The Korea Times (Korean: 코리아타임스) is the oldest daily English-language newspaper in South Korea. It is a sister paper of the Hankook Ilbo, a major Korean language daily; both are owned by Dongwha Enterprise, a wood-based manufacturer. Since the late 1950s, it had been published by the Hankook Ilbo Media Group, but following an embezzlement scandal in 2013–2014 it was sold to Dongwha Group, which also acquired Hankook Ilbo. The president-publisher of The Korea Times is Oh Young-jin.
The Sankei Shimbun is a daily national newspaper in Japan published by the Sankei Shimbun Co., Ltd, ranking amongst the top 5 most circulated newspapers in Japan.
Choi Kyu-hah, also spelled Choi Kyu-ha or Choi Gyu-ha, was a South Korean politician who served as the fourth President of South Korea from 1979 to 1980.
Park Geun-hye is a South Korean politician who served as the 11th president of South Korea from 2013 to 2017, when she was impeached and convicted on related corruption charges.
Katsunobu Kato is a Japanese politician who previously serves as the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare three times from 2017 to 2018, from 2019 to 2020, and from 2022 to 2023. He also served as Chief Cabinet Secretary from 2020 to 2021. Belonging to the Liberal Democratic Party, he has been a member of the House of Representatives since 2003.
Roh Moo-hyun was a South Korean politician and lawyer who served as the ninth president of South Korea between 2003 and 2008.
Presidential elections were held in South Korea on 19 December 2012. They were the sixth presidential elections since democratization and the establishment of the Sixth Republic, and were held under a first-past-the-post system, in which there was a single round of voting and the candidate receiving the highest number of votes was elected. Under the South Korean constitution, a president is restricted to a single five-year term in office. The term of the then incumbent president Lee Myung-bak ended on 24 February 2013. According to the Korea Times, 30.7 million people voted with turnout at 75.8%. Park Geun-hye of the Saenuri party was elected the first female South Korean president with 51.6% of the vote opposed to 48.0% for her opponent Moon Jae-in. Park's share of the vote was the highest won by any candidate since the beginning of free and fair direct elections in 1987 and the first such election in which any candidate won a majority. Moreover, as of the 2022 election, this is the latest South Korean presidential election in which the winning candidate won an absolute majority of the vote.
The Japan Institute for National Fundamentals or Kokkiken (国基研) is a public and foreign policy think tank in Tokyo, Japan, privately funded and founded in December 2007 by Yoshiko Sakurai.
Lee Jae-yong, known professionally in the West as Jay Y. Lee, is a South Korean business magnate and convicted felon who has been serving as the executive chairman of Samsung Electronics since October 2022. He is the only son of Lee Kun-hee and Hong Ra-hee. As of September 2021, Lee has an estimated net worth of US$11 billion, making him the fourth-wealthiest person in South Korea.
Park Chung Hee was a South Korean politician and army general. After seizing power in the May 16 coup of 1961, he was then elected as the third President of South Korea in 1963. He ruled the country until his assassination in 1979. He is now regarded as one of the most consequential leaders in Korean history, although his legacy as a military dictator continues to cause controversy.
Chun Doo-hwan was a South Korean army general and military dictator who ruled as an unelected strongman from 1979 to 1980 before replacing Choi Kyu-hah as president of South Korea from 1980 to 1988.
Hwang Kyo-ahn is a South Korean politician and prosecutor who served as acting president of South Korea from 9 December 2016 to 10 May 2017 and the 40th prime minister of South Korea from 18 June 2015 to 11 May 2017.
Chung Yoo-ra is a South Korean equestrian. She competed in the 2014 Asian Games, where her team won a gold medal.
Choi Soon-sil is a South Korean businesswoman known primarily for her involvement in the 2016 South Korean political scandal, stemming from her influence over the 11th President of South Korea, Park Geun-hye. In 2018, a court sentenced Choi to 20 years in prison on corruption charges. Due to Choi's concurrent involvement in her father's religious cult, reporting media have called her "South Korea's Rasputin", in reference to Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin.
The 2016 South Korean political scandal, often called Park Geun-hye–Choi Soon-sil Gate in South Korea, was a scandal that emerged around October 2016 in relation to the unusual access that Choi Soon-sil, the daughter of shaman-esque cult leader Choi Tae-min, had to President Park Geun-hye of South Korea.
Tatsuya Kato is a Japanese journalist who was a Seoul bureau chief of South Korea at Sankei Shimbun.
The impeachment of Park Geun-hye, President of South Korea, was the culmination of a political scandal involving interventions to the presidency from her aide, Choi Soon-sil. The impeachment vote took place on 9 December 2016, with 234 members of the 300-member National Assembly voting in favour of the impeachment and temporary suspension of Park Geun-hye's presidential powers and duties. This exceeded the required two-thirds threshold in the National Assembly and, although the vote was by secret ballot, the results indicated that more than half of the 128 lawmakers in Park's party Saenuri had supported her impeachment. Thus, Hwang Kyo-ahn, then Prime Minister of South Korea, became Acting President while the Constitutional Court of Korea was due to determine whether to accept the impeachment. The court upheld the impeachment in a unanimous 8–0 decision on 10 March 2017, removing Park from office. The regularly scheduled presidential election was advanced to 9 May 2017, and Moon Jae-in, former leader of the Democratic Party, was elected as Park's permanent successor.
South Korea is considered to have freedom of the press, but it is subject to several pressures. It has improved since South Korea transitioned to democracy in the late 20th century, but declined slightly in the 2010s. Freedom House Freedom of the Press has classified South Korean press as free from 2002 to 2010, and as partly free since 2011.
Yoon Suk Yeol is a South Korean politician who is the 13th and current president of South Korea since 2022. Prior to his presidency, he served as the prosecutor general of South Korea between 2019 and 2021.
Chung Mong-won is a South Korean ice hockey administrator and businessman. He has served as chief executive officer of both Halla Group and Mando Corporation, founded the Anyang Halla hockey team in 1994, and co-founded Asia League Ice Hockey in 2003. He became involved in international ice hockey as manager of the South Korea men's national ice hockey team in 2003, then became chairman of the Korea Ice Hockey Association in 2013, and implemented a development plan for the men's national team and the South Korea women's national ice hockey team in advance of ice hockey at the 2018 Winter Olympics hosted in South Korea. Under his leadership, the men's national team earned promotion to the top tier at the 2018 IIHF World Championship, and the women's national team played in the 2018 Winter Olympics on a Unified Korea team with North Korea. The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) has named Chung to its 2020 IIHF Hall of Fame group of inductees.
South Korea 
