Washington — The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on two people and one entity based in the United Arab Emirates, accusing them of being involved in a network that launders millions of dollars generated by IT workers and cybercrimes to support the North Korean government. 

The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement that the two people hit with sanctions worked through a UAE-based front company to facilitate money laundering and cryptocurrency conversion services that funneled the illicit proceeds back to Pyongyang. 

North Korea’s mission to the United Nations didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment. 

Tuesday’s action comes as Washington seeks to cut off funding for North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs, the Treasury said.  

“As the DPRK continues to use complex criminal schemes to fund its WMD and ballistic missile programs — including through the exploitation of digital assets — Treasury remains focused on disrupting the networks that facilitate this flow of funds to the regime,” Treasury Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley Smith said in the statement. 

Tuesday’s move targeted UAE-based Chinese nationals Lu Huaying and Zhang Jian as well as UAE-based Green Alpine Trading LLC. It freezes any of their U.S. assets and generally bars Americans from dealing with them. Those that engage in certain transactions with them also risk being hit with sanctions. 

The Emirati embassy in Washington didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment. Reuters could not immediately locate contact details for Green Alpine Trading, Lu or Zhang.
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Tokyo — Space startups in Japan and India said on Tuesday they had agreed to jointly study using laser-equipped satellites to remove debris from orbit, an experimental approach to the increasingly imminent problem of orbital congestion.

Tokyo-based Orbital Lasers and Indian robotics company InspeCity said they would study business opportunities for in-space services such as de-orbiting a defunct satellite and extending a spacecraft’s life.

Carved out from Japanese satellite giant SKY Perfect this year, Orbital Lasers is building a system that will use laser energy to stop the rotation of space junk by vaporizing small parts of its surface, making it easier for a servicing spacecraft to rendezvous.

Orbital Lasers plans to demonstrate the system in space and supply it to operators after 2027, said Aditya Baraskar, the company’s global business lead. It can be mounted on InspeCity satellites if the companies clear regulatory requirements in India and Japan, Baraskar added.

The companies said they had signed a preliminary agreement to initiate the collaboration. InspeCity was founded in 2022 and raised $1.5 million last year, while Orbital Lasers has raised $5.8 million since it was established in January.

A United Nations panel on space traffic coordination in late October said that urgent action was necessary to track and manage objects in low Earth orbit because of the rapid increase in satellites and space junk.

There are already more than 100 companies in the space servicing market as satellite constellations expand, Nobu Okada, chief executive of Japanese debris mitigation pioneer Astroscale, said earlier this year.

The project is the latest example of collaboration between Japan and India, whose governments are working together on the joint Lunar Polar Exploration (LUPEX) mission, which could launch as early as 2026.

Indian rocket maker Skyroot and satellite builder HEX20 are also working with Japanese moon exploration firm ispace on a future lunar orbiter mission.

The two countries’ commercial space tie-ups have been driven by Japanese satellite data solutions for India’s disaster management and agriculture, and can expand to more fields such as manufacturing, said Masayasu Ishida, chief executive of Tokyo-based nonprofit SPACETIDE, which has hosted space business conferences since 2015.

“The key is finding where and how to build complementary relationships” that align with national policies such as Make in India, which aims to boost local production, Ishida said.
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bangkok — Rights groups and activists Monday continued to urge the government of Laos to provide answers about the suspected abduction of prominent rights advocate Sombath Somphone, who was last seen at a police checkpoint in the country’s capital 12 years ago.

In CCTV footage captured by a roadside camera on December 15, 2012, in central Vientiane, Sombath is seen being pulled over at a police post, stepping out of his Jeep and getting into a pickup truck that drives him away.

He has not been seen or heard from since. The government of Laos, an authoritarian, one-party communist regime, claims it knows nothing of what happened.

“We continue to ask: Where is Sombath? We continue to say we are not going anywhere. We’re going to continue to demand answers from the Lao government. His is a case of enforced disappearance in the purest form,” Phil Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights and Labor Advocates, said Monday at an event in Bangkok marking the anniversary.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Commission of Jurists were among 78 nongovernment groups that also signed an open letter urging the United Nations to press Laos for answers at a coming review of the government’s human rights record next year.

A tireless champion for his country’s impoverished farmers, Sombath won the U.N.’s Human Resource Development Award in 2001 and Asia’s prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership four years later.

To help carry on Sombath’s legacy, his wife, Shui Meng Ng, set up a memorial fund in 2022 that awards small grants for projects in Laos and its neighbors, promoting vocational education, environmental sustainability and other causes Sombath had fought for. She also co-founded the Sombath Somphone & Beyond Project to seek answers to the suspected abductions of her husband and others.

On the day Sombath vanished, Ng was driving just ahead of him in another car to join him for dinner at home. Despite the government’s “wall of silence” about why he never made it, she continues to wait.

“I still need to know what happened to Sombath, whether he is even alive. I need the truth,” Ng, who traveled from Laos to Thailand for Monday’s event, told VOA.

“I still hope that he’s alive and wish he will come back,” she said. “I continue to seek answers. I will not give up trying to wait for Sombath to come back until my dying day.”

Hundreds of families across the region could relate.

In its latest annual report, the U.N.’s Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances says it has counted more than 1,130 cases across Southeast Asia since 1980, the majority of which remain unsolved. It defines the practice as an arrest, detention or abduction by state agents or their proxies, and the state’s refusal to either acknowledge the event or to reveal the victim’s fate.

Although many of the cases date back decades, the lack of resolution has lasting consequences, said Sunai Phasuk, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch in Thailand.

“It has created a sense of impunity that wrongdoers can continue their wrongdoings and get away with their crimes. And in parallel to that, the climate of fear … has been reinforc[ed],” he said.

In Laos, Ng said, the space for even mild dissent has only shrunk since her husband’s disappearance, out of fear that the same could happen to those who would follow in his footsteps.

She said precious few even dare to try anymore.

“So, it is not very hopeful in terms of activism or people raising issues of concern on any kind of sensitive area,” said Ng. “Everybody knows where the limit is and people are even stepping back way, way behind the line. … They’re not even testing the line.”

Phasuk said enforced disappearance has become a common feature of the so-called swap mart the governments are allegedly running by returning each other’s wanted dissidents regardless of the persecution they may face back home.

“Assassination, abduction and enforced disappearance seem to be grouped together in this network of transnational repression in mainland Southeast Asia,” he said.

In a 2024 report, Human Rights Watch chronicled 25 confirmed or suspected cases of cross-border repression in the region, including disappearances, over the previous decade.

Sombath’s case in particular, though, 12 years on, continues to serve as a bellwether in the search for answers in those cases.

“I hope that we’re not here next year doing this,” Robertson said. “I would like to see a breakthrough in this case. I want to have an event midyear where we say we’ve now found out what’s going on. … But if we have to be here next December, we will be.”
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BRUSSELS — The EU on Monday for the first time imposed fully fledged sanctions, including asset freezes and visa bans, on Chinese firms for supplying Russia’s military for the war on Ukraine.

It has also added North Korea’s defense minister to its sanctions blacklist after the secretive state sent troops to Russia to reinforce its military.

The move — part of the EU’s 15th round of sanctions over the conflict — represented a heightened effort to tackle the crucial role allegedly being played by China in keeping Russia’s war machine going.

The EU said it was blacklisting four Chinese companies for “supplying sensitive drone components and microelectronic components” to the Russian military.

Two other firms and one Chinese businesswoman were hit for circumventing EU sanctions aimed at stopping equipment flowing to Moscow.

Among the companies was Xiamen Limbach, alleged to have supplied engines for long-range attack drones used by Russia against Ukraine.

The EU has targeted Chinese firms before for supporting Russia’s military.

But until now the bloc has imposed bans on European firms doing business with the Chinese companies — rather than the tougher sanctions now being applied.

The EU also took aim at North Korea in the latest package, after Pyongyang dispatched troops to Russia to fight Ukraine.

The 27-nation bloc added defense minister No Kwang Chol and deputy chief of the general staff Kim Yong Bok to a number of North Korean officials already blacklisted.

Ukraine said Monday that its troops killed or wounded at least 30 North Korean soldiers who had been deployed in Russia’s western Kursk region, where Ukraine has seized territory.

In a bid to limit Russian revenues, the EU included around 50 oil tankers from Moscow’s “shadow fleet” used to help the Kremlin get around Western oil sanctions.
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SYDNEY — Australian authorities are responding to a surge in antisemitic and Islamophobic hate crimes.

Australian police said offensive graffiti that demeaned Islam was found under a bridge in the Sydney suburb of Sefton on Sunday.  

The New South Wales state Premier Chris Minns said “this racism and Islamophobia is disgusting and corrosive to the very fabric” of multiculturalism.  

Sefton is a majority-Muslim district. Official data shows that a third of residents follow Islam. 

Jason Clare, the federal education minister, told reporters Monday that all racism needed to be confronted.

“We need to condemn this and all forms of racism right across the country,” Clare said. “We are the best country in the world and one of the reasons for that is because we are made up of people from all around the world, all different religions living here in harmony, and this is just the absolute opposite of that.”

Jewish groups have also condemned the anti-Islamic graffiti, insisting that the “hateful” incident would be distressing for the whole community.

Muslim leaders, though, have said similar hate crimes targeting the Islamic community have not been taken seriously by Australia’s politicians.  

Gamal Kheir, secretary of the Lebanese Muslim Association, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Monday that the authorities had to do more.

“There is an underlying racist element, whether that be antisemitic, Islamophobic or any other form of racism, that is not being addressed and we (are) calling on government to stop making this a political football where politicians (are) trying to politically point-score, and resolve the problem,” Kheir said.

Australian police are also investigating another antisemitic hate attack. Earlier this month, a vehicle was set alight and properties were vandalized with anti-Israel graffiti in Sydney.  

The Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has set up a new task force to tackle antisemitic crimes following a recent arson attack on a synagogue in Melbourne.

Police are treating the firebombing as a likely terror attack.

Earlier this year, the Canberra government created special antisemitic and Islamophobia community envoys to help curb a rise in hate crimes linked to conflict in the Middle East.

Community groups have reported an increase in Islamophobic and antisemitic abuse in Australia since Israel’s war in Gaza began in October 2023. 

A police investigation into anti-Islamic graffiti in Sydney is continuing.
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BEIJING — China’s Communist Party must “turn the knife inward” to eliminate problems of discipline, including corruption, President Xi Jinping said, a new call to hunt down corrupt officials and those who corrupt them.

Since coming to power over a decade ago, Xi has cracked down on corruption involving party members, whether they were corrupt high-ranking “tigers” or lowly “flies” who failed to implement government policies.

But despite the sweeping crackdown, the party continues to be plagued by graft, particularly within the armed forces. Two former defense ministers have been purged from the party in the past two years for “serious violations of discipline,” a euphemism for corruption.

The party must take counter-measures against any interest group, organization of power, or privileged class from preying on or corrupting party members, Xi warned in a speech published on Monday by Qiushi Journal, a flagship party magazine.

“As the situation and tasks facing the party change, there will inevitably be all kinds of conflicts and problems within the party,” he said.

“We must have the courage to turn the knife inward and eliminate their negative impact in a timely manner to ensure that the party is always full of vigor and vitality.”

Xi’s call to “turn the knife inward” was part of a speech he gave at a major meeting with the party’s anti-graft watchdog on Jan. 8, but had not been disclosed previously.

The excerpts published on Monday suggest a renewed and wider push to instill discipline and hunt down officials seeking personal gain and those who lead them astray.

Last month, the defense ministry disclosed that an admiral who had served on the Central Military Commission, the country’s highest-level military command body, was under investigation for “serious violations of discipline.”

Last year, about 610,000 party officials were punished for violating party discipline, of which 49 were officials above the vice minister or governor level, according to statistics from the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.
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Seoul, South Korea — North Korean state media KCNA on Monday reported on the South Korean parliament passing President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment vote Saturday.

Yoon was impeached in a second vote by South Korea’s opposition-led parliament over his short-lived attempt to impose martial law, which shocked the nation.

KCNA had reported for the first time on Dec. 11 South Korea’s martial law crisis which was sparked on Dec. 3.

On Monday, KCNA did not offer much commentary, but called Yoon’s defiant televised remarks on Dec. 12 “a press statement spliced with lies and obstinacy” and noted the rally in front of South Korean parliament that called for Yoon’s impeachment.

It also noted media reports on various South Korean military and police officials’ suspension from duties and ongoing investigation into Yoon.

After the impeachment vote passed Saturday, South Korea’s acting defense minister, Kim Seon-ho, called on the military to maintain preparedness and ordered commanding officers to work promptly to stabilize their troop commands.

On Saturday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia has begun using North Korean troops in significant numbers for the first time to conduct assaults on Ukrainian forces battling to hold an enclave in Russia’s Kursk region.
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Suva, Fiji — Seven foreigners including four Australians and an American have been hospitalized after drinking cocktails at a five-star Fiji hotel resort, health officials said Sunday. 

The hotel guests were taken to hospital on Saturday night suffering “nausea, vomiting and neurological symptoms,” Fiji’s health ministry said in a statement. 

They fell ill after drinking a cocktail prepared at a bar in the luxury Warwick Fiji resort on the Coral Coast, about 60 kilometers west of the capital Suva, it said. 

A ministry spokesperson said the guests, aged from 18 to 56, included four Australians, one American and two foreigners who live in Fiji, whose nationalities were not given. 

All seven were initially taken to the nearby Sigatoka hospital. 

Due to the severity of their conditions, they were later transferred to the larger Lautoka Hospital on the island’s west coast, the ministry spokesperson said.  

Fiji police are investigating the incident. 

Australia’s foreign ministry said it was providing consular assistance to two families but declined further comment citing “privacy obligations.” 

Australian public broadcaster ABC said it understood a 56-year-old Australian woman was under constant surveillance in hospital and a 19-year-old female compatriot was suffering “serious medical episodes.” 

Two other Australian women aged 49 and 18 were in a critical but less serious condition, the ABC said. 

Fiji’s health ministry did not specify the cause of the illness but warned people to ensure drinks and food consumed during the holiday period were safe. 

In a separate incident in Laos last month, two Danish citizens, an American, a Briton and two Australians died of suspected methanol poisoning following what local media said was a night out in the town of Vang Vieng. 
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OKAPI WILDLIFE RESERVE, Democratic Republic of Congo — Scattered along the banks of the Ituri River, buildings cram together, cranes transport dirt and debris scatters the soil. The patches of trees are a scant reminder that a forest once grew there.

Nestled in eastern Congo’s Ituri province, the Chinese-run gold mine is rapidly encroaching on an area that many say it shouldn’t be operating in at all – the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, an endangered World Heritage site.

The original boundaries of the reserve were established three decades ago, by Congo’s government and encompassed the area where the Chinese company now mines. But over the years under opaque circumstances, the boundaries shrunk, allowing the company to operate inside the plush forest.

The reserve was already on the endangered list, amid threats of conflict and wildlife trafficking. Now the rapid expansion of the Chinese mines threatens to further degrade the forest and the communities living within. Residents and wildlife experts say the mining’s polluting the rivers and soil, decimating trees and swelling the population, increasing poaching, with little accountability.

“It is alarming that a semi-industrial mining operation is being given free rein in what’s supposed to be a protected World Heritage Site, that was already on the danger list,” said Joe Eisen, executive director, of Rainforest Foundation UK.

Spanning more than 13,000 square kilometers (5,000 square miles), the reserve became a protected site in 1996, due to its unique biodiversity and large number of threatened species, including its namesake, the okapi, a forest giraffe, of which it holds some 15% of the world’s remaining 30,000. It’s part of the the Congo Basin rainforest — the world’s second-biggest — and a vital carbon sink that helps mitigate climate change. It also has vast mineral wealth such as gold and diamonds.

Mining is prohibited in protected areas, which includes the reserve, according to Congo’s mining code.

Issa Aboubacar, a spokesperson for the Chinese company, Kimia Mining Investment, said the group is operating legally. It recently renewed its permits until 2048, according to government records.

Congo’s mining registry said the map they’re using came from files from the ICCN, the body responsible for managing Congo’s protected areas, and it’s currently working with the ICCN on updating the boundaries and protecting the park.

The ICCN told The Associated Press that in meetings this year with the mining registry the misunderstandings around the boundaries were clarified and the original ones should be used.

An internal government memo from August, seen by AP, said all companies in the Reserve will be closed down, including Kimia Mining. However, it was unclear when that would happen or how.

The document has not previously been reported and is the first acknowledging that the current boundaries are wrong, according to environmentalists working in Congo.

Rights groups in Congo have long said the permits were illegally awarded by the mining ministry based on inaccurate maps.

Shifting boundaries and rules

Eastern Congo’s been beset by violence for decades and the Okapi Reserve’s endured years of unrest by local militia.

In 2012, in Epulu town, a local rebel group slaughtered several residents including two rangers, as well as 14 okapis, the latter were part of a captive breeding program.

The reserve’s also been threatened by artisanal — small scale — mining, by thousands of Indigenous peoples who live in and around the forest.

The Muchacha mine — the biggest in the reserve and one of the largest small and medium scale gold mines in the country — spans approximately 12 miles (19 kilometers) along the Ituri River and consists of several semi-industrial sites. Satellite images analyzed by AP show consistent development along the southwestern section of the Reserve, since it began operating in 2016, with a boom in recent years.

Joel Masselink, a geographer specializing in satellite imagery, who previously worked on conservation projects in the forest, said the mining cadastral — the agency responsible for allocating mineral licenses — is using a version of the reserve’s maps in which the area’s been shrunk by nearly a third. This has allowed it to award and renew exploration and extraction concessions, he said.

The mining cadastral told the U.N. that the boundaries were changed due to a letter from the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature, the body in charge of protected areas in Congo, but didn’t provide a copy, said a report from U.N. experts. The ICCN told the AP it’s never seen the letter and the boundaries used should be the original ones.

Changing World Heritage Site boundaries needs to be approved by UNESCO experts and the World Heritage Committee, which analyze the impact of the modification, a spokesperson for the World Heritage Center told AP. The Center said no request to modify the Reserve’s boundaries had been made and that cases of boundary modifications to facilitate development were rare.

Civil society groups in Congo accuse some government officials of intentionally moving the boundaries for personal gain. “We all knew that Muchacha was within the reserve,” said Alexis Muhima, executive director of the Congolese Civil Society Observatory for Peace Minerals. He said the discrepancy over the park’s boundaries started when they realized the mine was producing large quantities of gold.

The U.N. report said mines are controlled by the military, and some members are under the protection of powerful business and political interests, with soldiers at times denying local officials access to the sites.

Residents, who once mined in the reserve, are infuriated by the double standard. “The community is worried, because the Chinese are mining in a protected area when it’s forbidden for the community,” said Jean Kamana, the chief of Epulu, a village inside the Reserve.

Despite being a protected forest, people still mined there until authorities cracked down, largely after the Chinese arrived. Kimia Mining grants limited access to locals to mine areas for leftovers, but for a fee that many can’t afford, say locals.

Muvunga Kakule used to do artisanal mining in the reserve while also selling food from his farm to other miners. The 44-year-old said he’s now unable to mine or sell produce as the Chinese don’t buy locally. He’s lost 95% of his earnings and can no longer send his children to private school.

Some residents told the AP there are no other options for work and have been forced to mine secretly and risk being jailed.

Losing land, animals and income

During a trip to the reserve earlier this year, Kimia Mining wouldn’t let AP enter the site and the government wouldn’t grant access to patrol the forest with its rangers.

But nearly two dozen residents, as well as former and current Kimia Mining employees from villages in and around the Reserve, told the AP the mining was decimating the forests and the wildlife and contaminating the water and land.

Five people who had worked inside Kimia’s mines, none of whom wanted to be named for fear of reprisal, said when the Chinese finished in one area, they leave exposed, toxic water sources. Sometimes people would fall into uncovered pits and when it rains, water seeps into the soil.

Employees and mining experts say the Chinese use mercury in its operations, used to separate gold from ore. Mercury is considered one of the top ten chemicals of major public health concern by the U.N. and can have toxic effects on the nervous and immune systems.

One 27-year-old woman who worked as a cook for Kimia for six months and lives in Badengaido town, close to the mine, said the soil has become infertile. “(It’s) poisoned by chemicals used by the Chinese,” she said.

The AP could not independently verify her claim. However, a report from the University of Antwerp that researched the impact of conflict and mining on the Reserve said chemicals used to purify gold, such as mercury or cyanide, can enter the ecosystems and pollute the soil.

In the past, 15 kilograms (33 pounds) of peanut seeds would yield approximately 30 bags, but now it’s hard to get three, she said. The loss of income has made it challenging to afford school and medical care for her siblings.

Assana, a fisher who also worked in the mines and only wanted to use his first name, said it now takes four days to catch the same amount of fish he used to get in a day. While doing odd jobs for the company last year, the 38-year-old saw the Chinese repeatedly chop swaths of forest, making the heat unbearable, he said.

Between last January and May, the reserve lost more than 480 hectares (1,186 acres) of forest cover — the size of nearly 900 American football fields — according to a joint statement from the Wildlife Conservation Society and government agencies, which said it was concerned at the findings.

Aboubacar, Kimia’s spokesperson in Congo, said the company respects environmental standards and pays tax to the government for reforestation. Mining is a crucial revenue stream for Congo and it “can’t place a higher value on the environment than on mining,” he said.

Kimia is supporting the population and has employed more than 2,000 people, said Aboubacar.

Conservation is an uphill battle

Conservation groups are trying to protect the reserve, but say it’s hard to enforce when there’s ambiguity on the legalities.

“On the one hand, Congo’s law clearly states that mining is illegal in protected areas. On the other hand, if a mine is operating with an official permit, then that creates confusion, and that becomes hard to enforce on the ground,” said Emma Stokes, Vice President of field conservation for The Wildlife Conservation Society.

The internal memo, seen by AP, outlines discussions by a joint task force between the ICCN and Congo’s mining registry, which was created to try and resolve the boundary issue. The document said it will trigger the process of stopping all mining within the Reserve and integrate the agreed upon map from the joint commission into the mining registry’s system.

UNESCO’s requested a report from Congo by February, to provide clarity on what will be done to resolve the problem.

But this comes as little comfort to communities in the reserve.

Wendo Olengama, a Pygmy chief, said the influx of thousands of people into the Chinese-run mines has increased poaching, making it hard to earn money.

During the authorized hunting season, he could capture up to seven animals a day, eating some and selling others. Now it’s hard to get two, he said.

Sitting in a small hut beside his wife, as she bounces their 3-year-old granddaughter on her lap, the couple says they want the Chinese company to provide business opportunities, such as cattle raising and teach people responsible hunting.

“If the situation persists, we’ll live in misery,” said his wife, Dura Anyainde. “We wont have food to eat.”
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South Korean lawmakers have impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol over his attempt to impose martial law. In a vote Saturday, 12 conservative lawmakers joined opposition forces to impeach Yoon, whose powers will now be suspended until the country’s Constitutional Court decides whether to formally remove him from office. Here is more from VOA’s Bill Gallo in Seoul.
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SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — South Korea’s parliament has voted to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol, a stunning fall from grace for a man who rose from political obscurity to the height of political power.

His decades of achievement could be on the verge of crumbling due to a single, baffling decision to send out troops under martial law over vague claims that one of Asia’s leading democracies was under threat.

The impeachment suspends Yoon’s presidential powers until the Constitutional Court determines whether to dismiss him as president or restore his powers. Yoon also faces investigations meant to find whether his December 3 decree amounts to rebellion, a crime that is punished by up to the death penalty in South Korea if convicted.

Yoon, a staunch conservative and longtime prosecutor, went from political novice to president of South Korea in 2022, ending five years of liberal rule that saw failed efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis and a slackening economy.

His time in office, however, was marked by near-constant friction with an opposition-controlled parliament, threats of annihilation from North Korea and a series of scandals involving him and his wife. Observers said he was impulsive, took criticism personally and relied too much on the advice of hardcore loyalists.

No one thing explained his attempt to shut down the mechanisms of a democratic nation over his claim that “anti-state forces” were acting under the influence of North Korea.

But there are strands in Yoon’s background, and especially in the intense acrimony with the liberal opposition and his hardline standoff with North Korea, that help illuminate the defining moment of his presidency.

A turbulent rise to top prosecutor

Despite 2½ years as president, Yoon’s career was overwhelmingly about the law, not politics.

Yoon, 63, was born in Seoul to two professors, and went to prestigious Seoul National University, where he studied law.

A major moment, according to Yoon, happened in 1980 when he played the role of a judge in a mock trial of then-dictator Chun Doo-hwan, who had staged a military coup the previous year, and sentenced him to life imprisonment. In the aftermath, Yoon had to flee to the countryside as Chun’s military extended martial law and placed troops and armored vehicles at various places including his university.

Yoon returned to the capital and eventually began a career as a state prosecutor that would last nearly three decades, building an image as strong-minded and uncompromising.

Prone to confrontation

But he also faced criticism that his personality was unsuited to high-level leadership.

“President Yoon isn’t well-prepared, and he does things off the cuff,” Choi Jin, director of the Seoul-based Institute of Presidential Leadership, said. “He also tends to express his emotions too directly. The things that he likes and dislikes are easy to see, and he tends to handle things with a small group of his own people, not the majority of people.”

During a parliament audit in 2013, Yoon, then a senior prosecutor, said he was under pressure from his boss, who said he opposed Yoon’s investigation into an allegation that the country’s spy agency had conducted an illicit online campaign to help conservative President Park Geun-hye win the previous year’s election.

At the time, he famously said, “I’m not loyal to [high-level] people.”

He was demoted, but after Park’s government was toppled over a separate corruption scandal in 2017, then-President Moon Jae-in made Yoon head of a Seoul prosecution office, which investigated Park and other conservative leaders. Moon later named Yoon the nation’s top prosecutor.

A neophyte in politics

Yoon joined party politics only about a year before he won the presidency, abandoning the liberal Moon after an impasse over a probe of Moon’s allies. Moon’s supporters said he was trying to thwart Moon’s prosecution reforms and elevate his own political standing.

The 2022 presidential race was Yoon’s first election campaign.

Yoon beat his rival, liberal firebrand Lee Jae-myung, by less than 1 percentage point in South Korea’s most closely fought presidential election.

Their campaign was one of the nastiest in recent memory.

Yoon compared Lee’s party to “Hitler” and “Mussolini.” Lee’s allies called Yoon “a beast” and “dictator” and derided his wife’s alleged plastic surgery.

Domestic political strife

Yoon’s time as president was dominated by frustration and acrimony, much stemming from his narrow victory and his party’s failure to win control of parliament throughout his term.

When Yoon declared the state of emergency, he said a goal was to eliminate “shameless North Korea followers and anti-state forces” in an apparent reference to the opposition Democratic Party.

In a fiery speech on Thursday, Yoon again defended his martial law decree and vowed to “fight to the end” in the face of attempts to impeach and investigate him. He called the Democratic Party “a monster” and “anti-state forces” that he argued has flexed its legislative muscle to impeach top officials and undermined the government’s budget bill for next year.

Claims of corruption also battered his approval ratings.

Yoon recently denied wrongdoing in an influence-peddling scandal involving him and his wife. Spy camera footage in a separate scandal also purportedly shows the first lady, Kim Keon Hee, accepting a luxury bag as a gift from a pastor.

Choi said he thinks Yoon likely planned the “clumsy martial law” edict to divert public attention away from the scandals.

“He tried to massively shake up the political world,” Choi said. “But he failed. He likely believed there was no other option.”

North Korea lashed out at his hard line

If political squabbles and scandal set the tenor of Yoon’s domestic presidency, its foreign policy was characterized by a bitter standoff with North Korea.

Yoon early on in his presidency promised “an audacious plan” to improve the North’s economy if it abandoned its nuclear weapons.

But things turned sour quickly, as North Korea ramped up its weapons tests and threats to attack the South. North Korea eventually began calling Yoon “a guy with a trash-like brain” and “a diplomatic idiot.”

North Korea took that trash theme literally, sending thousands of balloons filled with garbage over the border, including some that made it to the presidential compound in Seoul at least twice.

Yoon’s mention of North Korea as a domestic destabilizing force reminded some of an earlier South Korea, which until the late 1980s was ruled by a series of strongmen who repeatedly invoked the threat from the North to justify effort to suppress domestic dissidents and political opponents.
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Jakarta, indonesia — Indonesia remains cautiously determined to join BRICS despite a threat from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to double tariffs on members of the Russia- and China-led bloc if it pursues its stated goal of establishing an alternative to the U.S. dollar in international trade.

At a parliament meeting this month with the Indonesian Foreign Ministry, legislators expressed their concern about Trump’s threats.

“Although we are confident in expanding our diplomatic relations, Indonesia’s presence in BRICS may be considered as a departure from traditional trade relations with U.S. and the European Union,” said Sumail Abdullah, a ruling party legislator with a role in foreign affairs. “Don’t let this become a reality, because countries like Russia and China will certainly dominate BRICS.”

Foreign Minister Sugiono defended his decision to join BRICS, arguing that there are many benefits to being a member.

“Essentially, BRICS is a good platform that we can utilize as our vessel to discuss and bring forward the interests of developing countries. It is also an implementation of our independent and active foreign policy,” he told legislators at the December 2 session.

Sugiono stressed the importance of strengthening Indonesia’s economy by building food and energy security and developing downstream industries. Indonesia, he added, should be less reliant economically on other countries so it can better decide its own foreign policy.

Although the BRICS countries have made it a goal to reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar as an exchange currency, Sugiono said the issue was not brought up during the October 2024 BRICS Summit in Russia.

However, the minister left the door open to reconsidering the decision in light of Trump’s threat.

“If we think there are things that could harm our national interests, then we can review our membership in BRICS. What is important is that our attempt to join any multilateral group is focused towards maintaining our national interests,” he told the legislators.

Indonesia’s journey to join BRICS

BRICS is a global economic cooperation organization that was formed in 2006 to focus attention on investment opportunities among its founding countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Indonesia expressed its desire to join the bloc at the October summit in Kazan, Russia, where Sugiono proposed several concrete steps to strengthen BRICS and Global South cooperation.

President Prabowo Subianto has repeatedly underlined his intention to befriend both China and the United States, saying Indonesia will not join any military bloc.

Teuku Rezasyah, a professor specializing in diplomacy and foreign policy at Universitas Padjadjaran, told VOA that joining BRICS places Indonesia in the geopolitical center between the rival power blocs.

“We’re not only close with the U.S., the European Union, but also getting closer with Russia and China. As a result, we have more bargaining power, which will benefit us,” he said at a national seminar.

Teuku argued that the shared BRICS vision, as laid out in a 2021 joint statement, calls for a restructured global political, economic and financial architecture with a reformed United Nations at its center. He said this vision reflects a contemporary world that is more equitable, balanced and representative.

Political benefits, challenges

Although Indonesia has been invited to become a BRICS member since 2022, it did not officially express its intention until this October. Indonesia is currently a BRICS partner country, a status that applies to 12 other countries, including fellow ASEAN states Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand.

Teuku said the organization “is commonly understood as an attempt to form a geopolitical bloc capable of counterbalancing the influence of Western-dominated global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.”

Muhsin Shihab, an expert adviser on institutional relations at Indonesia’s foreign ministry, said in November that by joining BRICS, Indonesia can increase its global clout and can help to shape the agenda of the Global South.

But Tobias Basuki, co-founder of Aristoteles Consults, a political consultancy and legal services firm, said in an interview with VOA that he doubted Indonesia would gain much from joining the bloc because most of its political and economic goals can be achieved through bilateral ties with the BRICS members.

Russia and China have more to gain from expanding the group’s membership, he said, adding that they “have their own agenda and interests, which are not necessarily always aligned with the Global South’s needs and interests.

“So by joining BRICS, you’re actually entering their playground. It may not give Indonesia the position that Prabowo wants to be as a bridge-maker between the two competing powers.”

Basuki said that “if Indonesia wants to be a leader of the Global South, then it’s better to revive the [Indonesia-led] Asia-Africa conference and Non-Aligned Movement, which already has 120 countries, a true reflection of a Global South alliance.”

Apart from joining BRICS, Indonesia is also seeking membership at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which signals its ambition to align with global standards of governance and economic openness.
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