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Jung Min-ho

Korea Times Politics & City Reporter

Jung Min-ho has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2012, mostly covering social and political issues. He currently belongs to the Politics & City Desk where he covers topics such as health, labor and human rights. Prior to joining the team, he was responsible for covering North Korea and sports. His article about a biosecurity breach of Middle East respiratory syndrome won him an award from the Korea Science Journalists Association in 2016. He is also the co-author of the book, "Medical Pioneers of Korea" (2019). He served as the head of the international relations committee at the Journalists Association of Korea from 2021 to 2023.

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Foreign Affairs

Former pro-Yoon protest leader joins US State Department-linked board

Kim Jyung-hyun, a former protest leader who firmly opposed the arrest of former President Yoon Suk Yeol following his impeachment in late 2024, has been appointed to the board of governors of the East-West Center in Hawaii, according to his think tank and media reports. The Bexus Policy Research Institute, a Washington-based think tank, announced that Kim, a Korean American who holds dual citizenship, was nominated to the board on May 12 by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The 18-member international board was created by the U.S. Congress in 1960 as part of the East-West Center, a nonprofit diplomacy institution aimed at strengthening ties and mutual understanding between the U.S. and Asia-Pacific countries. A significant share of its budget comes directly from the U.S. federal government, and five of the board members are named by the U.S. secretary of state. According to a State Department letter revealed by Bexus, Kim was appointed to a three-year term on the board, effective immediately, with the secretary citing Kim’s work as an investigative journalist, army veteran and poli

May 25, 2026By Jung Min-ho
Former pro-Yoon protest leader joins US State Department-linked board
Politics

Parties place AI at center of local election pledges

Parties across Korea’s political spectrum are putting artificial intelligence (AI) at the heart of their campaign promises for the June 3 local elections, signaling a rare consensus that AI will shape everything from growth policy to welfare and public administration. Every parliamentary party now mentions AI in its official top 10 pledges, with candidates tailoring campaign promises to suit each region, though with different emphases. Proposals range from attracting a United Nations AI center to building AI-based administrative systems and expanding AI-enabled safety nets for older adults. The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) lists its overall AI vision as one of the top three policy priorities of its candidates, promising to deploy the technology to fully realize the nation’s potential and improve public services. The centerpiece of the party’s plan is using AI not only for economic growth but also in core regional functions such as education and infrastructure. The party says it will help its candidates, if elected, build AI-powered infrastructure by massively expanding c

May 25, 2026By Jung Min-ho
Parties place AI at center of local election pledges
Society

Korea launches tripartite committee to tackle AI's impact on labor

Korea launched a new tripartite body to confront the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on labor, bringing together unions, employers and the government in a yearlong dialogue on how to manage the transition inside real workplaces, rather than in abstract policy debates. On Friday, the Economic, Social and Labor Council (ESLC), a presidential advisory body on labor and social issues, formed the Committee on Labor-Management Coexistence in the AI Transition and held its first plenary meeting at its headquarters in Seoul. The committee is designed as a formal forum where labor, business and government jointly examine how the spread of AI is changing industrial worksites and employment and develop solutions to better embrace the transformation. Chaired by Hwang Deok-soon, former senior presidential secretary on jobs during the Moon Jae-in administration, the committee consists of 17 members, including three representatives each from labor and management, four from government and six public interest members. The committee will focus on four main themes: the impact and current state of AI

May 22, 2026By Jung Min-ho
Korea launches tripartite committee to tackle AI's impact on labor
  • Korea's largest industrial union criticizes employers for shutting workers out of AI transition
  • Declining income, no consent: AI eats into Korea's creative, language workforce
Politics

Campaign officially begins for June 3 elections with over 7,800 candidates

The campaign period for the June 3 local elections and parliamentary by-elections officially kicked off, Thursday, launching a nearly two-week nationwide race that both the ruling and opposition parties view as crucial to the future course of the government. Candidates across the country launched full-fledged voter outreach, with campaigning set to continue through June 2. According to the National Election Commission, 7,813 candidates are running in the race. Voters will elect 16 metropolitan and provincial chiefs, 227 mayors and county heads, 804 metropolitan council members, 2,650 local council members, 16 education superintendents and 14 National Assembly members. The governing liberal Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) is casting the elections as a mandate to shore up support for the Lee Jae Myung administration and secure momentum for social and economic reforms. As his first stop on the campaign trail, DPK Chairman Jung Chung-rae, who also serves as the party's chief campaign manager, visited the Dong Seoul Mail Distribution Center at midnight to rally support for Seoul mayoral candi

May 21, 2026By Jung Min-ho
Campaign officially begins for June 3 elections with over 7,800 candidates
North Korea

Activist bets on sports to reopen door between Seoul, Pyongyang

North Korean footballers will play in the South for the first time in years on Wednesday evening, when Naegohyang Women's FC faces Suwon FC Women in a match that offers a rare glimpse of inter-Korean sports engagement. For Kim Kyung-sung, a veteran civic activist who has spent more than two decades using sports to help build bridges between the two Koreas by promoting South-North sports exchanges, the occasion was encouraging — but he warns that the way Seoul is handling it could jeopardize more than the match. Kim said Seoul must drop what he calls the "inter-Korean frame" and treat North Korea strictly as an international sports counterpart if it wants to keep the door to dialogue open. “North Korea has already declared the South and the North to be ‘two hostile states,’” Kim said during an interview with The Korea Times. “From their point of view, there is effectively no inter-Korean exchange anymore and if Seoul keeps using that framework, Pyongyang is likely to bristle.” Kim said sports remains one of the few areas where Pyongyang shows willingness to follow internatio

May 20, 2026By Jung Min-ho
Activist bets on sports to reopen door between Seoul, Pyongyang
Global Community

Korea's biggest industrial union recruits migrant workers amid shipbuilding boom

A major industrial labor union has launched a membership drive targeting migrant workers at Hyundai’s shipbuilding complex in Ulsan, seeking to expand its reach to tens of thousands of subcontracted workers — many of them foreign — as members prepare for new talks with the company. A senior official at the Korean Metal Workers’ Union (KMWU) said the campaign’s goal is to integrate migrants, a rapidly increasing demographic in shipyards, into the union so they can be covered by collective bargaining and formal representation. “In many workplaces, especially in the shipyards, the number of migrant workers is growing rapidly, and they are often forced to endure poor conditions while left in a blind spot in terms of their rights,” the official told The Korea Times Monday. The three-day campaign includes early morning leaflet distribution at the shipyard gates, multilingual leaflets and QR code surveys, and trucks broadcasting messages in different languages, including English, Chinese, Nepali and Vietnamese, aimed specifically at migrant workers. He said the recent passage of a

May 19, 2026By Jung Min-ho
Korea's biggest industrial union recruits migrant workers amid shipbuilding boom
Society

EXPLAINER How Korea's little-used power to freeze legal strike works

As Samsung Electronics braces for a potentially historic strike later this week, the government’s rarely used “emergency adjustment” power has resurfaced as a viable option. Officials are publicly warning that if a walkout at the chip giant disrupts production and exports, they may enact a measure that can forcibly halt a legal strike and push the dispute into state-led arbitration. This emergency power is outlined in Article 76 of the Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act, which allows the labor minister to intervene when a dispute is deemed to pose a significant risk to the national economy or to people’s daily lives. This is regarded as a last resort because it forcibly suspends an otherwise lawful strike and can expose workers and unions to legal risks. Once the minister invokes the measure, unions must immediately halt any ongoing strike and are barred from staging industrial action for up to 30 days. If they defy the order and continue walkouts, the action can be treated as an illegal strike, exposing union leaders and other members to possible criminal penalties

May 18, 2026By Jung Min-ho
[EXPLAINER] How Korea's little-used power to freeze legal strike works
Tech & Science

Korean bill seeks strict watermark mandate on AI-generated content

Lawmakers are seeking to tighten Korea’s new artificial intelligence (AI) rules with a bill that would mandate watermarks on AI-generated content and criminalize their removal, in a bid to close what they call a “blind spot” in transparency rules. The bill, introduced last week by Rep. Kim Dai-sik and nine other legislators of the main opposition People Power Party, seeks to amend the AI Basic Law (officially, the Framework Act on the Development of AI and the Creation of a Foundation for Trust), which took effect earlier this year. The current law requires AI service providers to notify users whenever highly realistic audio, images or video have been created by an AI system. However, it does not specify where that notice should be placed or what form it should take, so most services satisfy the rule only with a small caption or icon inside their own interface. But once secondary creators screenshot, crop or repackage that content, the label is often removed — and under the current law, those downstream actors are not clearly treated as violators for removing it. This gap allows

May 17, 2026By Jung Min-ho
Korean bill seeks strict watermark mandate on AI-generated content
Society

Korea's birthrate uptick masks demographic crisis, advocate warns

Korea’s slight rebound in births should not lull politicians into a false sense of security, said a leading family policy advocate, calling for mayoral and gubernatorial candidates to treat low birthrates as an urgent structural crisis rather than a past problem. “We may have seen a rebound, but the current numbers are nowhere near a level where we can feel complacency,” Hwang In-ja, executive representative at the Federation for Korean Families and former lawmaker, said during an interview in Seoul, May 7. “This still is a national crisis and in Seoul it is even more serious. The city’s total fertility rate last year was 0.63.” Hwang said her organization began preparing for the June 3 local elections late last year out of concern that birthrate policy was slipping down the political agenda. “In the past five years or so, low fertility was at the center of every election,” she said. “But as soon as the numbers ticked up a little, we saw candidates losing interest. We created this manifesto precisely to wake them up again.” Hwang said the upcoming elections should be

May 15, 2026By Jung Min-ho
Korea's birthrate uptick masks demographic crisis, advocate warns
  • Seoul mayoral candidates urged to put families at heart of every policy
Society

Seoul mayoral candidates urged to put families at heart of every policy

The next mayor of Seoul should put families at the center of every major policy decision, from transport and housing to labor and budgeting — instead of merely adding yet another targeted support scheme. That is the core message of 172 civic groups ahead of the June 3 local elections, as they call for the adoption of a new “family impact” standard to be applied across all city policies. At a policy forum hosted by the Federation for Korean Families and nine other organizations in central Seoul on May 7, the groups released a joint manifesto urging all mayoral candidates to “reflect family impact in all Seoul governance,” not just in a handful of welfare programs. “Over the past few decades, central and local governments have poured astronomical sums of money into trying to overcome this (demographic) crisis. But what has been the result?” the joint statement said. “The reason is clear. Policy has not treated the family as a single, living community, but has instead carved people up into fragmented individuals — women, children, older people and youth. One-off cash han

May 15, 2026By Jung Min-ho
Seoul mayoral candidates urged to put families at heart of every policy
  • Korea's birthrate uptick masks demographic crisis, advocate warns
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