South Korea

South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea, is a capitalist country in East Asia on the southern part of the Korean peninsula, bordering North Korea to the north. Its capital and largest city is Seoul. The American military occupied the land in 1945 and its regime was characterized by popular discontent. For one it was because it kept the Japanese colonial government in place, which when removed the former Japanese governors were kept as advisors, with the People's Republic of Korea that had formed right after Japanese occupation being ignored, censored, and ultimately forcibly disbanded, despite the PRK being both functional and popular. The US further supported UN elections that divided Korea, which was also unpopular. The US military was largely unprepared for administration of the country, having a lack of knowledge of the language and the political situation there, and largely imposed its own will onto the people. South Korea became a republic in 1948 under Syngman Rhee, a US-backed figure who vehemently supported America and opposed communism. Despite his stance on the latter he ended up copying a lot of reforms that the DPRK to the north was doing, such as ones concerning society and land. They were still somewhat inferior and in the case of land reforms more complex as well, with South Korean landlords being compensated, tenants having to pay for the land in installments over five years, and the process of redistribution being drawn out. Rhee was not yet dictator at this time and had to operate within a system of private property under the auspices of a democratic government, putting reforms through painstaking legislative and budgetary processes, with this compounded by the fact that many legislators were large landowners who tried to delay reforms and increase compensation to landlords, otherwise creating loopholes that allowed for a lot of private property to be retained by landowners. After reforms were put through the convoluted amendment process which saddled them with contradictory and sloppy language, Rhee further delayed them by sending them back for redrafting.

Though South Korea is nominally a wealthy country, it has a significant amount of inequality and other severe problems. South Korea has the highest elderly poverty rate in the OECD, at about 50%, which gives rise to phenomena such as Bacchus Ladies, which are elderly women, some in their 80s, who solicit men for sex in the nation's capital. There are also several oddities in South Korea, such as the 2016 political scandal in which it was revealed that the president, Park Geun-hye, was being secretly manipulated by a shamanesque cult leader. There are many high-profile corruption scandals, with then-prime minister Lee Wan-koo resigning due to one in 2015, hardly two months into his term, with Park Geun-hye becoming tied into his scandal and others. This culminated with her removal from power in 2017, being found guilty of 16 charges, and in 2018 sentenced to 25 years in prison. Lee Myung-bak, president from 2008 to 2013, was also charged with corruption in 2018 and sentenced to 17 years in jail. The OECD published a report in 2015, before these scandals, which found that only 34% of South Koreans have confidence in their government, which is lower than the OECD average of 42% as well as the figures of some developing countries. The report also showed that only 29% of South Koreans were confident in their judicial system as of 2013, much lower than the OECD average of 54%. With this, 53% of South Koreans were reported to have been satisfied with the country’s education and school system, which is below the OECD average of 67%.

Culturally, South Korea is heavily influenced by the United States. From the United States were inherited things such as circumcision and Protestant Christianity, from which the "Unification movement", an anti-communist Christian cult that is also known as "the Moonies", was originated from and in turn spread to the US. 1-2 million people belong to this cult, which seeks a world order in which only Korean is spoken and all other religions are banned. It arranges mass weddings of strangers and is based around a cult of personality surrounding its founder, Sun Myung Moon, who is considered to be a messiah whose work The Divine Principle is held to be scripture. He was coronated in the US Senate in 2004, stating that emperors, kings and presidents had "declared to all heaven and earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent" — and indeed he and his wife are considered by the cult to be the members' "True Parents". Since 2003 the cult has a political party called "The Party for God, Peace, Unification, and Home".

South Korea also inherited a hardline capitalist attitude, which it is arguably more staunch on than the US. Largely because of this, South Korea has one of the world's highest suicide rates — about three times the world average and two and a half times the OECD average. A disproportionate amount of the suicides is by elderly people, whose children often cannot support them as past generations have done, leaving many elderly people not wanting to feel like a burden on their families. Students also have abnormally high suicide rates for a variety of reasons: for one this is because of increasing pressure to succeed academically, and in the case of not reaching certain expectations many students feel like they have dishonored their families. This is compounded by alcohol use, sleep deprivation, stress, and social alienation. Jumping off a bridge is one of the most common suicide methods in South Korea, so much so that in Seoul, the Mapo Bridge has earned the nickname "The Bridge of Death" or the "Suicide Bridge" because of how many people jump off it. Japan, whose situation is similar to South Korea's in many ways, including its aggressively capitalist attitude, suffers from very similar problems.

South Korea has the lowest fertility rate of any country in the world, falling to record lows in 2020 to 0.84, with the OECD average being 1.63. That same year, South Korea's birth rate was eclipsed by its death rate, for the first time since Statistics Korea began collecting data in 1970. As the South Korean economy stagnates and fails to provide for its younger generation of workers, burdening them with increased work loads and stress, they feel less able to raise the generation after them, failing with this to look after the elders in society.

After the Korean War, there were several socialist rebellions and corresponding massacres during both the direct US military government and the puppet government that came after it. Examples include:

• The Autumn Uprising of 1946
• The Bodo League massacre
• The Jeju Uprising
• The Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion