Analysis: New South Korean President Lee Jae-mying expected to enact pro-labor bills
Lee, who was elected as the country's 21st state head Tuesday, replied positively about the bill, which is designed to limit employers' damage claims against workers involved in strikes.
"The Yellow Envelope Act reflects the Supreme Court's verdicts and is aligned with the International Labor Organization standards. Its legislation is something that should be done obviously," he said.
Observers point out that the response amply demonstrates what may lie ahead for Asia's fourth-largest economy under Lee's leadership during the next five years.
"President Lee is likely to immediately pursue labor-friendly legislation like the Yellow Envelope Act. In fact, the National Assembly will convene Thursday at the request of the Democratic Party," political commentator Choi Soo-young told UPI.
"This means that the Yellow Envelope Act can be passed a day after Lee's inauguration. Under his stewardship, many similar bills are likely to be introduced," he predicted.
The Democratic Party, which holds a majority of seats in the country's unicameral parliament, headed the passage of the Yellow Envelope Act twice in 2023 and 2024.
Back then, however, former President Yoon Suk-yeol vetoed it as the country's major business associations expressed concerns that the bill might embolden already militant trade unions.
Even the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea echoed such a sentiment.
In addition to launching labor-friendly policies, experts expected that the new administration would channel funds in a bid to boost the sluggish economy in the short term.
"The South Korean economy is feared to grow below the potential growth rate this year due to the lack of demand. The new government will try to deal with this through increased public spending," Sogang University economics professor Kim Young-ick said in a phone interview.
"For example, President Lee is projected to proactively implement the local currency system, even if it means incurring a fiscal deficit," Kim said.
President Lee has expressed his commitment to promoting local currencies, or vouchers issued by regional governments that are valid only within designated areas, to revitalize the economy.
The Bank of Korea nearly halved the country's 2025 growth forecast from 1.5% to 0.8% on Thursday, falling short of its potential growth rate estimated to be around 2%.
Over the past three decades, the Korean economy has failed to achieve 1% annual growth only three times: in 1997 amid the Asian financial crisis, in 2009 because of the global financial turmoil, and in 2020 during the virus pandemic.
"As a mid- to longer-term goal, President Lee is projected to jack up the country's growth potential by underpinning productivity. One effective approach would be to fully take advantage of artificial intelligence-powered systems," Kim said.
Lee Phil-sang, an adviser at Aju Research Institute of Corporate Management and former Seoul National University economics professor, worried that President Lee would come up with populist policies at the expense of the country's fiscal health.
"Rather than trying to improve South Korea's economic fundamentals through such measures as deregulation, President Lee is feared to just increase government spending," Lee said.
"Such stimulus policies may have a short-term effect. But it would not make a big difference in the long run. Instead, such an approach may result in a steep rise in public debt. I am concerned that President Lee appears indifferent to rising debt," he said.
During last month's election campaign, President Lee said that the government should not overly worry about sovereign debt.
"There are people saying ignorant things like that the country must never go into debt because the national debt has exceeded $730 billion," he said.
"But if the government doesn't spend money during times like this, then when will it ever?" he asked. "Compared to our annual gross domestic product, the government debt is quite low at less than 50%."
President Lee also has been a prominent advocate of universal basic income, which is designed to provide all citizens with a guaranteed minimum level of income.
During the 2022 election campaign, when former President Yoon defeated then-candidate Lee, the latter proposed an annual payment of around $180 per person with the five-year goal of raising it to $730.
At the time, the idea also faced criticisms of its financial feasibility.
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Vox
28 minutes ago
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Trump killed affirmative action. His base might not like what comes next.
Proponents for affirmative action in higher education rally in front of the US Supreme Court on October 31, 2022, in Washington, Donald Trump's administration is scrutinizing higher education. Last week, the White House issued a memorandum requiring all universities receiving federal funds to submit admissions data on all applicants to the Department of Education. The goal is to enforce the 2023 Supreme Court decision that ended race-based affirmative action. Days before the memo was released, Columbia and Brown agreed to share their admissions data with the administration, broken down by race, grade point average, and standardized test scores. The administration suspects that universities are using 'racial proxies' to get around the ban on race-based admissions. The Department of Education is expected to build a database of the admissions data and make it available to parents and students. Amid this increased federal scrutiny, an alternative idea from Richard Kahlenberg, director of the American Identity Project for the Progressive Policy Institute, is gaining attention. Kahlenberg, who testified in the Supreme Court cases against Harvard and UNC, advocates for class-based affirmative action instead of race-based admissions. He argues that this approach will yield more economically and racially equitable results. Today, Explained co-host Noel King spoke with Kahlenberg about how he contends with the consequences of helping gut race-based affirmative action, why he believes class-based affirmative action is the path forward, and if his own argument may come in the crosshairs of a Trump administration eager to stamp out all forms of affirmative action. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There's much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. You're the director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute. I would take it to mean that you are a progressive. It's complicated these days. I'm left of center. I think of myself more as liberal than progressive. I ask because you testified as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the case Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. This is the case that essentially gutted race-based affirmative action. It doesn't sound like a progressive, or even a left-of-center, position. What was going on? Explain what you were thinking. I've long been a supporter of racial diversity in colleges. I think that's enormously important, but I've been troubled that elite colleges were racially integrated, but economically segregated. I think there's a better way of creating racial diversity — a more liberal way, if you will — which is to give low-income and economically disadvantaged students of all races a leg up in the admissions process in order to create both racial and economic diversity. What was the data that you looked at that led you to believe that? Were primarily wealthy Black and Hispanic students benefiting from affirmative action? There'd been a number of studies over the years that had come to that conclusion, including from supporters of race-based affirmative action. Then, in the litigation, further evidence came out. At Harvard, 71 percent of the Black and Hispanic students came from the most socioeconomically privileged 20 percent of the Black and Hispanic population nationally. Now, to be clear, the white and Asian students were even richer. But for the most part, this was not a program that was benefiting working-class and low-income students. Alright, so the Supreme Court in 2023 hands down this decision that says, essentially, we're done with race-based affirmative action. Was there a difference in how progressives and conservatives interpreted the Supreme Court ruling? Most mainstream conservatives have always said they were opposed to racial preferences, but of course, they were for economic affirmative action. But now we have some on the extreme, including the Trump administration, saying that economic affirmative action is also illegal if part of the rationale for the policy is seeking to increase racial diversity. What do you make of that? That was your team once upon a time, right? Well, I think it's troubling when people shift the goalposts. In a number of the Supreme Court concurring opinions in the case, conservatives said that economic affirmative action made a lot of sense. 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In both cases, the Supreme Court said we're not gonna hear those cases over the vehement dissent of a couple of extremely conservative justices. So I'm fairly confident that the Supreme Court will not go down the path of striking down economic-based preferences. What do you make of this move by the Trump administration to ask colleges for data? I'm of two minds about it. I do think transparency is good in higher education. These institutions are receiving lots of taxpayer money. We want to make sure they're following the Supreme Court ruling, which said you can't use race. Having said that, I'm quite nervous about how the Trump administration will use the data, because if a college discloses the average SAT scores and grades by race of applicants, of those admitted, and then those enrolled, one of two things can be going on. One is that the university's cheating and they're using racial preferences, and that would be a violation of the law. The other possibility is that they did shift to economic affirmative action, which is perfectly legal. And because Black and Hispanic students are disproportionately low income and working class, they will disproportionately benefit from a class-based affirmative action program. And so the average SAT score is going to look somewhat lower. I'm worried that the Trump administration will go after both race-based and class-based affirmative action. Because class-based affirmative action still might mean a college is admitting more Black and Hispanic students. And what the Trump administration seems to have the issue with is that fact. Yes. Increasingly, that's what it looks like. As long as the Trump administration was focused on counting race and deciding who gets ahead, they had the American public on their side. But Americans also support the idea of racially integrated student bodies, they just don't like racial preferences as the means for getting there. So, if Trump says, no matter how you achieve this racial diversity, I'm just opposed to racial diversity, he'll have lost the public. And I don't think he will be consistent with the legal framework under Students for Fair Admissions, either. Do you think he cares?
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
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Oklahoma will require teachers from NY, California to prove they back 'America First'
Teachers from California and New York who want to work in Oklahoma public schools will be required to pass a certification test to prove they share the state's conservative political values. Regardless of the subject or grade they teach, they'll have to show they know "the biological differences between females and males" and that they agree with the state's American history standards, which includes teachings of a disproved conspiracy theory that the Democratic Party stole the 2020 presidential election from President Donald Trump. The state department of education will implement the new certification test for teachers from the two largest Democrat-led states "who are teaching things that are antithetical to our standards" to ensure newcomers "are not coming into our classrooms and indoctrinating kids," Oklahoma schools Superintendent Ryan Walters, said in an interview with USA TODAY. Walters has dubbed the new requirement an "America First" certification, in reference to one of Trump's political slogans. Oklahoma's Republican Governor Kevin Stitt appointed Walters, a Republican, to the helm of the state's education department in Sept. 2020 and voters then elected him for a second term in November 2022. Oklahoma to require schools To teach Trump's 2020 election conspiracy theories Oklahoma is offering teaching bonuses that go up to $50,000 to attract teachers from across the nation and has seen "a dramatic increase in teachers wanting to come to Oklahoma," Walters said. The new test is meant to ensure they weed out teachers with opposing views from the state's standards. The state, like many others, has a persisting teacher shortage. He said the test will only apply to teachers from California and New York, for now, because those states specifically teach lessons that are antithetical to those taught in Oklahoma. 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The company previously helped develop the state's new high school history curriculum standards, which includes lessons on how to dissect the results of the 2020 election, including learning about alleged mail-in voter fraud, "an unforeseen record number of voters" and "security risks of mail-in balloting." The new curriculum also teaches the contested theory that COVID-19 emerged from a lab leak and removed a prior proposal for lessons about George Floyd's murder and Black Lives Matter. "These reforms will reset our classrooms back to educating our children without liberal indoctrination," Walters wrote in a post on X on April 29. "We're proud to defend these standards, and we will continue to stand up for honest, pro-America education in every classroom." The state superintendent said some of the history questions will about American government, how the nation came to be and its founding documents. 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Representation is determined by population size Walters said the test will be finished by Aug. 15 and it will be available to prospective teachers the week of Aug. 18. "We're very close," he said. Oklahoma schools have become more has conservative under Walters' took the helm of the state's education department in Sept. 2020, and voters elected him for a second term in November 2022. Along with the changes to the state's history curriculum standards, Walters has ordered public schools to teach the Bible in June 2024. Bible lessons will not be on the new teacher certification exam, he said. Teachers' union leaders: Test will be 'a huge turn off' to teachers amid 'serious teacher shortage crisis' Teachers' union leaders decried the new certification test in interviews with USA TODAY. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said Walters' new test is going to be a "huge turn off" to teachers and that it's not "going to solve a problem." "Teachers in this country are patriotic, and suggesting they're not is insulting," she said. Weingarten went on to criticize Walters for several of his conservative pushes for education in Oklahoma, including bible lessons, and support for a religious charter school, which was blocked by a split Supreme Court vote this May. She called those moves and the implementation of the new test "a major distraction." "Ryan Walters appears to be trying out for MAGA in chief, not educator in chief, because everything that he's doing is about the culture wars, not about the reading, writing and arithmetic," she said. "If he wants to be MAGA in chief then go be MAGA in chief. But let someone else be educator in chief and focus on other things people deserve, which is reading, literacy and wraparound services – and actual teachers who want to be in Oklahoma." Oklahoma and California teachers union leaders agreed. "This is a political stunt to grab attention," said Cari Elledge, president of the Oklahoma Education Association. "All of the mandates coming out of the Department of Education are baseless and are distractions from real issues in Oklahoma." One of those pressing issues is "the serious teacher shortage crisis," she said. "When political ideology plays into whether or not you can teach in any place, that might be a deterrent to quality educators attempting to get a job ... We think it's intentional to make educators fearful and confused." The political climate in Oklahoma has contributed to the teacher shortage, she said, noting there are about 30,000 teachers in Oklahoma who hold state teaching certifications but are not working in classrooms. "We believe the political morale is making it scarier to teach," she said. "We know our jobs are so much more important and at the end of the day it's about the future of our students." The state teachers union told its members in a July 11 letter, which Elledge provided to USA TODAY, that Walters "has no legal authority to vet certified teachers based on political ideology." They say that's because "licensing and certification are governed by state statute, not personal opinion or partisan preferences" and state law "requires us to recognize out-of-state teaching credentials." The letter references part of the state education code that says it "must issue certificates to qualified teachers from other U.S. states and territories if they meet basic requirements, including a criminal background check." The union is also concerned about the state education department's partnership with PragerU "because it's not an educational authority and it's partisan," Elledge said. "OEA is actively monitoring this and other overreaches," the letter reads. "We remain vigilant in protecting the rights of Oklahoma's educators and students." Teachers in Oklahoma don't teach newly implemented conservative ideologies in classrooms, which are expected to be on the 'America First' certification test, Elledge said. "They're not here to give opinions in class; they're here to teach facts," she said. There are not many teachers in Oklahoma who come from California or New York, anyway, because of political differences. "People in Oklahoma have more conservative values," she said. "It's not a destination state for people from California and New York, which is sad because it's a really good place and students here deserve the best they could possibly have." David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers' Association, said he also hasn't heard of an influx of teachers who want to move from California to teach in Oklahoma. But at a time when states are trying to solve teacher shortages, the Oklahoma test is trying to "scare them away," he said. "This almost seems like satire and so far removed from my research around what Oklahoma educators need and deserve," he said. "I can't see how this isn't some kind of hyper-political grandstanding that doesn't serve any of those needs." Goldberg rejects that what teachers need in California – "respect" and a livable wage – is different than what Oklahoma teachers need to thrive. Teachers have a responsibility to take care of kids in both places despite their different education systems, he said. Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@ Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Oklahoma to require Blue state teachers to take 'America First' test Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
For Women Scotland launches legal action against Scottish ministers on gender policy
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