Political schadenfreude

Having spent what feels like the past year deluged with political articles, opinions, and memes on social media, I'm looking forward quite a bit to the upcoming Election Day when it will all be over. (I've already voted; if your area has early voting I highly recommend doing the same. I went in on the very first day it was available, and the line was more than an hour long. It's almost like this has been a particularly nutty election that's made a lot of people very passionate.) Needless to say, this next week feels like it's going to be a record in how long it subjectively feels.

If you want something to take your mind off of our election, therefore, I highly recommend reading this summary of the scandal that's rocking the Korean government right now.

Spoiler alert: this one's a doozy.

I'd vaguely heard that something was up with the Korean presidency, but I hadn't clicked through to details until this post showed up in my feed. And...wow. There's the obligatory shadowy cabal pulling the strings, indulging in all kinds of graft and corporate 'protection' schemes to line their pockets. But that's not even scratching the surface. There's séances. And unencrypted tablet computers. And seriously dysfunctional BFFs. And secret cult ties. And K-Pop music video directors. And rumors of human sacrifice. And...the list goes on. As the author puts it, "Having survived a particularly tumultuous modern democratic history, Korean people may be the world's most cynical consumers of politics. But this. Even the most cynical Koreans were not ready for this." It's the sort of thing that if you saw in a film, your disbelief suspenders would snap in the first five minutes. (Speaking of which, if Park Chan-Wook doesn't make a movie out of this in the next five years, I'm going to be genuinely disappointed.)

Just...wow.

Suddenly our election doesn't seem quite so insane.