Here is a blast from the past, former Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok has been selected to be the next director of the National Intelligence Service:

President Lee Jae-myung (C) delivers his first personnel announcement during a press conference at the presidential office in Seoul on June 4, 2025. (From L to R) National Intelligence Service chief nominee Lee Jong-seok, Prime Minister nominee Kim Min-seok, Lee, chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik and National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac. (Yonhap)

Later Wednesday, Lee nominated former Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok, a dove who favors greater rapprochement with North Korea, as his spy chief. The nomination is likely related to Lee Jae-myung’s hopes to reopen talks, as the National Intelligence Service previously played a behind-tene role to promote ties with North Korea, observers say. Lee Jae-myung also nominated his key political ally and veteran lawmaker Kim Min-seok as prime minister, the government’s No. 2 job. Lee is expected to nominate other top Cabinet members in coming days.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but Lee Jae-myung has basically put a Pyongyang cheerleader in charge of the ROK intellgence service. Kim Jong-un has to be thrilled by this selection. During his time as unification minister Lee Jong-seok was involved in establishing the quasi-slave labor Kaesong Industrial Complex that has since been shuttered. He was also helping the ROK government send more money to North Korea than they contributed to USFK cost sharing. He even said that due to all the money they were giving to North Korea that no one there was starving any more. Like I said Kim Jong-un is going to love this selection.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out:

Three Iranian nationals — two athletes and one coach — participating in the 2025 Asian Athletics Championships in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, have been arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a Korean woman.

According to police, a report was filed around 7 a.m. Saturday, stating that a woman in her 20s had been sexually assaulted at a hotel in Gumi.

Police responded and arrested two athletes in their 30s and one coach at the hotel.

Initial investigations suggest the suspects met the victim at a bar near the athletes’ village in Gumi before taking her to a hotel, where the alleged assault occurred.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

As usual Korea has a very impressive voter turn out for their Presidential election:

Voter turnout for South Korea’s presidential election on Tuesday hit a tentative 79.4 percent, the highest in 28 years, the election watchdog said.

Of the total 44.39 million eligible voters nationwide, 35.24 million cast their ballots until 8 p.m., the National Election Commission (NEC) said. 

This includes early voting that took place on Thursday and Friday with a turnout of 34.74 percent, as well as the ballots from overseas, shipboard and absentee voting.

The preliminary voter turnout marked the highest since the 80.7 percent tallied in the 1997 presidential election. Early voting was not held until the 2017 election. 

Tuesday’s vote to choose a successor to ousted former President Yoon Suk Yeol began at 6 a.m. at 14,295 polling stations nationwide. 

By region, the southwestern city of Gwangju, a stronghold for the liberal Democratic Party, recorded the highest turnout of 83.9 percent, with the southern Jeju Island logging the lowest at 74.6 percent. Voter turnout for Seoul was 80.1 percent.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like all the opinion polls were correct because Lee Jae-myung won the ROK election by roughly the same amount he had been leading in the polls:

Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party of Korea has clinched the presidency, turning the page on six months of relentless political upheaval and a leadership vacuum left by ousted former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s troubled legacy.

The liberal Democratic Party will take power from the conservative People Power Party after a whirlwind 22-day campaign, just three years after the 2022 presidential election. That year, Yoon defeated Lee by the narrowest margin on record—just 0.73 percentage point.

As of 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, with 93.84 percent of the votes counted in Tuesday’s early presidential election, Lee had effectively secured victory with 16,012,324 votes, or 48.77 percent, while Kim trailed with 13,826,777 votes, or 42.11 percent. About 2.18 million ballots remained uncounted at that time.

“I express my respect for the people’s great decision,” Lee said as he left his residence for the party headquarters in Yeouido, after his win was deemed certain by the nation’s major broadcasters just before midnight.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but this election was over the minute that the PPP could not get third party candidate Lee Jun-seok to unify with Kim Moon-soo. If they had a combined ticket they had a chance of defeating Lee Jae-myung, but they both chose mutual defeat instead and will now will have to suffer the consequences of handing pretty much all levers of power to the DPK.

This is one of those stories where someone from America is just amazed that coordinated comment campaigns against another candidate may be a crime in Korea:

A wave of accusations of online opinion manipulation by a conservative education organization has gripped the final days of the presidential election campaign as the nation gears up to elect its new leader this week.

Last week, the online news outlet Newstapa reported that the education group Rhee Park School has been operating a team of online commenters to sway public opinion in favor of conservative People Power Party (PPP) candidate Kim Moon-soo and against liberal Democratic Party (DP) candidate Lee Jae-myung.

The team allegedly instructed its members to write online comments praising Kim as well as ones critical of Lee in a coordinated manner, according to Newstapa.

In response, the DP has filed a complaint against the “far-right” group, named after former Presidents Rhee Syng-man and Park Chung-hee, who are revered in conservative circles, with police launching an investigation into the case.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but political activist groups in the U.S. are solely dedicated to influencing online opinion with misleading information and bot farms. Here is what the likely next President of Korea had to say about these claims:

DP candidate Lee Jae-myung has called the allegations an act of “insurrection” that destroys the constitutional order while suggesting the PPP’s possible involvement in the alleged opinion rigging.

“It does not make sense that the PPP is not involved. I think there is a clear connection,” Lee told reporters Monday. “By praising PPP candidate Kim Moon-soo and disparaging Lee Jae-myung, (they) conducted a political attack by spreading false information, with Kim and the PPP reaping the benefits.”

Judging by his rhetoric it looks like Lee after he is likely elected President will use these claims to launch prosecutions against PPP figures.

At least they caught her for voting twice, but it does make you wonder how much more of this is going on?:

A Seoul court on Sunday approved a warrant to arrest a woman suspected of voting twice during early voting last week, including once by proxy for her husband, a court official said. 

The Seoul Central District Court issued the writ against the woman, only identified by her last name Park, citing the risks of her destroying evidence and fleeing. 

Park, a contract worker at the Gangnam Ward Office’s health center, is accused of casting ballots twice, once using her husband’s identity, on the first day of early voting on Thursday. She cast her own vote five hours later. 

For the early voting period, she had been appointed to a post responsible for issuing ballot papers to voters.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.