South Korea: Arrest of former president Yoon Suk-yeol fails

Today's news: Former US Vice President Mike Pence to visit Hong Kong in mid-January; Laos asks China to close a mine over environmental damage; European diplomats in Syria; Kyrgyzstan wants to raise the minimum age for marriage to 18.

SOUTH KOREA

South Korean police suspended an attempt to arrest former President Yoon Suk-yeol, who was impeached for declaring martial law a month ago. After a six-hour standoff between police and presidential guards, investigators ‘deemed it virtually impossible to execute the arrest warrant’. In one hour, the number of officers rose from 20 to 80. Yoon considers the arrest warrant against him illegal and refuses to appear before the investigators.

CHINA - USA

Former Vice President Mike Pence will visit Hong Kong in mid-January to participate in an economic forum, the UBS Wealth Insights 2025, where he will offer ‘an insider's view’ on the US election and its global implications, according to sources in the South China Morning Post. Pence, who had distanced himself from Trump, is also expected to meet with industry representatives in Hong Kong.

LAOS

Laos has ordered a Chinese-owned mine to shut down because it is held responsible for creating two sinkholes that opened up between rice fields in Pak Peng village in Thakhaek district. Residents believe the hollows (the largest 20 metres wide and 10 metres deep) are the result of excavations in the Nong Bok district where a company owned by the Chinese government operates, and fear that at some point the ground will cave in completely.

SYRIA - EU

The German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, and the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, will be the first European representatives to travel to Syria and meet with Ahmed al-Sharaa, who led the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group to the reconquest of the country. ‘My trip today, together with my French counterpart and on behalf of the EU, is a clear signal to the Syrians: a new political beginning between Europe and Syria, between Germany and Syria, is possible,’ Baerbock said, according to a ministry statement issued before his departure for Damascus.

KRGHIZISTAN

Kyrgyzstan's Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare has proposed changes to the Family Code, circulating the text for public discussion, raising the minimum age allowed for marriage to 18, whereas currently the rule is in force that ‘for locally respectable reasons’ marriage can be permitted even at the age of a minor.

RUSSIA

President Vladimir Putin has given the task of creating a single Russian language manual for the next school year, which is ‘balanced and well connected to everything, and takes into account the mentality of today's Russian youth’, and for exercises add ‘texts of patriotic literature’, along with other manuals for the state languages of the federal republics.

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