The hub-bub of a Trump victory in the US election aside, there's been quite a stir in South Korea recently, with mass protests in Seoul calling for the president's abdication.
The story behind these protests is one of the juiciest bits of political gossip I've seen in a long, long time. Hell, it's full of so much drama that if I didn't know any better, I'd think it was the plot to a cheap Korean soap opera.
As it turns out, the president of South Korea, Park Geun-hye, has her own grey eminence, Choi Soon-sil, the leader of a shamanistic cult who's been heavily influencing national policy since the president's election in 2012.
This all came to light after a series of investigations involving corruption and academic fraud at a prestigious South Korean university. Basically, a young Korean horse rider tried to get enrolled in said university, but lacked the grades and academic standing to do so. Her mother, being very rich, managed to get her enrolled regardless, creating a scholarship in equestrianism for her daughter to avoid arousing suspicion. Months passed, and the daughter failed most of her courses, eventually taking temporary leave from the university. In the meantime, the mother did some bribing and pulled a few strings to get her daughter's academic average up to snuff. Some other things happened, but they're not terribly important, and to make a long story short this coincided with a lot of other questionable things happening in the Korean post-secondary education system, which led to minor protests on campus.
Journalists arrived, some investigations happened, and what would have been the subject of a small news column or a page-long article suddenly exploded into a full-on political scandal when it was discovered that the girl's mother and the president were close friends. Not only that, but the girl's mother also turned out to be a member of a religious cult, of which the president is closely acquainted. The more journalists dug, the more dirt was dug up, and now it turns out the cult's shamanistic leader was the mentor of Park Chung-hee, a former president and father of the current president Park Geun-hye. This has all led to massive protests and public outcry calling for the president's resignation, whose current public approval rating is hovering between 5-10%.
Here's an article on the protests, for those who are interested:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/12/half-a-million-protesters-rally-in-seoul-to-demand-resignation-o/
I don't so much have an opinion on this, as I find it more interesting and nonsensical than anything. I suppose my own opinion is that the world seems to slowly be turning into a parody of itself.
TL,DR: South Korea is secretly run by a shamanistic cult leader.
