Chungbuk Governor Shaves Head in Protest Over Ruling Party Nomination Cut

▲Kim Young-hwan, the People Power Party governor of North Chungcheong Province, shaved his head on the 19th in strong protest against his exclusion from party nominations (cutoff). Governor Kim raised his voice, asking "Who dares to try to cut whose head off?" The previous day, he had posted on Facebook targeting Lee Jung-hyun, chairman of the People Power Party's nomination management committee who decided the cutoff, writing "I will show you the bad habits of Jeolla Province and the end of a traitor," only to delete the sentence hours later. The problem is that after Governor Kim's cutoff, the nomination committee accepted additional nomination applications, but controversy arose when only former lawmaker Kim Soo-min—who had been rumored to be the predetermined choice—submitted an application. The People Power Party's nomination turmoil is going from bad to worse.

▲The National Samsung Electronics Union, which announced a general strike for May, will hold a press conference on the 23rd of this month in front of Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong's residence in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, to announce the start of dispute actions. The union stated, "Wage negotiations that continued for months have finally broken down, and we are taking dispute action because management refused to accept demands for system improvements." Previously, the union led a vote to approve the general strike while demanding the abolition of the cap on the Outstanding Performance Incentive (OPI). With the semiconductor hegemony war being fought at the level of a contest between nations, isn't the union's excessive demands and boundary-crossing behavior a self-defeating move?