Author: Shalem John
Third time’s the charm for Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung, now South Korea’s 14th president. The 61-year-old former human rights lawyer ran for presidency twice unsuccessfully, first in 2017 and then in 2022, when he lost narrowly to impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol. In the June 3 snap election—triggered by Parliament’s impeachment of Yoon on April 4 for breaching the constitution and other laws by declaring martial law—Lee beat five other presidential candidates and garnered close to 3 million votes more than Kim Moon-soo from the ruling conservative People Power Party. When 36-year-old Yoon Go-eun (no relation to Yoon Suk…
Every time she opens her email, 35-year-old Caroline Mutama looks for a notification from US government officials to see if they have set the date for her visa interview at the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. She hopes to work as a nurse in Illinois. Mutama has already processed the travel documents for herself, her husband, and her two children. Now all she can do is wait. On weekdays, Mutama wakes up early, feeds her children, and prepares her oldest child for school. Then she walks five kilometers (about three miles) to her job as a registered nurse and midwife…
It’s 7:30 p.m. on a Saturday night, and Marian is waiting with her friends for the evening service to begin at Flow Church in Tsim Sha Tsui. She talks animatedly about how she felt after Beijing imposed a strict national security law in 2020 that silenced critics, decimated press freedom, and curtailed civic action in Hong Kong. At the time, Marian was filled with questions about how Christians should respond, “but my former church couldn’t answer my questions,” she said. CT agreed not to use her real name, as criticism of the government is sensitive in Hong Kong. She started…