pursuant to Article 65, paragraph 2 of the Constitution.”

“There may be certain opinions about what the quorum is for this agenda item, but the passage of a bill of impeachment is a demand for removal from office, and the subject of this impeachment bill is the prime minister, who is exercising the authority of the president as laid out in the Constitution,” Woo said.

“The Constitution only prescribes a weighted quorum for passage [of an impeachment bill] in the case of the president,” he added.

The ruling People Power Party had earlier adopted a policy of opposing the push to impeach Han. Rather than casting ballots, PPP lawmakers swarmed the speaker’s dais in protest, chanting “Resign, Mr. Speaker,” “Abuse of authority,” and “Null and void.” Only Cho Kyoung-tae, who opposed his party’s line on Han’s impeachment, took part in the vote, casting his ballot in favor.

tl;dr: the real president was already impeached, now they voted to impeach the guy who is doing the president’s job, but there is no precedent in doing so, so they are fighting over how to interpret the law.

In a sentence: everything just went to shit.

But why is he being impeached in the first place you might ask. To be honest I don’t even know at this point because all the reasons are just talking points to justify political warfare.

All I know is that many people feel like me.

They want to leave the country.

The KRW/USD pair is reaching its ATH levels. Meaning KRW is devaluing against the US Dollar. An ATH would actually imply an all time low in hope tho.

Everyone knows that when your currency is being devalued, your country is not in good shape. It is the ultimate social sentiment proxy of a nation.

Why do terrorists try to get their hands on those dirty American Dollars? It’s because they are accepted by most people. But why? Because the Dollar is backed by a strong economy that will not fail all of a sudden.

So why is KRW going down? Because more people are selling than buying; a signal that for a reason most people think the market will want to devalue KRW. And for what reason they are thinking that others will think the KRW will go down?

Because the government is very unstable right now.

Back when Korea went broke, the people handed in all of their gold to repay the nation’s debt. Well that was a shitty cause because now the very own mega corporations they salvaged own everything. (read more on Wikipedia)

Back then, I would imagine most Koreans were pretty patriotic and had a sense of belonging to the society they live in. As seen in the Gold-collecting campaign during the IMF crisis, they just gave out their precious metals to bail out mega corporations.

But where are these people now? They are mostly retired.

Now they must rely on a generation that is well educated to know that fiat is a ponzi scheme and taxes are bullshit. They can sell their KRW for USDT or USDC at crypto exchanges and freely exist the Korean economy.

This is the most decisive and crucial time for the Korean government to do something. But they can’t. They’re too busy fighting each other.