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Michael Breen

Michael Breen is the CEO of Insight Communications Consultants, a public relations company, and author of "The Koreans" and "Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader."

Michael Breen

Bye-bye left and right: Korea's politics needs a new vocabulary

If you have been following the protests at Seoul's Olympic Park over election mishandling, you will know that the protesters insist they are neither left nor right. Many commentators have welcomed this as evidence of a younger generation's independence from old political loyalties. I think the protesters are onto something more profound: a reality that much of political commentary has yet to recognize. The routine description of Korean politics as a contest between a progressive left and a conservative right no longer describes what is happening. More accurately, it never really did. The two main sides in politics today are descendants not so much of competing ideologies as of two political tribes that originated in historical circumstances that have largely disappeared. A generation ago, when many of today's political leaders were university students, Korean politics was defined by two intersecting divisions. The first separated an authoritarian government that claimed Korea was a "liberal democracy" from a democratic opposition determined to make it one. The ruling establishment justifi

Jun 18, 2026By Michael Breen
Bye-bye left and right: Korea's politics needs a new vocabulary
Michael Breen

Was the Starbucks Korea 'Tank Day' fiasco caused by AI?

When Starbucks Korea launched its “Tank Day” coffee promotion on May 18 — the day South Koreans commemorate the 1980 massacre of protestors in Gwangju by martial law troops — the scale of corporate self-sabotage was astonishing. Public outrage erupted so quickly that even asking how such a disaster happened risked sounding like an attempt to excuse it. In Starbucks' hometown of Seattle — where May 18, 1980 is remembered for the eruption of Mount St. Helens with the loss of 57 lives — the corporate response was restrained support for its Korean affiliate. But the issue may not end there. Under its agreement with Shinsegae Group’s Emart, which owns Starbucks Korea, HQ could potentially claim severe brand damage and exercise a call option allowing it to acquire the Korean business — the world’s third-largest Starbucks market — at a discount. Given this corporate equivalent of a public execution, we ask: What was the company thinking? Or rather, who was thinking? Companies themselves do not think. They are concepts without consciousness. People think — so how did multipl

Jun 4, 2026By Michael Breen
Was the Starbucks Korea 'Tank Day' fiasco caused by AI?
Michael Breen

S. Koreans may see North's footballers as sisters, but opposite isn't true

When North Korea’s Naegohyang Women’s FC arrives in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, this weekend for next Wednesday’s AFC Women’s Champions League semifinals, South Koreans will witness something rare: Young North Koreans walking openly among them again. The visit itself rings historic bells. This will be the first North Korean women’s football team to compete in the South since the 2014 Incheon Asian Games. It will also mark the first sports delegation of any kind since the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. That last date is highly significant because it was then that the portcullis came down on inter-Korean exchanges. It is worth explaining how that happened. Nobody on this side could see it coming — such was the earnestness with which rapprochement was being pursued — but it was Kim Yo-jong’s exposure to the South during those subzero days in Gangwon Province, ironically the world’s only divided province, that appears to have crystallized reality for North Korea’s number two. It must have seemed to her that, in the race to be the real Korea, the North’s revolution had

May 14, 2026By Michael Breen
S. Koreans may see North's footballers as sisters, but opposite isn't true
Michael Breen

HYBE case raises uncomfortable questions about legal reform

Such is the never-ending drama of corporate malfeasance that when police this week sought an arrest warrant for Bang Si-hyuk, founder and chairman of HYBE, the company behind BTS, my first thought was: Here we go again. But this case is about more than a familiar cycle of scandal and outrage. It is a test of something far larger: whether Korea’s recent judicial reforms, championed by the current government, represent a genuine shift in principle or merely a reshuffling of power. At first glance, the case appears straightforward. Investigators allege that Bang misled investors ahead of HYBE’s initial public offering, potentially violating the Capital Markets Act. Until recently, such a case would have been led by prosecutors. Now it is in the hands of the police. This change reflects a series of reforms over the past six to seven years aimed at curbing the once-dominant power of the prosecution by separating investigative and prosecutorial functions. The intent was to create a more balanced system. The question now is whether it works. Before answering that, it is worth reflecting on o

Apr 23, 2026By Michael Breen
HYBE case raises uncomfortable questions about legal reform
Michael Breen

When my colleague is my enemy

Here is a question for anyone who has a job: Who is your competitor? In our capitalist system, it’s the people selling rival products or services. For the hairdresser, it’s the other shop down the street. For the auto worker, it’s the foreign auto sales rooms. For the performer, it’s the other show. For the official, it’s the other person or agency competing for votes or budget. Rivalry of this sort is good. It fits the basic fact of life that living, let alone thriving, requires us to grow beyond who we were yesterday. In this sense we compete with ourselves. Meeting challenges, we grow and improve. We can see how, both personally and institutionally, over time we fester and decline when challenges are non-existent or avoided. This is not to say that everyone approaches life grimly with clenched fists. In meeting challenges and in competing, we cooperate with other people. But in Korea, we face a complication in that in many settings, people are disposed to compete with the very people they are also required to cooperate with. I was reminded of this recently when an industry ex

Apr 9, 2026By Michael Breen
When my colleague is my enemy
Michael Breen

BTS concert numbers

What do the widely different BTS crowd estimates say about the media? Readers may have noticed that local and international news reports in the lead-up to the BTS comeback concert last weekend said that 260,000 fans would be descending on downtown Seoul, making it one of the most thrilling non-protest events in the city center since the 2002 World Cup. The numbers were so huge — reminiscent of major protests in recent years — that the president ordered safety measures and the terrorist alert level was raised to “caution.” But then reports on the day, you will have noticed, went with the organizer’s claim of 104,000 attendees. This was reported without any “disappointment” or “less-than-expected” language. But even that may have been way off. You may have missed this because it was tucked away in a Yonhap news story that did not get much pick-up at first, but the official police figure was just 42,000 participants. The striking gap between the forecast, claimed and official crowd sizes prompted the familiar narrative about journalism: that media are unreliable, that their

Mar 26, 2026By Michael Breen
BTS concert numbers
Michael Breen

Are we moving away from unification as main national objective?

Two years ago, when North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made what he called a “final and crucial decision” to give up on the reunification of the two Koreas, we on this side of the DMZ didn’t know what to make of it. But now, having had time to think, is South Korea slowly swinging around to the obvious — that the commitment to unify with a neighbor that doesn’t want us risks violation of our democratic principles? In case we were not sure, last month, at the Workers’ Party of Korea’s 9th Party Congress in Pyongyang, Kim doubled down on the “two states” doctrine, and unpleasantly characterizing we innocents over here as the enemy. In his address, Kim proclaimed the need to “draw a historical line under the abnormal relationship” that has persisted on the peninsula for nearly 80 years and to redefine inter-Korean ties as those between “the most hostile of states.” South Koreans are no longer misguided compatriots awaiting liberation. They are that worst of creatures — and I don’t wish to offend readers by using the “f” word — but, yes, they’re foreigners

Mar 5, 2026By Michael Breen
Are we moving away from unification as main national objective?
Michael Breen

How eager should we be to reopen dialogue with North Korea?

How important is it to do whatever we can to get talks going again with North Korea? I ask because Kim Yo-jong, the influential sister of Kim Jong-un, said something vaguely nice last week and a lot of people seem to be feeling warm and fuzzy and a wee bit excited about it. The prioritizing of dialogue is a profound question because it goes to the heart of what divides the political left and right in democratic South Korea. Strip away the labels, park the pet issues and put aside whatever image you have of a particular politician, and this is the hinge upon which our democratic politics swings. If you believe dialogue is essential and that we should bend almost any which way to facilitate it, you are on the left. If you believe dialogue can wait until we are likely to get something tangible out of it, you are on the right. It doesn’t matter what your economic prescription is, or what you think about same-sex marriage or climate change. In this country, on this question, it really is that simple. Like most people, I’m a confused soul. I have flip-flopped on this dialogue thing over the

Feb 16, 2026By Michael Breen
How eager should we be to reopen dialogue with North Korea?
Michael Breen

When politicians issue verdicts before the courts do — Korea barely blinks

When President Lee Jae-myung, earlier this month, publicly suggested that two unpopular religious movements — Shincheonji and the Family Federation (informally known as the Unification Church) — should be considered for disbandment before courts had established any wrongdoing, one might have expected a loud and immediate debate about liberty. When I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago, I assumed others would do the same. But there was remarkably little from the commentariat. That puzzled me for a while. It makes more sense to me now. My mistake was one I have been making for decades: forgetting not to look at Korea through an Anglo-liberal lens. The silence on the rights of these minor religions is not because Koreans are indifferent to democracy, nor because the country lacks a concept of rights. It is because liberty — especially individual liberty — does not occupy the same sacred spot in the Korean moral imagination that I grew up with. As a result, outrage is not automatically triggered when power barges into that space without taking its shoes off. Readers will understan

Feb 5, 2026By Michael Breen
When politicians issue verdicts before the courts do — Korea barely blinks
Michael Breen

Why former President Yoon will not be executed

When prosecutors earlier this month demanded the death penalty for former President Yoon Suk Yeol for insurrection, the most important thing to understand was not what they were asking for, but what they were not going to get. This may not be apparent to readers overseas, but Yoon will not be executed. He will not even come close. Everyone in Korea knows this, including the prosecutors who made the request, the politicians cheering them and the judges who will eventually rule on it. That does not mean Yoon will escape punishment. He will not. He’s already faced some. He’s been impeached. His political career is over, his reputation is destroyed and he will almost certainly spend time behind bars. But death? No. Theater is too cynical a word, but capital punishment in this case is performative. It is a gesture. The confidence with which Koreans greet such announcements often puzzles outside observers. In my office, it was not even a topic of conversation until the two foreign employees couldn’t take it any more and asked people what they thought. Our justice system does not function

Jan 22, 2026By Michael Breen
Why former President Yoon will not be executed
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