Essays

Cancer copays, childbirth benefits, dementia care, American medical bills and Western wait lists: how Korean health insurance works—and where it falls short.

Google spent nearly twenty years asking South Korea for its detailed map data, and kept being refused. The story runs from a 6.7-metre woodblock map printed in 1861 to a 2026 government decision — and it was never really about roads.

Jeonse turned Korean tenants into their landlords’ bank — a housing-finance system that worked brilliantly until it didn’t. Why more than 40,000 people became jeonse-fraud victims, and what it reveals about the global housing crisis.

A tattoo once got a Korean man sent to a labor camp. In May 2026 the Supreme Court finally ruled tattooing by non-doctors legal. The 46-year journey from criminal mark to K-pop fashion, and why Korea took so long to catch up.

Every modern Korean president’s story ends badly, and every generation keeps returning to the street — armed, most recently, with K-pop light sticks instead of Molotov cocktails. What Korea’s compressed, noisy 39-year-old democracy reveals about itself.