36 Asia The EconomistNovember 7th 2020
2 tising campaigns.
The trot renaissance owes a lot to South
Korea’s other big musical genre, k-pop, as
well as to covid-19. At the cinema in Seoul,
the blue-hooded women explain that in
running their fan club, they have been in-
spired by devotees of k-pop, who are nota-
ble not just for their ardour, but for their or-
ganisation. “We co-ordinate on social
media to vote for our favourite candidates
and stream their songs every day to make
sure they make the charts,” says the 50-
something woman with long hair and big
glasses who has organised the outing andwho became a trot fan while bored at home
during the early days of the pandemic.
Members’ age ranges from 40 to over 80. “If
someone older doesn’t know how to do the
right thing on their phone, we teach them.”
This sort of activism is new for the middle-
aged people who tend to listen to trot, says
Son Min-jung of Korea National University
of Education, who studies the history and
cultural significance of the genre. “They
used to be passive listeners—trot has al-
ways been popular, but now it’s visible,”
she says.
And even though trot fans are mucholder than k-pop groupies, they are no
more level-headed or dispassionate. The
cinema in Seoul is full of middle-aged
women who alternatively whoop and weep
as their hero and his fellow contestants
sing, dance and change into a dazzling ar-
ray of costumes for two and a half plodding
hours. Their only complaint is that “there
could have been more about them hanging
out together, just like brothers—because
it’s not just about one of them winning, but
all of them together.” That remark, too,
could have come straight from a hardened
btsfan. 7Banyan Islands of liberality
U
ntil thisweek, Asia’s most famous
ministerial tattoo belonged to the
Indonesian former fisheries minister,
Susi Pudjiastuti. But you had to know
where to look—the birdlike form lived on
Ms Susi’s shin. In contrast, New Zea-
land’s new foreign minister, Nanaia
Mahuta, sports a Maori tattoo known as a
moko kauaeon her lips and chin.
Ms Mahuta is part of the most diverse
cabinet in New Zealand’s history, ap-
pointed by Jacinda Ardern following a
thumping re-election for the prime
minister and the Labour Party she leads.
Ethnically, almost half the 20 members
are not pakeha, ie, white, including five
indigenous Maori. There are eight wom-
en, two of whom are lesbians with young
children, and the first openly gay deputy
prime minister, Grant Robertson.
Ms Ardern would not, this week, have
fared well in Kansas. After a massacre of
Muslim worshippers last year, she swift-
ly implemented a ban on semi-automat-
ic weapons. Climate change and the
environment are big priorities. She likes
to talk about her “team of 5m”, meaning
all Kiwis. Voguemagazine nicknamed
her the “anti-Trump”.
Yet the prime minister’s liberal
stances are not so much shaping the
country’s attitudes as emblematic of
them. New Zealand, after all, was the first
place in the world to give women the
vote. The country is content, even occa-
sionally smug, about being so very pro-
gressive. As Andrew Geddis of the Uni-
versity of Otago says of Ms Mahuta’s
moko kauae, New Zealand’s public face
“says something about how we’re chang-
ing as a society and what we’re comfort-
able with showing the world”.
More notable than the appearance of
Ms Ardern’s cabinet is how voters an-
swered one question on their ballotpaper: should New Zealand legalise assist-
ed dying for those with a terminal illness?
Though the final tally has yet to be an-
nounced, around two-thirds of New Zea-
landers appear to have said “yes”.
Dying with dignity has been the subject
of heated debate for years. Voluntary eu-
thanasia has had the support of libertar-
ians, notably David Seymour, who heads
the actparty, as much as of more left-
leaning types. In 2015 Lecretia Seales, a
lawyer with a terminal brain tumour, sued
the government for the right to die. She
lost, but after her death her husband re-
doubled the campaign. A national debate
ensued, in which lawmakers looked to see
what worked in other countries.
Last year Parliament passed the End of
Life Choice Act. It restricts access to assist-
ed dying more than some European legis-
lation. It requires you to be suffering from
a terminal illness that is likely to end your
life within six months, to be showing a
significant decline in physical capability
and to be able to make an informed deci-
sion. Arguments that the law would result
in disabled people, the mentally ill or evenchildren being put to death never gained
traction. The law’s enactment was con-
tingent on the referendum, which was
binding. New Zealand thus becomes only
the seventh country to legalise assisted
dying, and the first country in Asia—
though the Australian state of Victoria
passed a similar law last year.
Yet when it came to another, non-
binding, question on their ballots, about
whether to legalise cannabis, Kiwis
curiously found limits to their open-
mindedness: just over half appear to
have voted against the proposition. That
might seem strange. New Zealand is one
of the easiest places in the world to get a
toke, and Ms Ardern’s admission of
having smoked weed elicited little more
than a national shrug. More than half of
those aged between 15 and 45 say they’ve
done the same.
Still, as Lara Greaves of the University
of Auckland, puts it, full legalisation of
cannabis, rather than its simple decrimi-
nalisation, was “a jump too far”. Some
feared that making more available would
only further encourage its use, especially
among the young. Moreover, said anti-
cannabis campaigners, a problem al-
ready exists with heavy alcohol con-
sumption, especially among Maori and
Pacific-islanders—why add to it? Besides,
who is going to get locked up just for
smoking a joint?
Such arguments are understandable.
But they miss a point that Maori commu-
nity workers and others make: Maori are
far more likely than pakehato be charged
with possession and cultivation of mari-
juana. And the disproportionate number
of Maori banged up for small-fry drug
offences feeds into the pathology of
Maori gangs that blight indigenous life.
Even the most progressive societies have
their blind spots.New Zealand legalises assisted dying, among other progressive steps