David McNeill

1 month ago | fccj.or.jp | Dan Sloan |David McNeill |Justin McCurry

March 2025 | Cover storyThe issue of ‘secret’ filming has ignited fresh controversy over Shiori Ito’s Oscar-nominated documentary Black Box DiariesIn 2018, a scandal erupted in Japan when a female reporter secretly recorded a conversation in which she was sexually harassed by Japan’s top finance bureaucrat. The reporter took her recording to a supervisor at TV Asahi who told her to drop it.

Jan 15, 2025 | irishtimes.com | David McNeill

The arrest of South Korea’s impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol defuses a potentially dangerous standoff between investigators and his security team, but the country remains mired in deep political turmoil. Yoon is the first sitting president in South Korean history to be detained after investigators backed by thousands of police officers entered his heavily barricaded residence in central Seoul early Wednesday morning and took him into custody.

Jan 8, 2025 | irishtimes.com | David McNeill

Not so long ago few ordinary South Koreans could tell you much about their president, Yoon Suk Yeol, a former prosecutor general who made his name by helping to impeach and convict his corrupt predecessor Park Geun-hye. The jailing of Park in 2018 made the apparently incorruptible Yoon a symbol of justice. So there is some irony in the fact that Yoon has himself been impeached and is now at the centre of South Korea’s worst constitutional crisis in decades.

Dec 8, 2024 | irishtimes.com | David McNeill

It’s minus-three degrees outside South Korea’s parliament building, the National Assembly, and Jeong Seung (22) is swaddled in a blanket to stay warm. Like many of the young protesters here, she has been sitting on the pavement in the frigid temperatures all night. “I don’t usually take much notice of politics but when I saw on the news that President Yoon had declared martial law, I thought I had to do something,” says Jeong, a university student.

Dec 8, 2024 | irishtimes.com | David McNeill

The position of South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol looks increasingly precarious, following the arrest of his former defence minister and a weekend of political drama and mass protests demanding he resign. Prosecutors said on Sunday they had detained Kim Yong-hyun, widely seen as the key figure in Mr Yoon’s declaration of martial law last Tuesday. Mr Kim stepped down from his defence post the day after the declaration was rescinded by parliament, amid nationwide fury.