David Lee

South Korea

Reporter at Freelance

Freelance reporter in Seoul🇰🇷 @SCMPNews, @AJEnglish, @NikkeiAsia, @Billboard, others. DM or 📧[email protected]

Articles

How South Korea’s music festival scene is getting bigger, louder and more diverse

1 week ago | scmp.com | David Lee

It was an early summer day and, without a cloud in the sky, the temperature in Seoul Olympic Park hit 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit). But the rising heat did not deter Elena Joo from attending this year’s Seoul Jazz Festival, with international headliners such as Thundercat, Jacob Collier and Lany, as well as chart-topping home favourites like Crush, Epik High and Jannabi.
South Korea's presidential election aims to restore democratic credentials

3 weeks ago | aljazeera.com | David Lee

Seoul, South Korea - After six hours of emergency martial law, hundreds of days of protests, violence at a Seoul court and the eventual impeachment of President Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea is now hours away from choosing a new leader in the hope of restoring stability to an unsettled nation. From 6am to 8pm on Tuesday (21:00 to 11:00 GMT), South Koreans will vote for one of five presidential candidates in a race led largely by the opposition Democratic Party's Lee Jae-myung.
South Korea votes in snap presidential poll after failed martial law bid

3 weeks ago | aljazeera.com | Lyndal Rowlands |David Lee
South Korea's presidential favourite has plans for new 'de facto' capital

4 weeks ago | aljazeera.com | David Lee

Sejong, South Korea - By the standards of South Korea's teeming metropolises, Sejong is not much of a city. With a population of 400,000 people, Sejong, a planned city located about 100km (62 miles) south of Seoul, does not even crack the top 20 urban centres. Recommended Stories But if South Korea's likely next president has his way, Sejong could soon become the country's "de facto" capital.
Is NewJeans gone? What K-pop group’s saga reveals about power play in artist-label relations

1 month ago | scmp.com | David Lee

NewJeans’ abrupt disappearance from the K-pop spotlight has shaken South Korea’s multibillion-dollar music industry – not just because of the group’s meteoric rise and global reach, but for what the saga reveals about increasingly blurred lines of power and the fragile nature of artist-label relations in the world’s most systematised pop machine.
In South Korea, crushing academic pressures start in kindergarten

2 months ago | scmp.com | David Lee

In one of Seoul’s wealthiest districts, four-year-olds are being drilled to write five-paragraph English essays in 15 minutes. These gruelling tests, designed for admission into exclusive English-language kindergartens, are the latest front in South Korea’s relentless education arms race – one that critics warn is exacerbating inequality and robbing children of their emotional well-being.
Beauty beyond borders: the rise and rise of South Korea’s plastic surgery empire

Mar 7, 2025 | scmp.com | David Lee

Last December, a series of plastic surgery ads were splashed on the side of buses and bus stops around Seoul. While this is nothing new for South Korea, a country that accounts for nearly 25 per cent of the global aesthetic surgery market and where nine in every 1,000 people have received some form of alteration, it was the faces of actresses Jeon Jong-seo and Jang Yoon-ju on the posters that caught the attention of many.
Love bingo, marriage spike and more

Mar 2, 2025 | aljazeera.com | David Lee

For the first time in nine years, South Korea's birthrate has risen, reversing a long-term trend which has seen it decline to record lows. The country's fertility rate had fallen for eight consecutive years, making it the only member of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) with a rate below 1. A birthrate figure denotes the number of children born to each woman within a population in her lifetime.
Netflix's Squid Game and South Korea's homeless centres

Mar 1, 2025 | aljazeera.com | David Lee

Seon-gam Island, South Korea - Two men stand at the entrance to a forest surrounded by tall pine trees on an island south of the capital Seoul. In the middle of the forest there is a large clearing and an excavation site. Recommended Stories The words written on a safety notice reveal what this forest hides: "Seon-gam Academy Graveyard Recovery Operation".
I Am Solo: South Korea’s messy, awkward dating show reflects a nation’s reality

Feb 22, 2025 | scmp.com | David Lee

In the land of K-dramas, where love stories unfold with heart-fluttering romance and impossibly perfect protagonists, a reality dating show is flipping the script – and winning hearts. I Am Solo, a show that feels more like a mirror to the messy, awkward and practical realities of modern romance, has become a cultural sensation in South Korea. First aired in 2021, the show has featured nearly 300 contestants over more than 180 episodes, and its popularity shows no signs of waning.