HARSH HEADWINDS

President Yoon Suk Yeol's BATTLE to reform a South Korea beset with structural problems under the specter of an increasingly aggressive neighbor to THE NORTH

- Matthew Tostevin

NORTH KOREA'S RHETORIC was reaching fever pitch again. Unused roads and rail links to the South had just been blown up in a spectacular display of belligerence. The North had labeled the South "a hostile state" and its leaders as "gangsters" and "scum."

It was not what South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol wanted to talk about.

For while the threat of new conflict with the nuclear-armed North has long loomed across the armistice line, the South's domestic problems are growing from the strains on its health care system to worries over the labor force to education.

A deepening divide between genders, a collapsing birth rate and an aging population have set it on course for a demographic collapse as dramatic as any in the industrialized world.

"We need to make structural reform domestically," Yoon told Newsweek in an interview in Seoul.

"The previous governments feared unpopular policies. They feared that they might lose the election, so they delayed and postponed what should have been done before, but now we no longer have enough time. We cannot postpone this forever."

Only able to serve one five-year term, former prosecutor Yoon, 63, is now reaching the midpoint. His approval rating stood at 20 percent in a survey in September, the lowest since he took office in mid-2022. As well as pushback to his reform plans, Yoon has been targeted by opponents over the role of his wife, Kim Keon Hee. In April's national assembly election, Yoon's conservative People Power Party was defeated by the main opposition, posing another challenge to his drive for reforms that he describes as essential.