For years, Chinese media has portrayed the United States as an unfriendly nation that seeks to contain and weaken China on the world stage.
The US has repeatedly been cast as a threat to world peace in Chinese media owing to Washington’s policies of arming Taiwan, sending military assistance to Ukraine, and supporting Israel’s war on Gaza.
So when stories in Chinese media suddenly began to appear about “strengthening China-US ties” and “the bonds of friendship between Americans and Chinese”, it naturally did not go unnoticed.
In the weeks before the long-awaited November 15 meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in San Francisco, China’s media softened its strident rhetoric.
State-run Xinhua news agency reported on a letter Xi sent to an American war veteran, who had served in the US Air Force group nicknamed the Flying Tigers and who fought with the Chinese military against the Japanese during World War II.
In the letter, Xi addresses relations between China and the US, noting a deep friendship forged between the two countries “that withstood the test of blood and fire”.
China’s Communist party-controlled People’s Daily, which earlier this year called the US a warlike country, promoted a collection of articles commemorating the Flying Tigers in the same week as Biden met Xi.
The 50th anniversary of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s visit to Beijing in 1973 also became a topic of focus, as well as Xi’s various trips to the US starting with his first visit in 1985, which he spent in Iowa where, we are told, “he fostered friendships with American people”.
Even the outspoken state-run Global Times, which in an editorial in October described the US as being “stained with the blood of innocent civilians” in Gaza, called for greater cooperation between Beijing and Washington on the day of the Biden-Xi meeting. A far cry from two months earlier, when Global Times described the US getting “nastier and nastier” in its attacks on China.
China’s nationalist commentators have followed the media’s softening tone too.
Commentator Hu Xijin, who once called for Chinese air strikes on Taiwan to “eliminate” US troops on the democratically-ruled island, wrote in a recent opinion piece of the need for expanded China-US cooperation.
Nationalistic blogger Sima Nan, who once described the US as a “rotten, crime-ridden place”, suddenly claimed that he was striving “to promote friendly Sino-American relations”.
The abrupt change of perspective on the US by China’s media and public figures can seem very confusing, said Vicky Tseng, 34, who works with social media at an advertisement company in Shanghai.
“But it is the Chinese government that sets the tone for Chinese media. So before Xi met Biden the government clearly decided that it was time for China to like America more,” she told Al Jazeera.
President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping walk in the gardens at the Filoli estate in Woodside, California, on November 15, 2023, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperative (APEC) conference [Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP]
Alfred Wu, a scholar of public governance in China at the National University of Singapore, also said that it was the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) headed by President Xi that sets the tone in the Chinese media landscape.
“There has been a very clear development towards greater state control over the media in China in recent years, leaving very little space for media that are not affiliated with the government,” Wu told Al Jazeera.
According to the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, China was second from the bottom of the world press freedom index for 2023, just ahead of last place North Korea.
“The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the world’s largest prison for journalists, and its regime conducts a campaign of repression against journalism and the right to information worldwide,” the group said.
“It doesn’t really matter what type of media you are these days,” said Titus Chen, a researcher on Chinese social media policies at the National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan.
“If you want to survive in the Chinese media market, you have to toe the party line,” he said.
And the party’s new line clearly sought to emphasise more cordial elements of China-US ties leading up to the Biden-Xi meeting, according to Chen.
“The change in media coverage is due to a renewed wish for more stability in the bilateral relations, particularly given the current economic situation in China,” he said.
China’s economic growth has struggled to reach government targets, youth unemployment hit 21.3 percent in June – before authorities stopped publishing data – and China recorded its first-ever foreign direct investment deficit in the July-September period of 2023.
“China has been trying to send a signal through its propaganda to the US and the West that China is ready to cooperate on a number of issues with the hope that this will secure more foreign investments,” Chen said.
Softer tones unlikely to last
The bleak economic situation has not been portrayed by Chinese media as a factor in the Biden-Xi meeting, according to Tseng, the advertising junior executive.
In fact, US economic restrictions imposed on China have been described in the Global Times as giving rise to breakthroughs in Chinese chip technology.
Xi’s oft-mentioned mantra about people-to-people exchanges and his championing of such exchanges along with his own interactions with American people over the years were portrayed in China’s media as having led to a successful APEC summit.
It was also pointed out that Xi received several standing ovations during an APEC dinner with business leaders and that points of cooperation outlined by Xi had opened a “vision for the future of China-US relations”.
Even two weeks after the summit, the People’s Daily described Xi’s endorsement of people-to-people ties as an inspiration for both Americans and Chinese that will generate “more positive energy for the healthy development of China-US relations”.
According to Wu, it was imperative for Chinese media to make Xi the centre of the APEC summit.
“The underlying message is that Xi is a very capable statesman [who] can negotiate with the US and can lead China to a better place,” he said.
Chinese media narratives regarding the US continuing in a more positive direction in the future are unlikely, observers said.
“I think the atmosphere can quickly become unfriendly again,” Tseng said. “And I have still found anti-US content on Chinese media the past weeks, so it never completely disappeared.”
While the positive atmosphere appeared to survive Biden calling Xi a dictator at the end of the APEC summit, the day after the meeting the Global Times released a cartoon sketch meant to illustrate hypocrisy in US foreign policy.
China and the US still have fundamental differences regarding foreign policy, particularly when it comes to the South China Sea and Taiwan, and these differences can easily and quickly sour the mood, Wu said.
Chen is also not optimistic that the soft touch towards the US in China’s media will survive.
“A pro-Taiwan gesture from an American politician might be all that it will take for the coverage to revert back to how it was before,” he said.
“And the day where that happens might come sooner than we all expect.”
The move is part of a wider trend as tech companies seek savings amid a slower-than-expected economy.
Spotify has announced a third major round of staff cuts this year.
The music streaming giant said on Monday that it will lay off about 1,500 employees, or 17 percent of its headcount, to bring down costs. The announcement follows the release of 600 staff in January and a further 200 in June.
The move fits with a growing trend in the tech sector, with economic conditions remaining more sluggish than expected. Following a round of redundancies at the start of the year, companies including Amazon and Microsoft-owned LinkedIn have announced further reductions recently.
In a letter to employees, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said the company hired more in 2020 and 2021 due to the lower cost of capital and while its output has increased, much of it was linked to having more resources.
Spotify invested more than $1bn to build up its podcast business, signed up celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and expanded its market presence across the globe in a quest to reach a billion users by 2030.
It currently has 601 million users, up from 345 million at the end of 2020.
Five months of severance pay
Ek said the reduction will feel large given a recent positive earnings report that saw the company report a profit in the third quarter, and its ongoing performance, including hitting its audience target of 601 million users early.
However, he noted that the gains were due mainly to the expanded resources.
“By most metrics, we were more productive but less efficient. We need to be both,” he said.
The company will start informing affected employees on Monday. They will get about five months of severance pay, vacation pay, and healthcare coverage for the severance period.
The company will also offer immigration support to employees whose immigration status is connected with their employment.
“We debated making smaller reductions throughout 2024 and 2025,” Ek said.
“Yet, considering the gap between our financial goal state and our current operational costs, I decided that a substantial action to rightsize our costs was the best option to accomplish our objectives,” he added.
They may weigh a maximum of 500 grammes (one pound) and only grow to 10 centimetres (four inches), but the farming of giant snails is proving to be big business in the Ivory Coast.
Considered a delicacy for their tasty flesh, the giant snails are also used to make cosmetics manufactured from their slime and shells.
But nearly 90 percent of the West African country’s forests have disappeared over the last 60 years, something which, together with the widespread use of pesticides, has decimated wild snails’ natural habitat.
Most forest has been lost to agricultural production in the world’s top producer of cocoa – to the detriment of the creatures that naturally thrive in a hot, humid environment.
As wild snail numbers have steadily fallen, farms that specialise in breeding them have increasingly sprung up. There are some 1,500 in the humid south alone.
A popular appetiser in the Ivory Coast, the snails are bred on farms such as one of many in the town of Azaguie, some 40km (25 miles) north of the commercial capital, Abidjan.
Inside some 10 brick and cement containers topped with mesh lids is a layer of earth and another of leaves.
Between the two slither thousands of snails, juveniles and breeders – some much larger than those found in Europe.
The gastropods are watered and fed every two days.
Seoul, South Korea – Most mornings, Eun Seo-Ran begins her day at around 7am by brewing tea for herself and her adopted daughter Lee Eo-Rie*. After a cup of black or herbal tea the two work in separate rooms – Seo-Ran as an essayist, while Eo-Rie studies for an exam. Around noon, they cook lunch, then sit down to eat and watch their favourite comedy series. Soon, the sound of them giggling fills the living room of their three-bedroom apartment. Outside, green cabbage fields stretch for miles.
In the evening, the two eat dinner, and then do the household chores. On clear nights, the silhouette of a mountain gleams in the distance as they practise yoga before bed, chatting about friends and work, and winding up another day in their quiet lives.
“Our lives have become inseparable over the years … Eo-Rie probably knows me better than anyone else in the world,” says Seo-Ran, a slight, soft-spoken woman, from their home in the southwestern region of Jeolla.
Despite being her adopted daughter, Eo-Rie is 38 – just five years younger than 43-year-old Seo-Ran. The women have been best friends and roommates for seven years. Last May, Seo-Ran adopted Eo-Rie in a desperate bid to become family under South Korea’s strict family law. By law, only those related by blood, marriage between a man and a woman, and adoption are recognised as family.
Strict gender roles and patriarchal family culture remain deeply ingrained in South Korea. But in recent years, more South Koreans have started to challenge these norms. They are increasingly pushing the government to accept a broader range of companionships as family, such as unmarried couples or friends living together, and demanding rights and services available to conventional family units. Women are often at the forefront of this push with a growing number of so-called “no-marriage women” choosing to stay single, defying the traditional pressure to marry, and look after a family.
The story of how Seo-Ran and Eo-Rie became family represents this desire to challenge—and reimagine—what it means to be family in South Korea.
From a young age, Seo-Ran knew she did not want to get married [Photo courtesy of Eun Seo-Ran]
‘My mum toiled for decades’
Seo-Ran grew up near Seoul in a middle-class family with a working father, a stay-at-home mother and an older brother – a nuclear household that by then had replaced the traditional multi-generational home. But despite the rapid shift in family structure, customs embedded within it changed more slowly.
Women were still largely expected to quit their jobs upon marriage and become lifelong caregivers for their in-laws. Placed at the bottom of the pecking order in their husbands’ families, they were usually relegated to the kitchen during family gatherings, including ancient rituals to honour dead ancestors. Called “jesa” or “charye”, the ritual is observed during the Chuseok harvest festival, the Lunar New Year and on dead relatives’ birthdays and women are expected to prepare food for days. The custom is so resented by many women that the number of divorces rises after every traditional holiday.
“My mum toiled for decades to serve my father’s family, including making countless jesa preparations each year. But my father is a very patriarchal person, and never showed any gratitude for what she did for his family,” Seo-Ran reflects.
“Having watched all of this, I’ve never had a fantasy about marriage – or having the so-called ‘normal family’,” she explains. Her mother, hoping Seo-Ran would live differently, wouldn’t even let her into the kitchen while she was growing up.
“Don’t live like me,” she would say.
Over time, some traditions diminished – but many remain. Today, women in double-income families spend three times more hours each day on childcare and household chores than men. In fact, even women who are breadwinners still spend more time on chores than their stay-at-home husbands.
South Koreans showcase “charye”, a traditional ritual service of food and offerings to thank their ancestors ahead of the Lunar New Year’s Day holidays at a traditional village in Seoul. Women are traditionally expected to cook for days for such rituals [File: Kim Jae-Hwan/AFP]
‘Why aren’t you married yet?’
From a young age, Seo-Ran knew she wanted to remain single in a society where many still see dating as a prelude to marriage and having children.
“Plus, I’m a very freewheeling person. I have wanderlust, I love to travel spontaneously, and I don’t like children,” she says shrugging. “I thought marrying would be an irresponsible thing to do for someone like me.”
After graduating from college, Seo-Ran picked up office work as she moved across the country – from the southern island of Jeju to a far-flung mountainous village – wanting to be closer to nature, and away from air pollution that exacerbated the chronic eczema she’d had since childhood. But she never felt she belonged.
“An unmarried woman living alone in a small village attracts endless gossip, matchmaking offers she never asked for, and unwanted sexual advances,” she explains, rolling her eyes.
Once, a drunken landlord tried to break into her house in the middle of the night – just one of several break-in attempts she experienced. In a country where many single people live with their parents, young women living alone are often vulnerable, stereotyped as being sexually available and 11 times more likely than men to experience break-ins.
On countless occasions, village elders asked Seo-Ran if she was married – and berated her for “going against the nature of the world” by remaining single. Many urged her to marry their sons or men living in the area. “‘Where is your husband? Where are your children? Why aren’t you married yet?’” her neighbours would ask her.
Fed up and exhausted, in 2016 Seo-Ran moved again, this time settling in the rural county of Jeolla with a population in the tens of thousands, which gave her a sense of anonymity. Soon after, she discovered that another woman was living alone next door.
That was Eo-Rie, who had also moved to Jeolla to escape city life. With plenty in common, including a love of plants, vegetarian cooking and DIY, and finding solidarity in their decision to remain single, the two quickly grew close.
Soon, they were sharing dinner every night. A year later, Eo-Rie moved in with Seo-Ran.
Seo-Ran bonded with Eo-Rie over shared interests and views including finding the traditional family unit to be oppressive [Image courtesy of Eun Seo-Ran]
‘A real family’
The decision was partly for protection as Seo-Ran felt unsafe on her own – two women living together would attract far less unwanted attention.
“But more than anything else … Eo-Rie and I talked a lot about how to live well and happily in old age, and concluded that living with a like-minded friend would be one of the best ways to do so,” Seo-Ran explains.
It took months to find the right balance. Eo-Rie, who likes to cook, found it tiring to cook for two, while Seo-Ran admits she is “a bit obsessed” with cleanliness – she showers as soon as she gets home – due to her skin condition. They decided that Eo-Rie would cook less and follow Seo-Ran’s shower habit.
Their different personalities – Seo-Ran is sensitive but outspoken while Eo-Rie is more easy-going and nonchalant – complement each other well, Seo-Ran says.
“Eo-Rie accepted my hyper-sensitiveness with ease, and even joked once, ‘I feel like I have a high-end home cleaner’,” she says, laughing.
Their home life became “joyful, peaceful, and comforting”.
“I came to believe that a real family is those who share their lives while respecting and being loyal to each other, whether or not they are related by blood or marriage,” says Seo-Ran.
A few years later, with the arrangement working so well, they decided to buy their apartment together. But then, after Seo-Ran, who suffers from other health problems like chronic headaches, was rushed to the ER several times, they started talking about how if they were family they could sign medical consent forms for one another. South Korean hospitals, fearing legal action should something go wrong, customarily refuse to offer urgent care – including surgery – unless a patient’s legal family gives consent.
“We have helped and protected one another for years. But we were nothing but strangers when we needed each other most,” Seo-Ran explains.
Seo-Ran speaks at a book event [Image courtesy of Eun Seo-Ran]
Legal loophole
So the two started looking into family law to see what was possible.
Marriage was out of the question. “We are not romantically involved or trying to get married. And even if we are, we wouldn’t be able to marry since same-sex marriage is not legal in South Korea,” Seo-Ran explains.
“So the only way left for us was this strange option of me adopting Eo-Rie,” she says, her eyebrows furrowed in frustration.
Under South Korean law, an adult can easily adopt a younger adult with both parties’ consent—an arrangement usually used by those marrying someone with adult children or among conservative families with no sons who adopt males within the extended family to continue “the family line”.
“What we wanted was simple things – to take care of each other, like signing medical consent [forms], taking family-care leave from work when one of us is ill, or organising a funeral when one of us dies later,” Seo-Ran says, sighing. “But none of that is possible in South Korea unless we are a legal family. So, we decided to take advantage of this legal loophole, however strange it may look.”
Some one million Koreans in a country of 50 million lived with de facto family – friends or partners – as of 2021, but they cannot access affordable state-subsidised apartments or housing loans, shared medical insurance, tax benefits and other services available to married couples and families.
If a living companion dies, bereaved partners or friends are left with few rights – they are more vulnerable to eviction if they do not own the property and can face myriad legal hurdles to receive inheritance.
In 2013, a 62-year-old woman who lost her flatmate of 40 years to cancer jumped to her death after leaving her home during an inheritance dispute with her flatmate’s family.
Although both Seo-Ran and Eo-Rie’s families have accepted their lifestyle, and the women jointly own their home, they wanted equal legal protection and rights.
On May 25, 2022, the two walked into a local administrative office, their hands clasped together, and filed adoption papers. The next day, they officially became mother and daughter.
“In South Korea, May is full of celebrations for families, like Children’s Day [May 5] or Parents’ Day [May 8], so we chose May to have a celebration of our own,” says Seo-Ran with a mischievous grin.
Gwak Mi-Ji, who hosts a podcast called Behonsé, at home with her rescue dog Jeong-Won [Hawon Jung/Al Jazeera]
Behonsé
Seo-Ran’s story – which she chronicled in her 2023 memoir, I Adopted A Friend – is the country’s first publicly known case of an adult adopting a friend to become family.
But the number of South Koreans exploring – and endorsing – lifestyles outside the conventional family unit is growing. The number of one-person households and those comprised of legally unrelated people hit a record high of nearly eight million last year or more than 35 percent of all households.
Gwak Min-Ji, an outgoing, friendly television writer in Seoul, is one such “no-marriage” woman. Nearly every week, the 38-year-old records her podcast, Behonsé, from her dining table.
Min-Ji began her podcast—based on the Korean words “bihon (no marriage, or, willingly unmarried)” and “sesang (world)” with a nod to Beyonce and her song, Single Ladies – from her living room in 2020, bored with isolation during the pandemic and hoping to reach out to other women like her.
“We’re still a minority significantly underrepresented on television and in the media. My goal was making us more visible by sharing the stories of our everyday life,” says Min-Ji in her cosy, two-bedroom apartment in the trendy neighbourhood of Haebangchon. “In a world that seems to scream that getting married is the only right answer, and that it’s unseemly to be a single woman unless you’re rich and successful, I wanted to show that there are many single women out there living mundane, ordinary lives—and that it’s perfectly okay!”
The podcast covers a wide range of topics from books, relationships and mental health to how to survive holidays with prying relatives, and the best single-women-friendly neighbourhoods. Min-Ji has interviewed single women of all ages and from all walks of life.
“Not all my listeners are against the idea of marriage. Some of them are in a relationship, and some listen to my podcast with their boyfriends,” Min-Ji says. But the excessive dual burden on working mothers and the relentless social stigma on divorcees, “forces many women to give up on marrying”, she adds.
Min-Ji’s podcast draws more than 50,000 listeners every week. Some have formed their own clubs via mobile chat groups. When Min-Ji organised a talk show event in January, the 200-odd tickets sold out within seconds.
“It felt as though everyone was so hungry for a chance to find each other,” Min-Ji says cheerfully as she shows me around her apartment. Her bedroom wall is plastered with photos and postcards from her travels to Europe and her refrigerator is covered with letters from friends and fans.
“My podcast has become a platform where no-marriage women can connect with others like them and do things together,” explains Min-Ji, stroking the head of her only full-time companion – a small rescue dog – sitting next to her on a sofa.
Yong Hye-In submits her proposed bill to widen the definition of family in parliament [Courtesy of the Basic Income Party]
‘The right to not be lonely’
But, like Seo-Ran, Min-Ji and her single friends face a key question: Who will care for them when they grow old or get sick?
“It’s one of the hottest topics among us,” Min-Ji says. “We’re seriously discussing where and how to buy houses together, or how to take care of each other when we fall sick.”
For now, they have created a “breakfast roll-call” group on the messaging app KakaoTalk where they check in every morning and visit those who fail to respond for two days in a row. But ultimately, Min-Ji and some of her friends are considering living together.
These considerations have a far-reaching implication in a country facing what many call a ticking time bomb: South Korea’s population is ageing faster than any other country’s, while its birthrate is at the world’s lowest level (0.78 as of 2022). By 2050, more than 40 percent of the population is projected to be older than 65, and by 2070, nearly half of the population will be elderly.
South Korea faces the major policy challenge of how to care for its elderly population, especially as the number of people living on their own grows.
In April, Yong Hye-In, a rookie South Korean lawmaker took what she described as a key step towards addressing the care crisis by proposing a law that would widen the legal definition of family.
“Many South Koreans are already living beyond the traditional boundaries of family,” explained Yong, a bespectacled 33-year-old lawmaker with the left-wing, minor Basic Income Party. “But our laws have failed to support their way of life.”
Yong, a minority in the parliament – women account for just 19 percent of the 300 seats, and the average age is about 55 – has made a name for herself as a vocal supporter of the rights of women, children, working-class people, and other politically underrepresented groups.
Promoted under the slogan “the right to not be lonely”, the law would benefit friends or couples living together including oft-neglected elderly people who are divorced, widowed, or estranged from their children, and people who live alone, Yong told me from her office in Seoul.
“As our society rapidly ages and more people live alone, so many members of our society are living in isolation and loneliness, or are at the risk of doing so,” Yong explained. “We should allow them to share their life and form solidarity with other citizens … and help them take care of each other.”
Her proposal resonated with many as the country faces the growing problem of “lonely death”, where people’s bodies remain undiscovered for a long time after they have died. South Korea recorded nearly 3,400 lonely deaths, or “godoksa”, in 2021, a 40 percent rise in five years. The vast majority of them were men in their 50s and 60s.
After Yoon Suk-Yeol of the right-wing People Power Party won the presidential election last March, the country’s gender equality ministry abruptly cancelled plans to recognise a wider range of companionships [File: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg]
Conservative backlash
But Yong’s bill drew a storm of protest from conservatives and evangelical church groups with enormous political lobbying power who accused it of “promoting homosexuality” by potentially giving gay couples similar status as heterosexual couples, thus, they said, effectively allowing same-sex marriage.
Yong received hundreds of angry calls and messages.
The “evil bill” will “destroy” the institution of marriage and family and ruin the lives of children by allowing same-sex marriage and encouraging births out of wedlock, some 500 conservative groups said in a joint statement.
“Apart from same-sex marriage, it’s hard to understand why people who live together demand the same legal protection as normal families,” a Christian Council of Korea (CCK) spokesman who requested not to be named told me. “If you are sick and need medical treatment, your real family should come right away and sign [the medical consent form], no matter how far they live. Why should anyone else do the job?”
Yong’s bill faces an uncertain future, ignored by most lawmakers and publicly rejected by the ruling right-wing government, which is backed by many evangelical church groups.
Min-Ji and Seo-Ran, both vocal supporters of Yong’s bill, have faced public criticism for their lifestyles. Interviews Min-Ji has given have drawn a torrent of online abuse from those who said she was not pretty enough to get married anyway, or swore she would face a lonely death. Others say her “selfish” lifestyle “disrespected” married people—an accusation Seo-Ran also faced after publishing her book in July.
Min-Ji, in red, speaks during an event with listeners of her podcast in Daejeon in October 2023 [Courtesy of Park Hye-Jeong]
A feminist healthcare cooperative
With legislative and government efforts to address loneliness and the lack of care largely stalled, some women have begun taking matters into their own hands.
Salim, a grassroots social and healthcare cooperative founded by dozens of feminists in Seoul in 2012, is one of them.
Salim’s collection of clinics is located in a high-rise building in the northern district of Eunpyeong, one of the most diverse yet rapidly ageing areas of Seoul where one in five residents is elderly.
“You don’t feel like a patient here, but part of a close-knit community,” Kim Ye-Jin, 31, a former television producer and cooperative member, explains.
Feminist doctors and activists – many of them no-marriage women – began the community to allow people to “grow old together by caring for one another,” according to Salim co-founder Choo Hye-In.
Salim, which means “saving” in Korean, is open to anyone for a minimum fee of 50,000 won ($39). It began with some 300 members and a small family medicine clinic headed by Choo, herself a doctor and no-marriage woman. But over a decade, it gained a reputation as a place welcoming not only women and Eunpyeong residents but also people with disabilities, victims of sexual assault or domestic abuse, sexual minorities, and migrant workers who may be shunned by clinics or not properly treated due to a language barrier or lack of insurance. Today, it counts nearly 4,200 members and has grown to include gynaecological, psychiatric and dental clinics, as well as a daycare centre for elderly people.
It’s the kind of “community of people who could protect you when you’re sick and lonely,” Ye-Jin explains, adding that Salim is one of the main reasons she and her friends want to grow old in the district.
Eunpyeong is home to many NGOs, women’s rights groups, and social enterprises and has been endorsed by Min-Ji’s podcast as one of the best neighbourhoods for single women due to its vibrant community.
Outside, Ye-Jin weaves past office workers, mothers with prams, middle-aged women with dog strollers and elderly men on walkers as she heads to a bakery, popular among her friends, where a selection of books about ageing and community-based care sits next to piles of croissants.
Ye-Jin is an active part of the local community, having founded Eunpyeong Sisters, a club for unmarried women, whose dozens of members get together to play sports or share meals while chatting constantly on mobile groups about everything from stock investment to women-friendly pubs.
“My hope was building a loosely connected community where women can feel safe, supported, and respected, while having fun doing activities each of us can’t do alone,” she says.
People walk through the seafood area of Jungang Market in Gangneung in eastern South Korea. By 2050, more than 40 percent of the country’s population is projected to be older than 65 [File: Carl Court/Getty Images]
Snapshots of the future
Social experiments like Salim and smaller, casual groups like Eunpyeong Sisters based on solidarity and mutual support can reveal how to tackle loneliness and isolation as society changes and people live for longer, said Jee Eun-Sook, a researcher at the Institute of Cross-Cultural Studies at Seoul National University who studies the lives of unmarried women and networks like Salim.
“That’s why the government needs to pay more attention to what these women do. Their efforts might show snapshots of the future to come—and potential solutions to solve the challenges that lie ahead,” she said.
Whether such efforts will remain experiments or lead to real change remains to be seen. But Seo-Ran is upbeat, saying changes are already afoot among many ordinary South Koreans. She says she shared her story to help people like her who don’t want to marry but might want to know how to form a family. After her book was published, many single women living with friends wrote to say they were considering a similar move while others thanked her for showing they were not alone.
“I hope that my story serves as a wake-up call for the government and our society,” says Seo-Ran.
Around Seo-Ran and Eo-Rie’s first family anniversary, the women took a weekend trip to Anmyeondo Island, known for its scenic beaches dotted with pine tree forests, with Seo-Ran’s mother and grandaunt—a holiday for, at least on paper, four generations of women.
For a long time, Seo-Ran’s mother wanted her daughter to marry, worried she’d be left alone after she died. But now she says she’s relieved that Seo-Ran is happy and has formed her own family. “Now, I have a granddaughter,” she jokes.
“You two don’t need to care at all about what the world and others say,” she told her daughter. “Just live your life fully.”
As Brazil takes over the G20 presidency on December 1 from India, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will be challenged to fulfil his promise of holding up the interests of the global south amid two ongoing wars and a slowing global economy.
Lula also takes over at a time of bitter internal divisions within the group, the legacy of outgoing president Narendra Modi, whose team, eager to force a joint declaration, ran roughshod over diplomatic niceties in closed-door meetings.
Despite these hurdles, Lula is forging ahead and has announced Brazil’s three key priorities as head of the G20: social inclusion and the fight against hunger, phasing out fossil fuels in favour of renewable energy and reforming global economic governance.
The Group of Twenty – the G20 – is a forum for the world’s largest economies to coordinate on key issues of global policy. Between them, G20 countries represent 85 percent of global output and two-thirds of the world’s population.
The G20 is made up of the European Union and 19 other countries, a mix of advanced and emerging economies. At its G20 leadership summit in September, India invited the African Union – representing 55 countries from across the continent – to become a member of the group.
This was seen as a step to underscore Modi’s self-prescribed role as “the mother of democracy … to mitigate the global trust deficit” between rich and poor nations.
The G20 was founded in 1999, following the Asian financial crisis. Originally designed as a council for finance ministers to discuss macroeconomic policy, its scope has since widened to cover issues ranging from global development to climate change and gender equality.
Critics, in turn, have dismissed the G20 as an ineffectual talking shop. In over 200 meetings, the group did coalesce around its yearly declaration. Otherwise, New Delhi only delivered one joint statement – on the African Union.
Against a backdrop of rising geopolitical tensions, South Africa and Brazil have openly criticised Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. For its part, China hosted a delegation of Muslim countries in November calling for a ceasefire. Elsewhere, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine has also undermined efforts at consensus-building.
Despite maintaining a neutral stance on that conflict, India has become more critical of Russia in recent months. Modi has also pared back military purchases from Moscow and bolstered diplomatic ties with the West.
Vladimir Putin, who is under an international arrest warrant for war crimes, declined to attend September’s gathering in New Delhi. President Xi Jinping of China also skipped the event, amid growing geopolitical tensions with India and deepening ties with Russia.
That didn’t stop India from “turning the annual summit into a commercial for the personality cult of Modi,” said Jayati Ghosh, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “In practice, it was an ineffectual presidency,” with the host keener on boosting its domestic image than addressing global challenges.
“While trying to project India as a global superpower, Modi passes on the baton with no shortage of problems … the world economy is slowing, climate change is looming and conflicts in the Ukraine and Palestine have undermined north-south relations,” she added.
Lula also takes over at a time of bitter internal divisions within the group, the legacy of outgoing president Narendra Modi [File: Evelyn Hockstein/AFP]
Ahead of this week’s handover, Lula informed a virtual summit of G20 leaders that “I hope this [Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire] agreement can pave the way for a lasting political solution to the conflict.”
In October, Brazil spearheaded a UN Security Council resolution which called for a pause in the conflict but was vetoed by the US.
“Lula’s position on Israel is delicate, but he’s arguably the best-placed global statesman to try and stop the carnage,” added Ghosh.
Elsewhere, Brazil’s president has irked Western leaders by suggesting that Russia and Ukraine share joint responsibility for their conflict. He has publicly backed both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin to attend the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro next year.
Equitable global growth
At the G20 summit in New Delhi in September, President Lula urged leaders to try and end world hunger by 2030.
“Part of that could be achieved through the creation of a global task force against hunger,” a Brazilian government official, who asked not to be named, told Al Jazeera.
“The task force would seek to rally support in areas like low-carbon agricultural research and farming insurance improvements, especially in food-insecure countries … that would require more funding from wealthy nations,” the source said. It’s not clear how likely it is that those would come through.
Lula has also backed the idea of a minimum global corporate tax rate of 15 percent. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) plan, designed in 2021 to clamp down on tax evasion and stem decades of tax ‘competition’ between governments, could generate at least $150bn in additional global tax revenues annually.
Almost 140 governments have signed up to the OECD agreement, and are at varying stages of turning the proposal into law.
“By expanding the OECD’s scheme, Brazil also wants to ramp up investment in the green transition. Lula wants the G20 to deploy more funds in renewable energy and nature conservation projects,” the official noted.
India turned the G20 summit into ‘a commercial for the personality cult of Modi’ [File: Dar Yasin/AP Photo]
Reforming multilateral institutions
For years, Lula has lobbied to reinforce the role of multilateral bodies such as the United Nations to try and resolve global challenges. His commitment to diplomacy, however, goes beyond a penchant for consensus.
At the UN General Assembly in New York in September, Lula defended the need to reshape the global governance system. “The unequal and distorted representation at the helm of the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and World Bank is unacceptable,” he said.
In 2022, the IMF provided $160bn in SDRs, the Fund’s reserve currency, to European countries and just $34bn to all of Africa.
“The unfair allocation of SDRs is only part of the problem,” says Rogerio Studart, a former Brazilian representative to the World Bank.
“Fund quota limits are also too small for emergency lending,” said Studart. He was alluding to IMF programmes such as the Resilience and Sustainability Trust, where country grants are capped at 150 percent of their capital commitments into the fund.
“These curb the amount of money available for climate disasters, especially in low-income countries. I think that Lula will try and raise country quotas for emergency lending, and attempt to reduce the conditions attached to these programmes,” he added, pointing out that its success was unclear as this had been tried for years,”
Studart also dismissed the World Bank’s “cautious” approach to risk tolerance.
“The Bank can raise considerably more money for developing countries by adjusting its loan-to-equity ratio,” he said. A higher ratio would add to the Bank’s lending capacity, but come with a higher risk of non-repayment.
His remarks echo a G20 report published in July which said that by raising their lending ratio slightly, groups like the World Bank could unlock billions of extra dollars in new lending. “Brazil will echo the findings from the report,” Studart said.
For Ghosh, the economics professor, “Lula is nothing if not pragmatic. Where the previous G20 presidency was more about domestic politics, Lula is the ideal candidate to try and restore a measure of stability to today’s fractious world order.”
For more than a month, protests against Central America’s largest open-pit copper mine have held Panama in a state of siege. Roadblocks have caused gas and propane shortages. Many supermarket shelves have run bare. Restaurants and hotels have sat empty.
But on Tuesday, protesters in Panama got the news they were waiting for.
The country’s Supreme Court of Justice ruled that Panama’s new mining contract with the Canadian company First Quantum was unconstitutional.
Protesters danced in the streets in front of the Supreme Court. They waved the red, white and blue Panamanian flag and sang the national anthem.
The ruling, a big blow for investors and for the country’s long-term credit rating, is, for the moment, a source of relief for Panama, which has been shaken by the country’s largest protest movement to plague the country in decades.
The news of the Supreme Court ruling came early on Tuesday – the day of the anniversary of Panama’s Independence from Spain.
“Today, we are celebrating two independences,” 58-year-old restaurant worker Nestor Gonzalez told Al Jazeera. “Independence from Spain. And independence from the mine. And no one is going to forget it.”
People turned out to celebrate. The bistro where Gonzalez works, in the western province of Chiriqui, was packed with patrons by noon – something the restaurant had not seen since mid-October.
“We are so happy,” said Gonzalez. “Because, we had been locked up in the province of Chiriqui for 35 days, without gas, without propane, and with little food. I had to go look for firewood in the mountains because I had no propane to cook with. So thank God that the justices took a stand and issued this ruling.”
The mine, known as Cobre Panama, has been in production since 2019, and extracting 300,000 tonnes of copper a year. It represents roughly five percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and 75 percent of Panamanian exports. The mining sector contributes roughly seven percent of Panama’s GDP with Cobre Panama as the country’s most important mine.
But protesters said Cobre Panama was a disaster for the country’s environment and a handout to a foreign corporation.
“I’m protesting because they are stealing our country. They are just handing it over,” said Ramon Rodriguez, a protester in a yellow raincoat in a march in late October, after protests ignited against the mine. “The sovereignty of our country is in danger. That’s why I’m here.”
This question of sovereignty is particularly important for Panamanians, who fought throughout the 20th century to rid the country of the United States-controlled Panama Canal Zone. This was an area almost half the size of the US state of Rhode Island that sliced through the middle of Panama.
“This contract is bad. It never should have been made. Never. So you have to fight,” said Miriam Caballero, a middle-aged woman in a grey sweatshirt who watched the October protest pass.
Protesters said Cobre Panama was a disaster for the country’s environment and a handout to the Canadian firm that had the mining contract [Michael Fox/Al Jazeera]
Impact on foreign investment
This was not the first contract with the mine. In 2021, the Supreme Court declared the previous contract unconstitutional for not adequately benefitting the public good. The government of President Laurentino Cortizo renegotiated the contract with improved benefits for the state. This was fast-tracked through Congress on October 20. Cortizo signed it into law hours later.
The president and his cabinet had applauded the new contract, saying it would bring windfall profits for the state.
“The contract ensures a minimum payment to the state of $375m dollars a year, for the next 20 years,” said Commerce Minister Federico Alfaro told Panama news outlet Telemetro. “If you can compare this with what the state was receiving before, which was $35m a year, it’s a substantial improvement to the past.”
Cortizo promised to use the funds to shore up the country’s Social Security Fund and increase pensions for more than 120,000 retirees.
After the protests spiralled out of control, he announced a moratorium on all new mining projects and promised to hold a referendum over the fate of Cobre Panama. The idea didn’t gain traction. The protesters wouldn’t budge.
Members of Panama’s business sector have blamed Cortizo for mishandling the crisis and refusing to use a heavy hand to end the roadblocks and stop the protests. Last week, they said it had cost the country $1.7bn.
Cortizo, whose approval rating was already down to 24 percent in June, responded to this week’s court ruling stating, “All Panamanians need to respect and abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court.”
Analysts say the protests and the ruling will have an impact for foreign companies looking to do business in Panama.
“I believe this court ruling is sending a very clear message to foreign investors,” Jorge Cuéllar, Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies at Dartmouth College, told Al Jazeera. “If this is the kind of foreign investment that politicians and capitalists are innovating in 2023, then Panamanians want no part of it.”
But this stance will likely come at a price.
In early November, after more than a week of protests, rating agency Moody’s downgraded Panama’s debt to the lowest investment-grade rating. It cited financial issues and noted the political turmoil. JP Morgan analysts said, at the time, that if the mining contract were revoked, it would substantially increase Panama’s risk of losing its investment-grade rating.
First Quantum also has much to lose. Its shares have lost 60 percent of their value over the last month and a half. More than 40 percent of the company’s production comes from the Panamanian mine.
Over the weekend, the company notified Panama that it planned to take the country to arbitration under the Free Trade Agreement between the two countries.
But in a statement released after the ruling, First Quantum said, “The Company wishes to express that it respects Panamanian laws and will review the content of the judgement to understand its foundations.”
Protesters said the country’s sovereignty was at stake [Michael Fox/Al Jazeera]
‘Jobs at risk’
The announcement is also a blow for the employees of the mine. The mine employs roughly 6,600 people – 86 percent of whom are Panamanian – and a total 40,000 direct and indirect jobs.
The Union of Panamanian Mine Workers, Utramipa, announced its members would march in several cities on Wednesday against the Supreme Court decision and in defence of their jobs.
“We are not going to allow them to put our jobs at risk, which are our means for supporting our families,” the union said in a statement.
Last week, Utramipa member Michael Camacho, denounced the protests on the news outlet Panamá En Directo. Operations at the mine were suspended last week due to protests at its port and the highway in and out of the facility.
“What about us, the workers? We are also Panamanians. We have the right to go to our homes and return to our place of work,” said Camacho. “But at this moment, we are being held hostage by the protesters, by the anti-social, the terrorists – which is what we should call them – and the people that stop us from passing.”
For the majority of Panamanians, the Supreme Court ruling is a welcomed sign that the country is on the road to normalcy.
Protesters in some provinces have promised to stay in the streets until the Supreme Court ruling is officially published – which usually takes a few days – or until the mine is closed for good. But many roadblocks have now been cleared, highways that stood empty for weeks are now open, and gas stations are rolling back in business.
“We are in a new phase,” Harry Brown Araúz, the director of Panama’s International Center of Social and Political Studies, told Al Jazeera. “The protests, as we have seen until now, should be lifted. And the government has said that it will begin the process of closing the mine in an orderly manner. This can generate confidence in the population, which had been lost.”
Araúz says the protest movement and the ruling are a powerful sign of the strength of Panama’s democracy, which the country regained just over 30 years ago.
“This is a really important moment,” he says. “It marks a before and after for Panamanian democracy.”
US Treasury Department says Iran relies on brokers, front companies to finance proxies across region, including Hamas.
The United States Department of the Treasury has announced new sanctions targeting 21 Iranians, foreign nationals, and firms accused of involvement in an illicit financial network for the benefit of the Iranian military.
In a statement on Wednesday, the department said that Iran relies on an array of “foreign-based front companies and brokers” to fund regional armed groups such as the Palestinian group Hamas and the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah.
“Iran generates the equivalent of billions of dollars via commodity sales to fund its destabilizing regional activities and support of multiple regional proxy groups, including Hamas” and Hezbollah, the statement said.
Iran engages in “illicit finance schemes to generate funds to fan conflict and spread terror throughout the region,” said Brian Nelson, Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
“The United States remains committed to exposing elements of the Iranian military and its complicit partners abroad to disrupt this critical source of funds,” he added.
The US has issued sanctions targeting Iran-backed groups across the region since Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel on October 7, sparking fears of a wider conflict that could draw in Washington and Iran’s formidable network of proxies.
Those sanctioned, including firms based in the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, and Iran, help generate funds for several branches of the Iranian military, including the Ministry of Defence, Armed Forces Logistics, and Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the department said.
The sanctions package includes the Iran-based firm Sepehr Energy and employees, brokers, and buyers connected to it. The Associated Press news agency reported that the company did not respond to a request for comment.
The designations block access to US property and financial assets and generally bar people in the US from dealing with them.
The announcement came on the same day that Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that he would miss an important meeting on the Israel-Hamas conflict at the United Nations headquarters because US authorities did not deliver visas for him and his delegation on time.
“The Americans issued visas for me and all my companions at 1:00 am [21:30 GMT],” Amir-Abdollahian said after a cabinet meeting, noting that this made it “not possible” for the Iranian delegation to attend.
After more than a decade of intense lobbying, Somalia has been admitted into the East African Community (EAC). After ratification by the Somali Federal Parliament, the membership will become official.
The application process, started by former President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in 2011, had been long and arduous with some member states allegedly hesitant to bring Somalia into the fold.
The process finally yielded fruit this year after the current president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, appointed a special envoy to accelerate the admission process not long after he came into office in August 2022 for a second time. Mohamud, who was also president from 2012 to 2017, was a key backer of regional integration during his first term.
“We are a significant country in the region which can contribute a lot, and we will also benefit from them,” Mohamud said as he landed in Mogadishu after an EAC summit in Arusha, Tanzania, where Somalia was admitted into the bloc on Friday.
The president has said Somalia’s membership will also benefit EAC members Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania.
Critics of the move said the admission of Somalia, a country of more than 17 million people and a long history of conflict, could introduce security challenges for the bloc, which now has a combined population of more than 300 million people, or a fourth of Africa’s population.
However, experts argued that Somalia has taken significant strides in its fight against the armed group al-Shabab and point to security challenges in other EAC members such as the DRC, where at least 120 armed groups are fighting in its volatile east, and South Sudan, which has been in and out of a civil war since before its independence.
Somalia had tried since 2011 to join the EAC and was admitted on November 24, 2023 [Tony Karumba/AFP
Challenges and opportunities
The EAC was stablished in 2000 and is headquartered in Arusha. Its mission has been to foster economic growth by, among other things, eliminating customs duties among member states. It established a common market in 2010.
Somalia’s primary economic activities are livestock and agriculture, and they have proven to be highly vulnerable to climate change. Livestock remains Somalia’s main export, followed by bananas, fish, hides and skin, and charcoal, but the country is believed to have potential offshore resources like oil and gas.
Since 1991 when Somalia’s government collapsed, leading to three decades of political instability and the rise of al-Shabab, the country’s trade volume with its neighbours shrank rapidly.
Still, analysts said, Somalia, which has Africa’s longest coastline and an estimated two million citizens in the diaspora, is ripe for economic integration with its neighbours.
“I think EAC countries also see Somalia’s … successful investments by Somalis in EAC countries,” Mohamed Abdi Waare, political analyst and a former president of Somalia’s Hirshabelle state, told Al Jazeera. “They also see its vast blue economic potential in its long coastline, the opportunities to participate in the reconstruction of Somalia and to leverage Somalia links with its diaspora, its links with the Middle East and its strategic location.”
“With massive natural resources, the rebuilding and reconstruction boom after the defeat of al-Shabab, Somalia will provide an excellent opportunity for regional investment in its blue economy, its infrastructural rehabilitation and its real estate and construction industries,” he added.
However, not everyone is on board with the integration, even within the Horn of Africa nation.
Friday’s announcement has become contentious among Somalis. Many have described the integration as rash or too early.
One of them is Abdirahman Abdishakur, the presidential envoy for humanitarian coordination, who said EAC membership is different from that in other bodies like the African Union (AU), Intergovernmental Authority on Development, Arab League and Organisation of Islamic Conference.
“We understand that all [those bodies were] formed for political, peace and development cooperation, but the EAC bloc is different and was mainly formed for economic and trade purposes,” Abdishakur, who is also a member of parliament, told Al Jazeera. “For Somalia, we don’t have goods, services and economic ideology to bring to the table.”
“Almost every Somali middle-class [citizen] bought an apartment and has their family in Nairobi, and the real estate is booming, which signals [an] advantage for Kenya’s economic growth and other countries want the same,” he said. “It’s an added advantage [to member states] for Somalia to join the bloc, but we are not gaining much.”
He added that Somalia could be better off joining the bloc in the future if the country’s leadership could provide resources, energy and ideas to stabilise the country first.
There are also other challenges.
After its accession, Somalia is required to put elements of the treaty into law within six months of signing the document.
In a report released this month, the Heritage Institute, a Mogadishu-based think tank, stressed that this could be tough to do and thus hinder Somalia from being an effective member of the EAC. This, the report said, was due to the country’s poor track record on governance, human rights, rule of law and socioeconomics. Additionally, “constant friction between the Somali federal government and member states” could also hinder smooth ratification of the treaty in parliament, the report said.
“Any infrastructure that Somalia lacks will only delay the part of the integration for which such infrastructure is needed,” Bashir Sheikh-Ali, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Institute and the author of the report, told Al Jazeera.
For instance, the EAC expects partner states to have dispute resolution forums for interstate matters within the bloc, Sheikh-Ali said. Without an independent judiciary, Somalia may not be able to fully participate or benefit from the bloc’s binding resolutions, he said.
“If the Somali government takes the creation of an independent judiciary seriously, Somalia will have a shot at having a full-fledged government, which should lead to a better environment for people in all aspects of their lives,” he added.
The institute suggested in its report that the country create a comprehensive risk minimisation plan and secure a prolonged period of treaty implementation.
Conflict resolution
In recent years, relations have soured between Somalia and its autonomous region of Somaliland over the disputed city of Las Anod. Some of the EAC members have a diplomatic presence in both territories, and it remains to be seen how the bloc would help keep the peace after Hargiesa, capital of the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, previously shunned Kampala’s effort to mediate with it and Mogadishu.
Previously, Somalia was embroiled in a diplomatic rift with Kenya – the only bloc member that directly borders it – over a maritime dispute. The former asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on the case after out-of-court negotiations between the two nations failed.
Although Kenya refused to acknowledge the ICJ ruling in 2021 that favoured Somalia, experts said the two countries now have a platform to resolve any future disputes.
“For the Kenyan side, there was no avenue to resolve the issue, but now after the admission of Somalia to the East African Community, there is hope any future dispute between the two countries can be resolved through the mechanisms of the economic bloc,” said Abdullahi Abdi, an analyst on Horn of Africa affairs.
Signs of that new harmony could manifest soon enough.
In June, the AU Transition Mission in Somalia, previously known as the AU Mission in Somalia, began winding down its peacekeeping mission. Established in 2017, its mandate fully ends next year. Thousands of the AU peacekeepers came from three EAC members.
Analysts believe that Somalia’s accession will only increase its neighbours’ desire to focus on eliminating the armed group al-Shabab. The EAC has deployed a regional force to the DRC, the last member to join, and could well do the same for Somalia.
If that leads to the decimation of al-Shabab, which is infamous for its resilience, then Somalia’s admission into the EAC could turn out to be a masterstroke not just for the country but also the region, they said.
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