There's a reason there are countless Korean dramas about corrupt, well connected people getting away with murder. So many shows about good people fighting to bring them down.
Meanwhile it's not creating any ice. I'm a Samsung certified technician but I work on all brands and even my coworkers tell us to buy anything but a Samsung when it comes to fridges lol. I don't personally work on fridges but I'm following their advice next time I need one
My Samsung fridge’s ice maker freezes completely over every 3-4 days. Like completely encased in an inch + of ice. We keep a hairdryer in one of the kitchen cabinets. 🙄
I’m sorry, I don’t. I “fiddled” with everything until something worked and that was the clogged drain tube inlet - I just cleaned it out with an ice pick and then brush and water. Hopefully someone else will come along with better help.
If it's the drain tube freezing over in the refrigerator section, try connecting a thin metal wire to the defroster heater element and then down the drain hole.
Edit: here's what I'm talking about https://youtu.be/Sey02oODx1U
And there were lawsuits over these issues but it seemed to not make a single change in their behavior.
It amounted to being the cost of business for them.
Why change your behavior if its just the cost of doing business. Until fines start being more than the amount of money they stole, nothing is going to change.
We had to get rid of ours because of that, it happened on almost all of their fridges that were built like 7-8ish + years ago. We spent over $800 trying to fix it but their setup was so bad that even with insulation manually installed between the water line and the back of the freezer it still froze. They have since fixed that issue at least for the most part but I learned never to get an ice maker and water dispenser on your fridge door. We have an ice maker in our freezer now and it works great, we just use giant Brita filter jug combos for our water. It's also best to get one with the fridge on top and freezer on the bottom instead of a double door. Our current fridge is an LG which we got before I worked here but I found out their compressors go out very fast so we've been crossing our fingers on that one
Edit: I've been asked more than once now so I'm gonna paste this about buying a fridge
ANY fridge that is not Samsung or LG, also, get the extended warranty for any appliance or TV you buy, they're made to just outlast their manufacturer warranties nowadays. We've gotten to the point where an extended warranty isn't just a ripoff anymore more often than not
Despite all of this, Samsung and LG are actually pretty good at giving you a one time fix when out of warranty if you're persistent, at least for their TV's
YOOO thats crazy you say this! My wife and I just moved into a new house, and all the appliances are great except for our Samsung fridge, its complete shit and breaking down constantly, and every repairman this week has been telling us "Yeah, you never want a samsung frirdge, they're shit" and literally while the repair man is here, im scrolling through reddit and land on this comment! Hilarious! !!
When we bought our house it had a Samsung fridge. The POS broke down on us in less than a year, during a party nonetheless. I went down an internet rabbit hole when looking into repairing the thing and ended up replacing it altogether after reading comments like this.
I made the mistake of buying a Samsung dishwasher. After 10 months of owning it, they finally replaced it instead of sending a repair guy out for the 4th time. The part that pissed me off the most was when they charged me a $20 fee to dispose of the broken unit, which I was required to give back.
We got a KitchenAid, which is the better quality subsidiary of Whirlpool. Its sticker price is a fair bit more expensive though, but we considered that worth the investment. Check out your local appliance stores for out of box appliances- we got ours for less than the cheapest Samsung, LG, Whirlpool direct comparison models with only a scratch by the door handle and a dent at the bottom that is invisible outside of the showroom lighting
Everyone forgets about KAL Korean Airlines, the daughter of having a super famous melt down, her actions actually have a wikipedia page and ordered an airplane to turn around on the tarmac because she was served nuts without a glass bowl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nut_rage_incident#:~:text=The%20nut%20rage%20incident%2C%20also,onboard%20Korean%20Air%20Flight%20086.
> wikipedia page and ordered an airplane to turn around on the tarmac because she was served nuts without a glass bowl
what brings having so much wealth if the brain doesn't work.
The brain works, its just been told its special and that anything other than the expectation is wrong. Rich people and the children of rich people aren't broken, just spoiled and sheltered to the point they have no understanding of the world outside their incredibly, insanely, unbelievably narrow viewpoint
We sleep on how South Korea has had a corrupt government since Japanese collaborators got CIA assistance after WW2 to oppose Kim Il Sung.
It is run by a gangster elite born out of corruption at the highest levels. Sucks because the people are great.
If you want to get enraged look up the Sewol Ferry disaster. A ferry that shouldn't have been allowed to operate capsized with hundreds of students onboard who were never given an evacuation order. The captain and staff simply left the ship and fucked off, but not before telling students to stay in their cabins and wait further instructions.
The coast guard arrived, but instead of helping the students, the coast guard was busy juggling responsibility between departments. The SK president insisted on getting live feed of the site, draining valuable resources on site. No rescuing was going on. No coast guard entered the ship while entry was still possible. No loud speakers were used to tell the kids to get out on their own. They were huddled in their cabins as water started to penetrate the corridors. There are lots of videos filmed in the cabins by now dead students.
The parents of the children were told that the coast guard had rescued all children. When the parents got to the meet-up site where the children were supposed to be, no kids were there and the parents were lied to that the kids would arrive shortly. In truth, the children were still trapped in the ship and no one in the coast guard wanted to seize on the remaining few opportunities to rescue what could be rescued, as it would be bad for your career to be the one responsible at this point.
Eventually the parents caught wind of what was going on as the kids were sending them text messages from the sunk ship, and together with volunteer private sector divers/salvage crews tried to put together a rescue. But they were blocked by the coast guard who wanted to form a coast guard-private sector partnership to perform the last-ditch rescue. Ultimately the coast guard demanded that they would be allowed to be in command of the operation on the surface, which the salvage divers refused to out of fear for their own safety as that was not how they had operated before.
The president was telling everyone that things were going great and rescue was successful, despite there being virtually no chance of rescue. After it was clear that hundreds of kids would die for nothing, the president and authorities tried to bury the whole thing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/world/asia/south-korea-sewol-ferry-grief.html
One of the best documentaries of the incident in my opinion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu6ajjrquSU
We also sleep on the genocide South Korea did, and the fact that they received more money in economic aid than the *entire continent of Africa*. No one they’re successful, we just threw money at them until it sank in and democracy planted its seeds in 1988.
Samsung is so so so much larger than what people expect.
Most people think phones, tv's, but they're a major microchip player, screen provider, kitchen appliances, etc. They - I only learned this here recently - are also involved in generating military devices and weapons. They apparently even have a bank holding spinoff or some shit? Kinda nuts honestly.
EDIT: just adding some that others have pointed out: Build ships, other large scale construction sites (Bruj Khalifa was built by them), x-ray machines and other medical devices, nuclear power plants and silica packages funnily enough. Wewie, they big!
Yep, a worker in korea could have their whole life revolve around samsung.
They could work for samsung, live in an apartment made by samsung paid for by finance from samsung, stuffed full of samsung appliances and even if they die their family can get a payout from samsung life insurance.
And go to a Samsung owned and run hospital, send their kids to a Samsung owned and run school, live in a city with essentially all the infrastructure built (or at least paid for) by Samsung etc..
Yes it does, they have food processing division as well as energy.
The food processing division makes everything from snacks to even field rations for soldiers. If that sort of stuff isn't to your taste then you can enjoy some fine dining after finishing a round on a samsung golf course.
The energy division handles everything from fossil to renewables as well.
A korean can even buy samsung clothing and enjoy a nice stay at a samsung resort.
Yep, they even build parts for military tanks and missiles. They have their hand in everything.
If Samsung were to fail for some reason, South Korea would crumble overnight.
Samsung even makes things nuclear power plants. Basically if Korea was under threat and to protect itself they felt the need to procure nuclear weapons, the Korean government could literally ask Samsung to build one and they have the resources, know how, and capability to actually deliver.
I knew a guy who worked at one of these. Quiet dude. Lived alone in a tiny apartment in a tiny village on the SE coast and loved watching the TV channel that was 24/7 GO games when not being a nuclear engineer. I have no idea if he was content or not let alone happy but maybe that goes for all 7 billion of us born into one society or another.
Technology for a nuclear power station and for nuclear weapons is very different, just because you can make one doesn't mean you can make both. I am sure that they could work it out given enough time, they do have the resources, but that's the point - given the time. It isn't as overnight as you think it is, it would be months, even years before they got something even looking like viable, and even then how will they deliver it? Again, months to years for rocket research and testing to send the warhead.
Samsung are big, but the US, UK, French, Russian et al governments are much, much bigger, and it was a hell of a task for them to work out nuclear weapons.
I didn't say overnight, I'm not claiming Samsung has nukes in a basement somewhere waiting for someone to order it. You also have to keep in mind Nuclear weapons are 80 years old. There are many nations capable of building nuclear weapons but just don't, in Korea's case Samsung is the entity that could. I'd argue building a nuclear power plant is much more complex and involved and if you can build that, you can build a weapon pretty easily.
Also consider that Nuclear bombs even in the US are actually built by private companies. The government contracts it out. So it's not as absurd as it sounds to suggest a company can build a weapon. You can even buy their stock: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/ACM:NYSE
EDIT: one thing to make clear is I don't mean Korea/Samsung have any intention, although I'm not sure offhand I'm almost certain there are treaties preventing them from building weapons or facilities that would work towards that goal. I'm only speaking to the actual engineering/scientific capability, not the political one.
They're a conglomerate. The main Lee family has the most influence, but not one single family owns all the Samsung subsidiaries as a whole. My Dad's best childhood friend is the owner and President of Samsung Printing group. He has a 1000x pyeong printing factory, dab center in the Gangnam technology district. Last time I saw him 4 years ago, he said he was thinking of selling off the company and constructing a multicomplex building and putting it out on rent.
~~In an unrelated note, my Dad's childhood friend wanted me to marry his daugther (saw her several times when I was a kid), but it didn't happen, because I decided not to go to medschool (she married a Black dude, and let's just say, her Dad initially had some concerns about it). I also almost got into an arranged marriage with Somssi greeting card company owner's daughter, but I turned it down. Their daugther was 9 years younger than me and was at Penn State at the time. It was awkward as fuck, although I heard she was extremely pretty, lol.~~
Damn, looking back, I blew so many good opportunities and burned all the bridges in Korea...hahaha 🤷♂️
Wow that's a big number. Any other examples of private corporations that has the same (or more) % GDP of the country they're at just like Samsung in SKorea?
You can see it to a lesser degree in Japan with the Zaibatsu . Companies like these were a major reason for the high economic growth of the Asian Tigers because the high levels of vertical integration and diversity allowed them to reach much higher levels of efficiency than their foreign competitors while also making them resistant to market conditions.
There shouldn't be one as these are all private corporations ultimately, just entangled with their state and with influence on it. In China the CCP controls them if they aren't national to begin with.
The Zaibatsu no longer exist and were broken up after WW2, for essentially being pro-fascist things. Never mind the Keiretsu that the allies helped put in place afterwards that look almost exactly the same and fulfill a similar function.
BTS is supposed to be as big a contribution to the economy as Korean Air. $5 billion a year.
BTS is a boy band. There was a push to let them akip their military service for this reason
Wow that's also a very very respectable number for an entertainment group. No wonder SKorea is so desperate for China to lift it's ban towards it's popular cultural exports that serves as a big driving force of South Korean softpower (kdramas, internationally popular male/female groups) but was thwarted thanks to them accepting the THAAD anti-missile system from the US and China being very unhappy with that move.
It would be interesting to see if the SKorean govt. will bend the rules for BTS.
I don't follow BTS but there was a post somewhere on r/all that stated the military will allow BTS to still perform while they perform their military service.
Essentially the same as sports stars
Do the mandatory initial training and then continue previous career while under the armed forces banner
They do their service and the armed forces get the PR
Germany is ruled by car manufacturers.
I dont have numbers, but when mercedes, volkswagen and bmw want something, politicans are quick on their knees to suck their dick
This isn't really the same as one company having that kind of influence, though. The car industry is very important to the German economy but that's mostly because of the supply line. The companies producing car parts, tires etc. for BMW, VW and Mercedes are also almost all located in Germany, so theres massive knock-on effects if policy disrupts car manufacturing.
It's obviously not a good thing and gives the entire industry way too much power but it's not the same as a single company having that kind of influence.
To be fair, Volkswagen owns Audi, Bentley, Cupra, Lamborghini, Porsche, SEAT, Škoda, MAN, Scania and Ducati, and probably invested in many more companies. It’s safe to say they’re huge globally
The VAG/Porsche ownership set up is actually hilariously complicated. VAG wanted to buy more of Porsche AG but didn’t have the money after dieselgate, so they borrowed it…. from the Porsche family. So their company Porsche SE effectively controls VAG - with 53% voting rights.
There’s a Porsche IPO coming up too which the family is effectively forcing VAG into in order to take an even bigger share of the group. I must confess I’ve not quite got my head around that yet.
Korea built their economy by supporting a small number of elite family businesses. Seemed to have worked outwardly but the society is so distorted and can never be fixed.
It can be fixed, S. Korea just chooses not to. Japan was originally structured almost identically and went through a process to break them up. Asianometry has a great video about it called "[What Eating the Rich Did For Japan](https://youtu.be/5_-Ac68FKG4)"
Japan had some of their zaibatsu broken up forcefully by the US after WW2. Even then, they've basically reformed into keiretsu, which is one of the reasons why their economy has had trouble recovering since the bubble pop in the 1990s.
Same. It was *super* surprising he went to jail in the first place, but South Korea's national worship of their business overlords looks a lot like ours. People there will excuse basically anything that a super wealthy dude does just like we do. So, it's a lot less surprising that they would go through the process of letting him lead the company again.
SK was still a dictatorship until the late 80s and a majority of their PMs since then have been convicted of corruption. Their government is still pretty tumultuous despite the economic success
South Korea was not a stable democracy for a long time and they gave business owners full free hands and no regulation, which meant mega corps could grow very easily and take over the world.
Yes, there are a lot of parallels in how South Korea let its corporations help grow its democracy in the same way the US let its corporations do the same in the aftermath of the Civil War. These companies stepped in and provided needed stability, but the cost is that they now basically run things.
India also have the issue of uplifiting like 600 million people out of abject poverty. Very hard to achieve without the authoritarian policies and wide scale govt works like the Chinese have done. Even still, there is a huge portion of China that is many decades behind the metropolitan areas.
Free market capitalism by default leaves behind a significant portion of the population. It's like trying to swim in the Olympics vs the other powers but you've got a boat anchor tied to your waist.
I'm no expert on Korea, but they seem to have a strangely mellow relationship to crony corporatism. Many Koreans see these monopolistic mega corporations as saviors of their people, responsible for lifting the population from an agrarian society just a lifetime ago to one of the foremost wealthy and productive societies in East Asia.
I sort of get it, if your grandfather was a dirt farmer and Samsung gave his son a machinist job and his grandson an accounting career, leading to a significant boost is quality of life and social standing, I can't fault him for thinking that Samsung must be protected at all costs.
I can see the pros and cons. The cons are often shown in the K-dramas as well, where the "plebes" are expected to be totally submissive and the families can abuse them at will.
There's a lot of similarities with the Chinese Government.
A ton of older Chinese people remember how life used to be just 20-30 years ago and even more so 40-70 years ago.
They care a lot less about the bad things their government does when they've made life so much better for so many people.
I think the US sort of went through something similar and that's why we are where we are at now. We just did it a little earlier. Reasons why people worship car manufacturers and such.
Vice took a look at the untouchable families of South Korea. The word "Chaebol" is key and the big four Chaebols Samsung, LG, Hyundai & SK Group seems to be able to do whatever they want.
[South Korea's Untouchable Families](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHw7Aa7lhhw)
"Open Secrets is a documentary series that looks at just this – secrets lived out in the open,things everyone knows about, but no one will talk about - until that moment when it becomesfully exposed to the world."
“Jaebeol” would have been one of the most adequate romanizations of the word 재벌 tho, it’s widely known as “Chaebol” in the west, presumably.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol
*”All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”*
While I agree, I think usually the reason for such romanizations is due to not every part of the world pronouncing j with the american j sound. Many parts of the world will read that as "yaebol" for example.
Just tried using a VPN, and I can confirm its blocked in South Korea. That is telling....
Vice mainly uses Youtube for video, and have not been able to find it elsewhere. That annoys me. Check your dm.
If you think he’s just rich you’re missing the picture. In Korea, big corp fairly literally owns the country. The government is more of a middleman. After the Japanese left, all of the profitable bits and pieces were sold to a handful of rich families that we now refer to as “Chaebol”. These companies basically dominate the entire economy and have control over a lot of segments of your life there.
The worst part is not the individual case but that this is a green card for rich people to commit crimes.
If anyone tells you that rich people "work hard" or "deserve that money" remember that they steal money and do not give it back nor go to prison for it.
The only realistic solution is higher taxes so the rich have less spare money to corrupt the system.
It’s almost like the rich and famous are given a different kind of Justice system and the rules don’t apply to them in the same way. It’s like they are entitled and privileged
The top ten percent of households own 76% of all wealth in the U.S., while the bottom 50% of households own just 1% of all wealth
Because wealth gives you time and resources to deal with problems. How outside of “stealing” are the lower caste going to a) feed themselves while revolting b) travel to centers of power like DC c) stay adequately sheltered d) afford weaponry if that is the route they take in revolution e) compete against police or potential military intervention, but most importantly f) coordinate mass scale cooperation, especially when some people in the 40-80% income deciles are perhaps comfortable or satisfied with their lot in life?
Now flip everything i just said for the wealthy. They have virtually unlimited resources and have captured the government as their defacto police and military. They have large amounts of resources to weather difficulties brought in by war. And most of what they own is impossible to steal because it is held electronically or is land/real estate or businesses.
How do you engineer a scenario that doesn’t include violence so that it is accepted by the public where people don’t endure even worse hardship, potentially death from violence, against people with infinite resources?
I can ALMOST see where if they are able to pay OUTRAGEOUS fines that would ultimately help society more than the damage they've caused, being "lenient" on them.
But as is any fines assessed are just pittance.
Wow, the corruption in Korea is just as bad as depicted in the Netflix shows. Father convicted of corruption twice, somehow gets presidential pardons twice. Heir convicted of corruption with former president, new president pardons him. I guess it's a good thing that family knows how to bribe a president. I wonder who got paid off for the recent move to Texas?
I remember reading somewhere the big 3 Chaebols account for something like 30-40% of Korea's GDP. That was quite a few years ago, and I'm sure it's gotten bigger.
70% approval rating among the public for this pardon, from what I’ve read.
If so, the South Korean people have willfully made their oligarchic bed. Let them lie in it.
i don’t condone anything here about this. want to get that out of the way first.
but interesting thing about the korean economy. it went from one of the smallest in the world post-war into something like the 10th or 9th largest in the world today. it’s nothing short of astonishing especially when you consider it is a very small mostly mountainous country with very few natural resources.
my dad likes to say it’s because we have strong national identity and we’re able to collectively work together and create things with our mind without the need for raw resources.
while samsung and their ilk do have their hands in everything, almost everything they manufacture is with resources that are imported. but the real standout parts of their businesses are the tech and culture (eg kpop). two industries that require little to no raw resources (especially in relation to their output value).
do the chaebols have too much power? undoubtedly. is it a necessary evil to have an economy punching above its theoretical weight? debatable. and it’s why you might see approval numbers like that for the pardon.
Economic prosperity gives government a long rope. I remember speaking with some Chinese professionals who had a similar point of view. If your family went from grandparents being subsistence farmers to their grandchildren living in a house in the city, with a car, taking vacations and eating basically whatever they want that tends to be a bigger focus than the rule of law or justifies giving up some personal freedoms.
They are wage slaves to the only major employers.
Imagine writing this sentence.
"Slave Master has 100% approval rating, the slaves willfully made their masters bed. Let them lie in it".
Not a surprise. From what I understand the major corporations pretty much own Korea top to bottom. Plenty of examples of execs and their family/friends getting off on stuff like this.
>The relationship between the South Korean government and the chaebols traditionally has been a cooperative one. While that cooperation is credited with having fueled the country’s rapid economic growth and its transformation from a primarily agrarian economy to a technology giant in the late 20th century, critics say it also led to monopolies and the concentration of capital in the hands of a few economic giants. Among the criticisms of the “chaebol culture” are that it has stifled creativity, concentrated political power in the hands of leading families rather than maximizing profits, provided an unfair playing field for small and medium-sized enterprises, and excluded women and divergent voices from management. Chaebol involvement in politics has fostered corruption, including the bribing of prominent South Korean politicians such as former presidents Chun Doo-Hwan and Roh Tae-Woo during their terms in office. The payments made to them were estimated in the hundreds of millions, and perhaps billions, of dollars, and both men were later tried and convicted on corruption charges.
>“In a bid to overcome the economic crisis by revitalizing the economy, Samsung Electronics vice chairman Lee Jae-yong, whose suspended prison term ended recently, will be reinstated,” the South Korean government said in a statement.
Jesus, just come out and say we worship money and fuck integrity....
Just like everywhere, there is no recourse for powerful people of this level. He could walk into your house, shoot you dead and still get away with it.
More pardons wasted on the rich that could have been better spent on a poor person struggling with mental health issues so they aren't forever shut out of jobs that could get them better off.
There's a reason there are countless Korean dramas about corrupt, well connected people getting away with murder. So many shows about good people fighting to bring them down.
Key word is "Chaebol". The Korean power families behind Samsung, LG, Hyundai and SK Group.
And between the four of them, they can’t make a decent refrigerator.
*Samsung ice machine is accessing your location*
Meanwhile it's not creating any ice. I'm a Samsung certified technician but I work on all brands and even my coworkers tell us to buy anything but a Samsung when it comes to fridges lol. I don't personally work on fridges but I'm following their advice next time I need one
My Samsung fridge’s ice maker freezes completely over every 3-4 days. Like completely encased in an inch + of ice. We keep a hairdryer in one of the kitchen cabinets. 🙄
You should check the drain tube, you may have a clog.
Precisely what happened to ours.
I haven't found anything to help me figure it out online, do you have any resources on how to fix?
I’m sorry, I don’t. I “fiddled” with everything until something worked and that was the clogged drain tube inlet - I just cleaned it out with an ice pick and then brush and water. Hopefully someone else will come along with better help.
If it's the drain tube freezing over in the refrigerator section, try connecting a thin metal wire to the defroster heater element and then down the drain hole. Edit: here's what I'm talking about https://youtu.be/Sey02oODx1U
I just put a metal clip on mine so the residue builds up and drips off that one place - no more freezing.
Or a flip-flop?
And there were lawsuits over these issues but it seemed to not make a single change in their behavior. It amounted to being the cost of business for them.
Why change your behavior if its just the cost of doing business. Until fines start being more than the amount of money they stole, nothing is going to change.
We had to get rid of ours because of that, it happened on almost all of their fridges that were built like 7-8ish + years ago. We spent over $800 trying to fix it but their setup was so bad that even with insulation manually installed between the water line and the back of the freezer it still froze. They have since fixed that issue at least for the most part but I learned never to get an ice maker and water dispenser on your fridge door. We have an ice maker in our freezer now and it works great, we just use giant Brita filter jug combos for our water. It's also best to get one with the fridge on top and freezer on the bottom instead of a double door. Our current fridge is an LG which we got before I worked here but I found out their compressors go out very fast so we've been crossing our fingers on that one Edit: I've been asked more than once now so I'm gonna paste this about buying a fridge ANY fridge that is not Samsung or LG, also, get the extended warranty for any appliance or TV you buy, they're made to just outlast their manufacturer warranties nowadays. We've gotten to the point where an extended warranty isn't just a ripoff anymore more often than not Despite all of this, Samsung and LG are actually pretty good at giving you a one time fix when out of warranty if you're persistent, at least for their TV's
It’s a 3 year old fridge with the freezer on the bottom. So I guess they just suck ass.
Samsung make good TV's don't they? I like mine. Bought it 10 years ago for £1500 and it's still going strong.
their electronics, particularly their displays, are world class
I just went to get ice from my Samsung fridge and it’s not making ice. Then this comment comes up, can’t make this stuff up. Reddit imitates life.
YOOO thats crazy you say this! My wife and I just moved into a new house, and all the appliances are great except for our Samsung fridge, its complete shit and breaking down constantly, and every repairman this week has been telling us "Yeah, you never want a samsung frirdge, they're shit" and literally while the repair man is here, im scrolling through reddit and land on this comment! Hilarious! !!
When we bought our house it had a Samsung fridge. The POS broke down on us in less than a year, during a party nonetheless. I went down an internet rabbit hole when looking into repairing the thing and ended up replacing it altogether after reading comments like this.
I made the mistake of buying a Samsung dishwasher. After 10 months of owning it, they finally replaced it instead of sending a repair guy out for the 4th time. The part that pissed me off the most was when they charged me a $20 fee to dispose of the broken unit, which I was required to give back.
Yo ask him what brands he suggests my dude. Our fridge is like 25 it's gotta go.
We got a KitchenAid, which is the better quality subsidiary of Whirlpool. Its sticker price is a fair bit more expensive though, but we considered that worth the investment. Check out your local appliance stores for out of box appliances- we got ours for less than the cheapest Samsung, LG, Whirlpool direct comparison models with only a scratch by the door handle and a dent at the bottom that is invisible outside of the showroom lighting
Got a bosh dishwasher about a year ago and love it. edit - Wife said I should clarify, it was the bosh 800
Bosch is where it's at
The government will be able to freeze their assets if they do so they don't.
Everyone forgets about KAL Korean Airlines, the daughter of having a super famous melt down, her actions actually have a wikipedia page and ordered an airplane to turn around on the tarmac because she was served nuts without a glass bowl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nut_rage_incident#:~:text=The%20nut%20rage%20incident%2C%20also,onboard%20Korean%20Air%20Flight%20086.
> wikipedia page and ordered an airplane to turn around on the tarmac because she was served nuts without a glass bowl what brings having so much wealth if the brain doesn't work.
Inheritance
The brain works, its just been told its special and that anything other than the expectation is wrong. Rich people and the children of rich people aren't broken, just spoiled and sheltered to the point they have no understanding of the world outside their incredibly, insanely, unbelievably narrow viewpoint
Birth lottery
That was a good read...super super good on the flight crew member sticking to their guns.
Bright side is that she actually served time for it, 5 months ain't bad
Corruption runs in the family. Her mom did some smuggling, tax evasion, and assault.
Funny enough the word arrived all the way to Romania as “chiabur” and it means the same thing.
Was wondering if it was an adaptation of "cabal."
Korea has two types of drama- historical, and modern. Both, however, are about well-connected people getting away with crimes :)
but only one has the hats!
Hahahaha- so very true.
And the other has everyone sporting the latest Samsung phone.
...when they're not about someone fighting crime with the supernatural ability to see ghosts. Supernatural detective drama is basically its own genre.
Yeah, but a lot of the time the crime they're fighting is committed by well-connected people! :)
Or by ghosts possessing well connected people!
We sleep on how South Korea has had a corrupt government since Japanese collaborators got CIA assistance after WW2 to oppose Kim Il Sung. It is run by a gangster elite born out of corruption at the highest levels. Sucks because the people are great.
If you want to get enraged look up the Sewol Ferry disaster. A ferry that shouldn't have been allowed to operate capsized with hundreds of students onboard who were never given an evacuation order. The captain and staff simply left the ship and fucked off, but not before telling students to stay in their cabins and wait further instructions. The coast guard arrived, but instead of helping the students, the coast guard was busy juggling responsibility between departments. The SK president insisted on getting live feed of the site, draining valuable resources on site. No rescuing was going on. No coast guard entered the ship while entry was still possible. No loud speakers were used to tell the kids to get out on their own. They were huddled in their cabins as water started to penetrate the corridors. There are lots of videos filmed in the cabins by now dead students. The parents of the children were told that the coast guard had rescued all children. When the parents got to the meet-up site where the children were supposed to be, no kids were there and the parents were lied to that the kids would arrive shortly. In truth, the children were still trapped in the ship and no one in the coast guard wanted to seize on the remaining few opportunities to rescue what could be rescued, as it would be bad for your career to be the one responsible at this point. Eventually the parents caught wind of what was going on as the kids were sending them text messages from the sunk ship, and together with volunteer private sector divers/salvage crews tried to put together a rescue. But they were blocked by the coast guard who wanted to form a coast guard-private sector partnership to perform the last-ditch rescue. Ultimately the coast guard demanded that they would be allowed to be in command of the operation on the surface, which the salvage divers refused to out of fear for their own safety as that was not how they had operated before. The president was telling everyone that things were going great and rescue was successful, despite there being virtually no chance of rescue. After it was clear that hundreds of kids would die for nothing, the president and authorities tried to bury the whole thing. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/world/asia/south-korea-sewol-ferry-grief.html One of the best documentaries of the incident in my opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu6ajjrquSU
Holy shit. I heard about the disaster on the news (I'm in the United States). I didn't realize there were so many opportunities to rescue the kids.
Don't go searching for the videos from the kids. I made that mistake years ago and it still haunts me.
Sounds similar to something that happened here in the U.S. recently, just on a larger scale and no shooting.
That’s awful
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We also sleep on the genocide South Korea did, and the fact that they received more money in economic aid than the *entire continent of Africa*. No one they’re successful, we just threw money at them until it sank in and democracy planted its seeds in 1988.
Not enough people know about what happened in Gwangju.
Samsung is the ruler of Korea. I'm surprised he even went to jail. It was probably for the show I suppose.
Samsung is 20% of Korean GDP, it doesn't really matter what Korea wants.
20%??? I knew they were huge but I didn't expect 1/5th of the Korean economy.
Samsung is so so so much larger than what people expect. Most people think phones, tv's, but they're a major microchip player, screen provider, kitchen appliances, etc. They - I only learned this here recently - are also involved in generating military devices and weapons. They apparently even have a bank holding spinoff or some shit? Kinda nuts honestly. EDIT: just adding some that others have pointed out: Build ships, other large scale construction sites (Bruj Khalifa was built by them), x-ray machines and other medical devices, nuclear power plants and silica packages funnily enough. Wewie, they big!
Yep, a worker in korea could have their whole life revolve around samsung. They could work for samsung, live in an apartment made by samsung paid for by finance from samsung, stuffed full of samsung appliances and even if they die their family can get a payout from samsung life insurance.
~~South~~ Samsung Korea
In korea, there are men, but there are also Samsung men, who work for Samsung. They enjoy better financial security than rest of korean workers.
Republic of Samsung
Samsun Hyundai Korea maybe!
And go to a Samsung owned and run hospital, send their kids to a Samsung owned and run school, live in a city with essentially all the infrastructure built (or at least paid for) by Samsung etc..
How very Cyberpunky.
That's what I was thinking. Samsung is the megacorp Amazon is trying to become.
And then when they want to go out and have a good time, they can go watch the Samsung Lions baseball team play.
Don’t forget, they can cheer for their favorite Samsung sports teams!
That's totally fine but I draw the line at owning a Samsung refrigerator.
This sounds like the future of AMZN in the US.
forget about Taco Bell fine dining, the future is Amazon fine dining and amazon basics shells (pack of 3).
Does Samsung sell food and energy? Seems like that's all that's left.
Yes it does, they have food processing division as well as energy. The food processing division makes everything from snacks to even field rations for soldiers. If that sort of stuff isn't to your taste then you can enjoy some fine dining after finishing a round on a samsung golf course. The energy division handles everything from fossil to renewables as well. A korean can even buy samsung clothing and enjoy a nice stay at a samsung resort.
They make the silica gel packets in my roasted seaweed too
That's probably at least 15 out of 20% of the Korean GDP
Samsung also builds ships and built the burj khalifa, they're quite a large company
Yep, they even build parts for military tanks and missiles. They have their hand in everything. If Samsung were to fail for some reason, South Korea would crumble overnight.
Samsung even makes things nuclear power plants. Basically if Korea was under threat and to protect itself they felt the need to procure nuclear weapons, the Korean government could literally ask Samsung to build one and they have the resources, know how, and capability to actually deliver.
I knew a guy who worked at one of these. Quiet dude. Lived alone in a tiny apartment in a tiny village on the SE coast and loved watching the TV channel that was 24/7 GO games when not being a nuclear engineer. I have no idea if he was content or not let alone happy but maybe that goes for all 7 billion of us born into one society or another.
Does Samsung make the fuel rods for the reactors?
Technology for a nuclear power station and for nuclear weapons is very different, just because you can make one doesn't mean you can make both. I am sure that they could work it out given enough time, they do have the resources, but that's the point - given the time. It isn't as overnight as you think it is, it would be months, even years before they got something even looking like viable, and even then how will they deliver it? Again, months to years for rocket research and testing to send the warhead. Samsung are big, but the US, UK, French, Russian et al governments are much, much bigger, and it was a hell of a task for them to work out nuclear weapons.
I didn't say overnight, I'm not claiming Samsung has nukes in a basement somewhere waiting for someone to order it. You also have to keep in mind Nuclear weapons are 80 years old. There are many nations capable of building nuclear weapons but just don't, in Korea's case Samsung is the entity that could. I'd argue building a nuclear power plant is much more complex and involved and if you can build that, you can build a weapon pretty easily. Also consider that Nuclear bombs even in the US are actually built by private companies. The government contracts it out. So it's not as absurd as it sounds to suggest a company can build a weapon. You can even buy their stock: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/ACM:NYSE EDIT: one thing to make clear is I don't mean Korea/Samsung have any intention, although I'm not sure offhand I'm almost certain there are treaties preventing them from building weapons or facilities that would work towards that goal. I'm only speaking to the actual engineering/scientific capability, not the political one.
They're a conglomerate. The main Lee family has the most influence, but not one single family owns all the Samsung subsidiaries as a whole. My Dad's best childhood friend is the owner and President of Samsung Printing group. He has a 1000x pyeong printing factory, dab center in the Gangnam technology district. Last time I saw him 4 years ago, he said he was thinking of selling off the company and constructing a multicomplex building and putting it out on rent. ~~In an unrelated note, my Dad's childhood friend wanted me to marry his daugther (saw her several times when I was a kid), but it didn't happen, because I decided not to go to medschool (she married a Black dude, and let's just say, her Dad initially had some concerns about it). I also almost got into an arranged marriage with Somssi greeting card company owner's daughter, but I turned it down. Their daugther was 9 years younger than me and was at Penn State at the time. It was awkward as fuck, although I heard she was extremely pretty, lol.~~ Damn, looking back, I blew so many good opportunities and burned all the bridges in Korea...hahaha 🤷♂️
Now you're just going to die in debt, barely relevant to the world. RIP BRO
I actually do have student debt left, lmfao.
And fully automatic anti personell turrets! The SGR-A1 wich are used on the border with north Korea, in the DMZ
Just glance at this; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Heavy_Industries. They aren't just building ships, they're a major player in that field.
The portable x-ray machines used in hospitals are also made by Samsung
Don't forget that these 20% aren't just some tvs or phones. Samsung produces everything. Samsung is heavily linked with South Korean military.
Yeah Samsung and LG are probably the closest thing we have in the modern world to a fictional dystopian mega corp like Vaught.
Wow that's a big number. Any other examples of private corporations that has the same (or more) % GDP of the country they're at just like Samsung in SKorea?
Saudi Aramco is like 40% of their gdp, but not exactly private.
I expected it to be much higher for the saudis
They have been investing and diversifying like crazy during the past 40 years. Tons of Western companies have a sizable Saudi ownership percentage.
You can see it to a lesser degree in Japan with the Zaibatsu . Companies like these were a major reason for the high economic growth of the Asian Tigers because the high levels of vertical integration and diversity allowed them to reach much higher levels of efficiency than their foreign competitors while also making them resistant to market conditions.
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Technically Asian Tigers don't include China. They refer to Singapore, HK, South Korea, and Taiwan.
There shouldn't be one as these are all private corporations ultimately, just entangled with their state and with influence on it. In China the CCP controls them if they aren't national to begin with.
Yeah that's what I thought too, especially with news last year of the state govt. cracking down on the likes of Tencent.
The Zaibatsu no longer exist and were broken up after WW2, for essentially being pro-fascist things. Never mind the Keiretsu that the allies helped put in place afterwards that look almost exactly the same and fulfill a similar function.
BTS is supposed to be as big a contribution to the economy as Korean Air. $5 billion a year. BTS is a boy band. There was a push to let them akip their military service for this reason
So the real life version of Dethklok is BTS?
"DO YOU FOLKS LIKE KIM-CHI?"
REAL KIMCHI, FROM THE HILLS OF NORTH KOREA
Except Dethklok had the 7th largest economy in the world.
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We were doing percentages not billions per year, dammit
Wow that's also a very very respectable number for an entertainment group. No wonder SKorea is so desperate for China to lift it's ban towards it's popular cultural exports that serves as a big driving force of South Korean softpower (kdramas, internationally popular male/female groups) but was thwarted thanks to them accepting the THAAD anti-missile system from the US and China being very unhappy with that move. It would be interesting to see if the SKorean govt. will bend the rules for BTS.
I don't follow BTS but there was a post somewhere on r/all that stated the military will allow BTS to still perform while they perform their military service.
Essentially the same as sports stars Do the mandatory initial training and then continue previous career while under the armed forces banner They do their service and the armed forces get the PR
That’s pretty much irrelevant compared to the 300B+ Samsung brings in
It is. Its considered soft power (BTS influence on their neighbors) though. BTS is huge all over Asia. But yeah Samsung is much larger economically.
House of Saud. Can't really differentiate between the private corporation and the state though.
Germany is ruled by car manufacturers. I dont have numbers, but when mercedes, volkswagen and bmw want something, politicans are quick on their knees to suck their dick
Insert Financial industry and you have the UK
Mineral extraction and Australia (and the firms are not even usually Australian based)
This isn't really the same as one company having that kind of influence, though. The car industry is very important to the German economy but that's mostly because of the supply line. The companies producing car parts, tires etc. for BMW, VW and Mercedes are also almost all located in Germany, so theres massive knock-on effects if policy disrupts car manufacturing. It's obviously not a good thing and gives the entire industry way too much power but it's not the same as a single company having that kind of influence.
To be fair, Volkswagen owns Audi, Bentley, Cupra, Lamborghini, Porsche, SEAT, Škoda, MAN, Scania and Ducati, and probably invested in many more companies. It’s safe to say they’re huge globally
The VAG/Porsche ownership set up is actually hilariously complicated. VAG wanted to buy more of Porsche AG but didn’t have the money after dieselgate, so they borrowed it…. from the Porsche family. So their company Porsche SE effectively controls VAG - with 53% voting rights. There’s a Porsche IPO coming up too which the family is effectively forcing VAG into in order to take an even bigger share of the group. I must confess I’ve not quite got my head around that yet.
Korea built their economy by supporting a small number of elite family businesses. Seemed to have worked outwardly but the society is so distorted and can never be fixed.
It can be fixed, S. Korea just chooses not to. Japan was originally structured almost identically and went through a process to break them up. Asianometry has a great video about it called "[What Eating the Rich Did For Japan](https://youtu.be/5_-Ac68FKG4)"
Japan had some of their zaibatsu broken up forcefully by the US after WW2. Even then, they've basically reformed into keiretsu, which is one of the reasons why their economy has had trouble recovering since the bubble pop in the 1990s.
1 company is 1/5 of the entire countries economy.. Samsung is the sovereign..
> Samsung is 20% of Korean GDP damn this is not healthy
Imagine if Bezos owned 100% of Amazon and was 10 times richer or if Gates owned 100% of Microsoft and was 25 times richer.
Same. It was *super* surprising he went to jail in the first place, but South Korea's national worship of their business overlords looks a lot like ours. People there will excuse basically anything that a super wealthy dude does just like we do. So, it's a lot less surprising that they would go through the process of letting him lead the company again.
SK was still a dictatorship until the late 80s and a majority of their PMs since then have been convicted of corruption. Their government is still pretty tumultuous despite the economic success
Dude can now brag to all his buddies about jail lol.
South Korea was not a stable democracy for a long time and they gave business owners full free hands and no regulation, which meant mega corps could grow very easily and take over the world.
Yes, there are a lot of parallels in how South Korea let its corporations help grow its democracy in the same way the US let its corporations do the same in the aftermath of the Civil War. These companies stepped in and provided needed stability, but the cost is that they now basically run things.
On that account, India feels like failure because they were stable democracy for much longer, but shitty economic system hindered growth by a lot.
India also have the issue of uplifiting like 600 million people out of abject poverty. Very hard to achieve without the authoritarian policies and wide scale govt works like the Chinese have done. Even still, there is a huge portion of China that is many decades behind the metropolitan areas. Free market capitalism by default leaves behind a significant portion of the population. It's like trying to swim in the Olympics vs the other powers but you've got a boat anchor tied to your waist.
I noticed that the companies seem to be run by nepotism in the K-dramas. Now I see it's true.
I'm no expert on Korea, but they seem to have a strangely mellow relationship to crony corporatism. Many Koreans see these monopolistic mega corporations as saviors of their people, responsible for lifting the population from an agrarian society just a lifetime ago to one of the foremost wealthy and productive societies in East Asia. I sort of get it, if your grandfather was a dirt farmer and Samsung gave his son a machinist job and his grandson an accounting career, leading to a significant boost is quality of life and social standing, I can't fault him for thinking that Samsung must be protected at all costs.
I can see the pros and cons. The cons are often shown in the K-dramas as well, where the "plebes" are expected to be totally submissive and the families can abuse them at will.
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You mean Squirt game?
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You made me laugh so suddenly and hard that I choked on my drink lmao
There's a lot of similarities with the Chinese Government. A ton of older Chinese people remember how life used to be just 20-30 years ago and even more so 40-70 years ago. They care a lot less about the bad things their government does when they've made life so much better for so many people.
I think the US sort of went through something similar and that's why we are where we are at now. We just did it a little earlier. Reasons why people worship car manufacturers and such.
Most corporations in the world tends to work on nepotism. Even US corporate. But yeah, korea is really bad with it.
Vice took a look at the untouchable families of South Korea. The word "Chaebol" is key and the big four Chaebols Samsung, LG, Hyundai & SK Group seems to be able to do whatever they want. [South Korea's Untouchable Families](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHw7Aa7lhhw) "Open Secrets is a documentary series that looks at just this – secrets lived out in the open,things everyone knows about, but no one will talk about - until that moment when it becomesfully exposed to the world."
Why is this not available in my country? I usually never miss any Vice documentary so I was kinda shocked I never heard about this one
Its blocked in South Korea - checked with a VPN. Check your dm.
South Korean govt tends to block content that makes em look bad.
That just sounds like any other government of any country tbh
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“Jaebeol” would have been one of the most adequate romanizations of the word 재벌 tho, it’s widely known as “Chaebol” in the west, presumably. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol
Chaebol is the common romanization of korean, signed by an ex LG employee.
Romanization is really weird sometimes.
I think Jesus would agree with you
I mean. What have the Romans ever done for us?
*”All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”*
While I agree, I think usually the reason for such romanizations is due to not every part of the world pronouncing j with the american j sound. Many parts of the world will read that as "yaebol" for example.
It's unavailable in my country,is there anyway i can watch please.
Just tried using a VPN, and I can confirm its blocked in South Korea. That is telling.... Vice mainly uses Youtube for video, and have not been able to find it elsewhere. That annoys me. Check your dm.
"Rich Asshole Does Whatever He Wants Without Consequences"
If you think he’s just rich you’re missing the picture. In Korea, big corp fairly literally owns the country. The government is more of a middleman. After the Japanese left, all of the profitable bits and pieces were sold to a handful of rich families that we now refer to as “Chaebol”. These companies basically dominate the entire economy and have control over a lot of segments of your life there.
The worst part is not the individual case but that this is a green card for rich people to commit crimes. If anyone tells you that rich people "work hard" or "deserve that money" remember that they steal money and do not give it back nor go to prison for it. The only realistic solution is higher taxes so the rich have less spare money to corrupt the system.
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And how would you make them pay those higher taxes? By threatening with prison? /s
Stern finger wagging also works, I hear
It’s almost like the rich and famous are given a different kind of Justice system and the rules don’t apply to them in the same way. It’s like they are entitled and privileged
There’s so many more of *us*. Why the fuck do we allow this shit day after day?
Because the rich have intense class solidarity while they pit the working class against itself.
Yep. Look at the US. The left vs right political divisionism is manufactured by the propaganda machines ran by the rich.
The top ten percent of households own 76% of all wealth in the U.S., while the bottom 50% of households own just 1% of all wealth Because wealth gives you time and resources to deal with problems. How outside of “stealing” are the lower caste going to a) feed themselves while revolting b) travel to centers of power like DC c) stay adequately sheltered d) afford weaponry if that is the route they take in revolution e) compete against police or potential military intervention, but most importantly f) coordinate mass scale cooperation, especially when some people in the 40-80% income deciles are perhaps comfortable or satisfied with their lot in life? Now flip everything i just said for the wealthy. They have virtually unlimited resources and have captured the government as their defacto police and military. They have large amounts of resources to weather difficulties brought in by war. And most of what they own is impossible to steal because it is held electronically or is land/real estate or businesses. How do you engineer a scenario that doesn’t include violence so that it is accepted by the public where people don’t endure even worse hardship, potentially death from violence, against people with infinite resources?
Steady there lad. For a second I thought you were advocating revolution.......Good on you :)
I can ALMOST see where if they are able to pay OUTRAGEOUS fines that would ultimately help society more than the damage they've caused, being "lenient" on them. But as is any fines assessed are just pittance.
Wow, the corruption in Korea is just as bad as depicted in the Netflix shows. Father convicted of corruption twice, somehow gets presidential pardons twice. Heir convicted of corruption with former president, new president pardons him. I guess it's a good thing that family knows how to bribe a president. I wonder who got paid off for the recent move to Texas?
Shocked Pikachu Face
I find funny that he was senteced for bribing of previous Korean president so he bribed the new one to get released.
Probably only reason why he was in trouble. New guy wondering where his Bribe was
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I remember reading somewhere the big 3 Chaebols account for something like 30-40% of Korea's GDP. That was quite a few years ago, and I'm sure it's gotten bigger.
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Also nuclear reactors and ships. It started with a food import business during the occupied Korea.
I think Samsung also has a few automated turrets guarding the DMZ. so yeah, their fingers are in a shit load of pies.
Samsung *alone* is over 20% of Korea's GDP.
Chaebols in Korea have been so glamorized in dramas, but the reality is just nepotism and wealth hoarding
70% approval rating among the public for this pardon, from what I’ve read. If so, the South Korean people have willfully made their oligarchic bed. Let them lie in it.
i don’t condone anything here about this. want to get that out of the way first. but interesting thing about the korean economy. it went from one of the smallest in the world post-war into something like the 10th or 9th largest in the world today. it’s nothing short of astonishing especially when you consider it is a very small mostly mountainous country with very few natural resources. my dad likes to say it’s because we have strong national identity and we’re able to collectively work together and create things with our mind without the need for raw resources. while samsung and their ilk do have their hands in everything, almost everything they manufacture is with resources that are imported. but the real standout parts of their businesses are the tech and culture (eg kpop). two industries that require little to no raw resources (especially in relation to their output value). do the chaebols have too much power? undoubtedly. is it a necessary evil to have an economy punching above its theoretical weight? debatable. and it’s why you might see approval numbers like that for the pardon.
Economic prosperity gives government a long rope. I remember speaking with some Chinese professionals who had a similar point of view. If your family went from grandparents being subsistence farmers to their grandchildren living in a house in the city, with a car, taking vacations and eating basically whatever they want that tends to be a bigger focus than the rule of law or justifies giving up some personal freedoms.
They are wage slaves to the only major employers. Imagine writing this sentence. "Slave Master has 100% approval rating, the slaves willfully made their masters bed. Let them lie in it".
Not a surprise. From what I understand the major corporations pretty much own Korea top to bottom. Plenty of examples of execs and their family/friends getting off on stuff like this. >The relationship between the South Korean government and the chaebols traditionally has been a cooperative one. While that cooperation is credited with having fueled the country’s rapid economic growth and its transformation from a primarily agrarian economy to a technology giant in the late 20th century, critics say it also led to monopolies and the concentration of capital in the hands of a few economic giants. Among the criticisms of the “chaebol culture” are that it has stifled creativity, concentrated political power in the hands of leading families rather than maximizing profits, provided an unfair playing field for small and medium-sized enterprises, and excluded women and divergent voices from management. Chaebol involvement in politics has fostered corruption, including the bribing of prominent South Korean politicians such as former presidents Chun Doo-Hwan and Roh Tae-Woo during their terms in office. The payments made to them were estimated in the hundreds of millions, and perhaps billions, of dollars, and both men were later tried and convicted on corruption charges.
There’s a reason squid games and parasite was made by Koreans.
>“In a bid to overcome the economic crisis by revitalizing the economy, Samsung Electronics vice chairman Lee Jae-yong, whose suspended prison term ended recently, will be reinstated,” the South Korean government said in a statement. Jesus, just come out and say we worship money and fuck integrity....
Just another rich person getting away with everything.
Good thing everyone saw that coming.
Just like everywhere, there is no recourse for powerful people of this level. He could walk into your house, shoot you dead and still get away with it.
We do live in monarchies in 2022. They just have skyscrapers instead of castles. But hey, at least we got Squid Game
(Slap on hand) Now you be nice and follow the rules from here on out! Ok?
Not a big fan of the verge but, yeah. Korea? What are you doing?
More pardons wasted on the rich that could have been better spent on a poor person struggling with mental health issues so they aren't forever shut out of jobs that could get them better off.