International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Labour's Polycrisis

Kevin Lin — 2025-08-20T12:11:28Z

A concept that takes on a life of its own often says a lot about the material conditions and structure of feeling of the time. Polycrisis, recently re-popularised by the historian Adam Tooze, was first coined in an earlier era of multiple crises in the 1970s. For Tooze, polycrisis points to “this experience of not a single crisis with a single clearly defined logic…but this coming together at a single moment of things which, on the face of it, don't have anything to do with each other, but seem to pile onto each other”, and he locates the beginning of the current polycrisis in 2008 at the point of the Great Recession.

- Features / Philippines, South Korea, China, Indonesia, Asia, Trade unions/workplace organizing, Hong Kong

South Korea's Conservatives Are Trying to Cling to Power

Kap Seol — 2025-01-21T19:30:52Z

South Korea's right-wing president, Yoon Suk-yeol, has finally been arrested after his attempt to stage a coup. But Yoon's supporters are still mobilizing aggressively, hoping that Donald Trump will take their side over false claims of electoral fraud.

- IVP600 - January 2025 / United States (USA), South Korea, China, North Korea

The South Korean crisis seen from France

Pierre Rousset — 2024-12-16T11:15:03Z

The imposition of martial law by President Yoon Suk Yeol on December 3 was quickly defeated. This is good news, but not only that.

- IV599 - December 2024 / France, South Korea

After President Yoon's failed self-coup

Youngsu Won — 2024-12-06T17:45:07Z

President Yoon Suk Yeol's declaration of martial law has sparked outrage in the streets and concern among South Korea's international allies.

- IV599 - December 2024 / South Korea, North Korea

North and South Korea at a turning point after 70 years

Karen Yamanaka — 2024-01-29T22:44:01Z

“The situation on the Korean Peninsula has become more tense recently, with North Korea still conducting a series of missile tests from late last year into this year.”

- IV588 - January 2024 / South Korea, North Korea

Revenge politics to raise the ghost of the elite pro-nuclear consensus

Karen Yamanaka — 2023-02-20T22:26:34Z

“Regardless of the energy output the nuclear tests, heightened and intensified regional tensions in this area will endanger geopolitical stability which may trigger unexpected nuclear weapons also in other parts of the world.”

- IV577 - February 2023 / South Korea, North Korea

Transphobic hate is not an opinion but a crime that endangers the lives of transgender people

Yong-hui Hong — 2023-01-03T22:41:11Z

In South Korea, there was a focus on hate and discrimination against transgender people in 2020 and 2021, when the Covid-19 backlash targeted LGBTIQ people.

- Sexual politics / South Korea, LGBT

Feminists are protesting against the wave of anti-feminism that's swept South Korea

Ashley Ahn — 2022-12-12T16:55:55Z

Feminists in South Korea are planning to conduct nationwide protests against gender-based violence this weekend, the first to occur simultaneously in several major cities since the pandemic.

- IV575 - December 2022 / Women, South Korea

The geopolitics of crisis

Pierre Rousset — 2022-12-11T06:16:13Z

“The Korean crisis contributes to the general dynamic of militarization underway on the Eurasian continent and in the Indo-Pacific, with its attendant humanitarian disasters, from Ukraine to Burma, as it contributes to the acceleration of global warming that has spiralled out of control.”

- IV575 - December 2022 / South Korea, Japan, North Korea

Ukraine is not the Neoliberal Laboratory for Transnational Capital

Karen Yamanaka — 2022-10-07T06:49:22Z

“The ongoing war in Ukraine is a factor to speed up neoliberal reconstruction in Ukraine. The war has also taken on the character of an economic war. ”

- IV573 - October 2022 / South Korea, Ukraine