Over the Yoon: South Korea ousts president

0:09Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Rosie Bloor. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

0:25I've just found out that a Henry is not just a popular man's name. It stands for a type of person, high earner, not rich yet. And it turns out they could be quite an important group. And few foodstuffs attract such derision as tofu. If you have strong views about those strange white blocks or the people who eat them, you'll want to hear what our culture correspondent has to say.

1:02But first…

1:14This morning, South Korea's Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment of President Yoon Suk-yul and removed him from office. The acting chief justice said Yoon had breached the Constitution by declaring martial law last December. Crowds outside the court were jubilant. But some of Yoon's supporters reacted by sobbing openly. Yun's shocking attempt amounted to a coup that left the country rudderless. Today's decision finally brings to an end the immediate political saga, but not to the deeper divisions inside South Korea. The court's decision today is a huge victory for South Korea's democratic institutions, first and foremost, under pretty brutal assault.

2:05Noah Snyder is our East Asia bureau chief. The country has been in a state of paralysis and deep uncertainty since President Yoon made his faithful decision to try to impose martial law. And there's been a real tug of war back and forth between the forces of democratic resilience and the forces of division and fragility within the South Korean political system. The next phase of this process is going to be another test for them, and that's a snap presidential election, which has to be held within 60 days of the court's ruling, according to the Constitution. Noah, before we move on to what happens next, there's been a lot going on.

2:45Remind us what the charges were against Yun and why he was impeached. You're right, Rosie. Let's rewind for a second to that fateful day that started this whole drama. It was early December of last year and President Yoon late at night declared martial law to everyone's surprise. He sent troops storming into the country's legislature, its National Assembly, into the National Election Commission. And he claimed that he was staging a resistance to anti-state forces, destroying the country from within. That plan fell apart within a few hours. By morning, lawmakers had gathered to overturn the martial law declaration.

3:27Citizens had poured into the streets to defend their democracy against this essentially self-coup. And within a couple weeks, President Yoon had been impeached at the National Assembly. And that's what triggered this constitutional court trial. So the court essentially has to uphold the decision by the legislature to impeach the president. And that's what they did today unanimously. They said that he had violated the basic principles of South Korea's democracy. And they essentially rejected all of the arguments he had made over the course of many weeks that this was within his authority as president.

4:04And his removal from office is now immediate. That's right. He is no longer the president of South Korea. He has been essentially kicked out of the president's official residence in Seoul. and his brief, unfinished term as president is really tarnished. His legacy is going to be defined first and foremost by this decision and by the impeachment, which makes him the second South Korean president to be removed from office through impeachment after Park Geun-hye back in 2017. And who might replace him? The race is, as you can expect, essentially kicked off right away. The leading candidate is the leader of the main progressive opposition party, the Democratic Party, and his name is Lee Jae-myung.

4:52As listeners of this podcast may remember, we spoke to him just last month about what he would like to do if he were elected. Now, he's a divisive figure, and there are plenty of roadblocks on his road to the presidency as well. But last week, one of those big ones got cleared when a South Korean court overturned an earlier conviction of his, which had threatened to essentially block him from running for president. So the big question now is whether the conservatives in South Korea are able to unite around a single standard bearer. They are understandably in a bit of disarray following President Yoon's impeachment.

5:29And there is no single figure who's emerged yet on the conservative side. But whoever the next president is, they're going to have a really tough job ahead. So what awaits them? The most pressing thing, I think, is to try to unite the country as much as that's possible in deeply polarized South Korea. This process, as we discussed earlier, has highlighted the resilience of South Korea's institutions, but it also, in a lot of ways, has highlighted the really deep divisions that run through society. And we saw it play out just outside the courthouse today as well, with folks on the side supporting Yoon had adopted a lot of the rhetoric of Donald Trump's MAGA movement.

6:10They talk about stopping the steal. They talk about fake news. They turn a lot of them to YouTube for their information. And these divisions have really become entrenched. And so the next leader is going to have to do a lot of work to try to get South Korea back to at least where it was before President Yoon made his fateful decision. And President Yoon, it should be noted, isn't going to be out of the spotlight either. He's going to continue to be a lightning rod. There's a separate criminal trial against him, which is for charges of insurrection. And those charges carry a potential life sentence or maybe even the death penalty if he's convicted.

6:52And that trial is starting up just 10 days from now on April 14th. And Noah, you say that the aim is to get South Korea back to where it was before Yun imposed martial law. But actually, South Korea is in a pretty tricky spot anyway, isn't it? That's absolutely right. All of this uncertainty has really battered South Korea's economy. Confidence is down. Growth forecasts have been cut. Markets have been jittery. Beyond the uncertainty that's been hanging in the air in the wake of the martial law fiasco, even if this hadn't happened, South Korea would be in a really tricky position, especially with the new Trump administration in America.

7:30South Korea for a long time has been on a geopolitical fault line, has been caught between America, its chief security ally and China, a major trading partner and neighbor. Different forces within South Korea on different sides of the political spectrum have different views about how the country should align itself. President Yoon had been trying to move closer to America and to Japan in order to counter China and North Korea. Lee Jae-myung, if he's elected, may try to seek more balance in between them. But the balancing act is going to be even harder, I think, than anyone expected, given where President Trump is going, both on economics.

8:13So the new tariffs that he's imposed include a 25 % tariff on South Korea, which is a huge blow for an export-oriented economy, but also where Donald Trump has been heading with allies. Now, he hasn't turned his attention to South Korea just yet, but he has many times in the past talked about withdrawing troops from South Korea. He has some unfinished business with Kim Jong-un in North Korea, dating back to failed negotiations in his first term. And so there's already a sense of a quiet crisis brewing in South Korea's relationship with America. So the next president is going to have to find a way, on top of everything else we've discussed, to somehow handle that as well.

8:59Noah, thank you so much. Really interesting. Thank you for having me.

9:16If you're lucky enough to be jetting off somewhere for the Easter holidays, or even if you're planning a trip on another occasion, I guarantee that our episode of the Weekend Intelligence out tomorrow will change how you think about your next flight. What happens to a plane after it makes its final journey through the sky? What do you do with the giant hunks of metal that we once entrusted to take us from continent to continent? Intrigued, eh? If you want to find out, you'll need to be a subscriber to listen.

9:56It's hard to feel sympathy for people writing on the Henry UK Reddit forum. Duncan Robinson is our political editor and Badger columnist. One thread asking, what is your best purchase in the last year? included responses boasting of£460 Sony headphones. Now I enjoy my drive to work. Luxury Super King memory phone mattresses. Cost about£2 ,500 all in, but huge incremental return on investment. And simply, a second dishwasher. One account even posted screenshots of their bank balance with... Charlie Munger famously said, The first 100k is a bitch. Well, suck it, Charlie, I did it. Their current account totaled£100 ,180.79.

10:42A Henry can be a man or a woman, and it stands for high earner, not rich yet. Generally, they're people with incomes of above£100 ,000, and there are about two million of those people in the country. Many of the posts detail the problems Henrys face, and they're problems British politicians should ignore at their peril. Duncan, this doesn't sound like a group who have problems. Well, the first problem is very high taxes. So if you're in the UK and you earn more than£100 ,000, you face a very large marginal rate of about 60 % because they start removing your tax-free allowance at that level. And this interacts with other problems in the British tax system.

11:22So you have national insurance and student loans, which sort of act a little bit like a tax. And so in short, that means, say, a high flyer in their mid-20s working as a corporate lawyer in the city, they can face a marginal tax rate of about 71%, which is absolutely enormous in a system where tax rates are meant to max out at about 40-something percent. And there's also big problems with access to free childcare, which is a very generous benefit to young parents in the UK, but which is completely cancelled for people who earn more than£100 ,000. Okay, so explain that one to me. Everyone is entitled to 30 free hours of childcare per week when they have children over the age of two.

12:00But that gets stripped away when someone earns even one pound more than£100 ,000. And that creates this gigantic cliff edge in the system where somebody in London, where childcare is relatively expensive, and so the free childcare is worth even more, would have to earn more than £149 ,000 to take home more than they would at£99 ,000 without children. It still seems like a hard group to take out the violins for. Well, I think there's two reasons why people should care. The first one is that it's only the top 5 % of earners, but those 5 % of earners do contribute about 50 % of all income taxes. And so effectively, they're the golden goose.

12:37They pay for the NHS, they pay for people's benefits. And so you do have to take care of them. And secondly, there are just quite a lot of people who earn that much money now. So there's 1.8 million people who earn more than£100 ,000, and that's growing. Wages are going up in nominal terms for the first time in quite a long time. And so by the next election, you'll have about 2.2 million people who are earning that much. So it's a relatively significant sum of people to care about. And are politicians trying to address this issue? Funnily enough, they're not. The£100 ,000 seems to have such a sort of hold on people.

13:10It seems like such an unimaginably large sum of money that the fact that it actually covers quite a lot of people now gets completely overlooked. So Labour, they're in government, but they're a centre-left party, they're a social-democrat party. Fundamentally, it's not their job to care that much about rich people. The Conservatives have had this sort of midlife crisis over the past decade where they've sort of given up on the most prosperous people in society, which is traditionally their bedrock. And a lot of those voters sort of drifted over to the Liberal Democrats at the last election. But even they're not really offering anything to these types of voters, even though they have been unashamed of offering policies that appeal to rich people.

13:46For instance, they've been very opposed to the VAT rise on private schools, for example. And then you've got Nigel Farage's challenger party, Reform UK, but they fundamentally do best among the poorest people in society. So they do much better among households with incomes below£30 ,000 than they do among households above£70 ,000. So if politicians aren't going to do anything about it, what happens? So what we're seeing is that Henry's have started looking after themselves. So if you go onto Reddit or on TikTok, you will see a lot of people offering advice for Henry's of how to avoid tax perfectly legally.

14:19And so there's all sorts of schemes that people do to reduce their tax bill. You will see people putting extra money into their pensions, which is fine. But then you also see slightly more wasteful spending where, for instance, they will use salary sacrifice schemes to buy an electric car that they don't really need. Or they will buy a bike on a cycle to work scheme that they don't really need. or they would just start doing a four-day week, for example. They would just start working a bit less and that has all sorts of problematic knock-ons effects for the economy. So Duncan, you're saying we really should be sympathetic to this group then?

14:49I think we should be a little bit more sympathetic to them because they are the golden goose. But also MPs from a very cynical perspective could look out for them too because they will be Henrys too very soon. So an MP in the UK earns about£94 ,000 a year at the moment but by the end of the Parliament that will be just over£100 ,000. so all these problems will soon apply to them and let's see if it gets fixed then. I hope the Henrys have been giving you plaudits, Duncan, on their Reddit groups for taking up their cause when no one else can. Well, there was a relatively positive reaction to the piece but there was one person who seemed to suggest I was jealous because I couldn't afford a platinum Amex.

15:26Thanks, Duncan. Thank you.

15:39Tofu has a somewhat dubious political reputation in the West. The Guardian reading, tofu eating, woke karate, dare I say... Zuella Braverman, Britain's former home secretary, blamed tofu eaters for a protest that closed a bridge. John Fassman is our senior culture correspondent. A senator from my home state, Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, argued that Democrats want to turn Texas into California, right down to the tofu. And across the West, eating tofu is seen as leftist, as weak, as unmanly. But honestly, this view is extremely silly. And carnivores who hold it are depriving themselves of a healthy, delicious, adaptable source of protein.

16:25Don't hold back with your views, John. Before we get onto the politics of tofu, just remind us what tofu is actually made of. Tofu is made basically from soybeans. And what you do is you heat them up, you puree them, you strain them, and then you do basically what dairy farmers do to milk to make cheese, which is you inoculate the milk with a coagulant. It forms into curds and those curds then solidify and can be set into various different forms. So it's essentially a product similar to cheese, but made from soybeans. So, John, you've given us just a tiny hint that you're a fan of tofu, but a lot of people just say it's wobbly, bland, white, tasteless.

17:05People do say that but I am here to dispel the myths and I want to state at the outset that I am an enthusiastic carnivore and also a tofu lover. Now I know that some people only eat tofu because they feel they should or because they've sworn off meat. In a terrific new book that I read called Tofu Culinary History by Russell Thomas, he's a journalist, he argues correctly that tofu deserves better than its worthy reputation. But really, the first step to enjoying it is getting politics out of the kitchen and appreciating it for what it is. It is not a meat substitute. That's a little tough. No one is going to mistake it for a steak.

17:41It is a lean, healthy source of protein that deserves to be appreciated for what it is in its own right. So John, give us some tips. How would you cook your tofu? I'll tell you how I do cook my tofu because I have two kids who are not especially adventurous eaters. Most often what I'll do is crumble extra firm tofu into a frying pan, saute it until all the water is out and it's little crumbles, and then season it very heavily. At that point, it's functionally indistinguishable if you're going to put it in a taco from chorizo, which is meat-based, except that it is not meat based. It has no cholesterol.

18:16It's much leaner. If I'm going to braise it, I'll freeze tofu. And when you freeze it and thaw it, it develops this wonderful porous honeycomb-like texture that chews a bit like braised beef, but soaks up all the sauces. I will sometimes also coat it in cornstarch and then fry it so it gets very crispy and then douse it in a sauce and will again take up the flavors of whatever you cook it in. Now I'm absolutely starving. John, one of the things that's interesting is, as you say, a lot of people think about it as a meat substitute in the West, But when I was in China, I noticed often you would see it served alongside meat in dishes like mapu tofu.

18:54Yeah, and when I was in Southeast Asia, also, it was not unusual to see it served alongside meat. You would often see, for instance, a dish of braised pork and yuba, which is a dry tofu skin, which when cooked in liquid for a while, develops a chew that's very much like meat. You could combine smoked tofu with celery into a sort of light stir fry. You can cut silken tofu, which has a wonderful soft texture, as the name implies. and use it as a bed for steamed spicy fish because it acts as a foil for all that spice. And all of these dishes have tofu alongside meat because they actually taste good together.

19:26They complement each other. They aren't antithetical in that sense. They're two types of protein that work well together. So how did tofu get its political reputation in the first place then? Well, I think it came into the West with the countercultural 60s. And so it was initially seen as part of a worthy back-to-the-land macrobiotic diet, that cooked most often, I would say, by people for whom taste may not have been as important as the political statement they were making by cooking it. It has now reaped the reward on the other side. And so I would encourage everyone, when you look at a box of tofu, to consider the food in front of you and not the politics around it.

20:02John, thank you so much. Great to have you back. Always a pleasure. Thank you.

20:14Thank you.

20:44Benji Guy and Jonathan Day. We'll all see you back here for the Weekend Intelligence tomorrow.