The Economist February 26th 2022 Asia 37helped that its highly automated semicon
ductor factories were less susceptible to
disruption by covid19 outbreaks than oth
er industries were.
But Mr Moon set the train in motion
when he called emergency meetings in
January 2020 to persuade companies to
speed up production of test kits. His deci
sion to remain in the background of pub
lichealth management probably helped
earn bipartisan support for the measures
the authorities imposed. It has been main
tained, and is reflected in ubiquitous
maskwearing and a vaccination rate of
86% of the population, one of the world’s
highest. The legislative supermajority his
party won in the elections to the National
Assembly in 2020 helped the government
swiftly dole out generous pandemic relief,
minimising economic disruption.
That victory also allowed Mr Moon to
advance another goal: to improve the
worklife balance of overworked South Ko
reans. Before the pandemic, a reduction in
working hours for employees at large com
panies had already led to increased spare
time and fewer afterwork dinners with
the boss. More generous parental leave had
encouraged more fathers to spend time
with their children. Since then, the curbs
on working hours have been extended to
smaller companies. Budgets for parental
leave and child care have been boosted.
Companies still have some catching up
to do to accommodate these new habits.
And the president’s commitment to im
proving life has waned at times: he has
done little, for instance, to push his party
to adopt fastchanging social mores on
such matters as gay marriage and discrim
ination on grounds of sex, sexual orienta
tion or health. Prominent political asso
ciates of the president have been em
broiled in sexualabuse scandals. Little by
little, however, Mr Moon’s policies have
been chipping away at a culture that puts
work above all else.
The parliamentary supermajority also
helped Mr Moon fulfil his promise to
strengthen South Korean democracy. He
curbed the power of the public prosecu
tor’s office by diverting some of its powers
to other agencies. Supporters hope that the
reforms will strengthen oversight of po
werful government agencies and break the
culture of politically motivated prosecu
tions that has bedevilled the presidency.
All Mr Moon’s democratically elected pre
decessors have found themselves subject
to corruption investigations after leaving
office. Yoon Seokyoul, Mr Moon’s former
chief prosecutor and now the conservative
candidate for president, has threatened to
go after his former boss if he wins the elec
tion. If he does, the result will be a test not
just of Mr Moon’s probity, but also of the re
silience of his reforms.
The changes wrought by Mr Moon have
been mirrored in a development for which
he is cannot claim credit, but for which he
will probably be remembered as well:
South Korea’s rise as an exporter of pop
culture. btsand Blackpink are the world’s
most popular boy band and girl band re
spectively. Bong Joonho, who was one of
thousands of artists and intellectuals
blacklisted by Ms Park for his leftwing
views, won a Best Picture Oscar for “Para
site”, a dark satire about inequality. “Squid
Game”, a gory television show directed byHwang Donghyuk, also offering a crude
critique of capitalism, topped the Netflix
charts and produced countless memes
now lodged in the global imagination. That
both directors are now treated as national
icons rather than enemies of the state sug
gests South Korea’s democracy has indeed
grown stronger under Mr Moon. That both
shows depict a world hopelessly stacked
against the little guy suggests that Mr
Moon’s promised egalitarian revolution
still has a long way to go.nK
rung thep mahanakhonmaybea
mouthful, but it is less likely to pro
voke sniggering among those with a
teenage mindset than its betterknown
alternative, “Bangkok”. That is one in
terpretation for guidance published on
February 16th by the Office of the Royal
Society, Thailand’s answer to the Acadé-
mie Française. A dense press release
noted that this pithy fourword version
of the much longer formal Thai name for
the country’s capital should be the stan
dard for official purposes and should be
used when writing in Roman script, too.
Some Thais criticised the government
for abruptly changing how their capital is
known around the world. But it is hardly
the first to consider rebranding a world
famous city. Politicians have long loved
to rename places to suit their whims.
Rarely do citizens clamour for change.
Often a city’s name is changed to shed
colonial or other unpleasant memories.
Among the bestknown is Bombay,
named by the dastardly British, which
became Mumbai in honour of a localgoddess,Mumbadevi.Batavia, the Ro
man name for part of the Netherlands,
became Jakarta when the Dutch left.
Frunze, commemorating a prominent
Bolshevik, became Bishkek as the Soviet
Union crumbled. Equally common are
simply tweaks to spelling to reflect local
pronunciation: Kanpur not Cawnpore,
for instance, or Yangon for Rangoon.
In Australia, various places associated
with settlers or featuring offensive lan
guage have been given Aboriginal names
instead. Tasmania’s Suicide Bay, where
30 indigenous men were murdered, is
now called Taneneryouer, meaning
“trauma”. In India, the ruling Bharatiya
Janata Party is replacing Muslimsound
ing names in pursuit of its Hindu
nationalist agenda. Faizabad district in
Uttar Pradesh is now Ayodhya district,
and the city of Allahabad has become
Prayagraj. In 2019 Kazakhstan’s capital,
formerly Astana, (ie, “capital”), was
renamed NurSultan in honour of Nur
sultan Nazarbayev, a former president
who retired that year.
Inevitably, some changes are conten
tious. The city government of Ishigaki in
southern Japan renamed an area under
its jurisdiction to include the word “Sen
kaku”, as a scattering of islands there are
known in that country. That annoyed
both China and Taiwan, which lay claim
to the uninhabited cluster of rocks, and
know them as the Diaoyu islands. China,
for its part, last year renamed several
villages it claims in northeastern India
to reflect its preferred spellings.
Nor do all changes stick. Few people
refer to Bangalore as Bengaluru or to
Chittagong as Chattogram. Rebranding
Bangkok, too, would be unlikely to
change how foreigners refer to it. That
may be why Thai officials hastily clari
fied matters the next day: Bangkok is still
fine to use, they said—but so is Krung
Thep Maha Nakhon. GeographyandpoliticsWhat’s in a name?
Why so many Asian cities adopt an aliasOne night in Krung Thep Maha Nakhon