South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol faces a string of legal battles as the suspended leader fights to save his political career – and avoid prison – following his brief imposition of martial law last year.

Yoon’s December 3 decree threw South Korea into turmoil when he banned political activity and sent troops to the heart of the nation’s democracy – only to reverse the move within six hours after lawmakers forced their way into parliament and voted unanimously to block it.

The decree was swiftly met by widespread public anger, reviving painful memories of strongmen leaders who curtailed rights and freedoms in the country after the Korean War until its transition to democracy in the late 1980s.

Even several members of Yoon’s own conservative ruling party turned on him. On December 14, parliament voted to impeach him, suspending his presidential powers.

But a defiant Yoon has vowed to “fight to the end,” as the country’s top court reviews his impeachment and as he also appears in a separate criminal trial for insurrection.

Here’s what we know.

What’s happening in Yoon’s impeachment trial?

South Korea’s Constitutional Court will decide whether to remove Yoon from office permanently or reinstate him. It is now reviewing his impeachment by parliament after hearing weeks of testimony by high-ranking current and former officials.

Lawyers for parliament have argued that if Yoon is reinstated, he could try to impose martial law again or undermine constitutional institutions.

Yoon has argued that he had a right as president to issue his martial law decree. The former prosecutor-turned-politician said his move was justified by political deadlock and threats from “anti-state forces” sympathetic to North Korea.

Lawyers for Yoon have also argued that he never actually intended to stop parliament from operating, even though the order was publicly declared, and troops and police were deployed to the legislature.

Yoon also sent troops to the National Election Commission and later said the decree was necessary, in part, because the body had been unwilling to address concerns over election hacking, a claim rejected by election officials.

A ruling in the impeachment case is expected in March.

If the Constitutional Court upholds Yoon’s impeachment, he would become the shortest-serving president in South Korea’s democratic history, having taken office in May 2022. The country must then hold new presidential elections within 60 days.

If Yoon’s impeachment is upheld, it would also remove his immunity from most criminal charges.

What other charges does he face?

Prosecutors indicted Yoon on separate criminal charges related to his martial law decree of leading an insurrection. He was arrested in January after a weeks-long standoff between investigators and his presidential security team. He has since been held in solitary confinement at a detention center near Seoul.

Insurrection is one of the few criminal charges from which a South Korean president does not have immunity. It is punishable by life imprisonment or death, although South Korea has not executed anyone in decades.

The indictment alleges that Yoon’s imposition of martial law was an illegal attempt to shut down the National Assembly and arrest politicians and election authorities. Yoon has said his decree was intended as a temporary warning to the liberal opposition and that he always planned to respect lawmakers’ will if they voted to lift the measure.

Yoon’s lawyers have also repeatedly argued that his arrest was politically motivated and that the warrant was invalid because of flaws in the way the investigation was conducted.

The next preliminary hearing for the criminal proceedings is set for the end of March.

Yoon’s insurrection trial is expected to take months. A verdict could be reached by late 2025 or early 2026, according to legal analysts.

Meanwhile, the court is reviewing a request by Yoon’s lawyers to revoke his arrest order and release him from custody, though such challenges are rarely successful.

What important details did we learn from Yoon’s trial?

The impeachment proceedings offered dramatic details illustrating how Yoon and the military enacted the ultimately short-lived martial law order.

South Korea’s former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun said it was he, not the president, who first proposed the ill-fated brief period of military rule.

Kim said he wrote the controversial decree himself, which included a sweeping ban of political activity across South Korea.

“All political activities, including the activities of the National Assembly, local councils, and political parties, political associations, rallies and demonstrations, are prohibited,” the martial law decree said.

Both Yoon and Kim strongly denied ordering military commanders to “drag out” lawmakers inside the National Assembly. However, former Army Commander Kwak Jong-geun consistently testified he received direct orders from Yoon himself to forcibly remove assembly members.

Kim and lawyers for Yoon maintained the order was misheard – arguing the Korean word for lawmakers was confused with the similar sounding word for agents or soldiers.

Former first deputy director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) Hong Jang-won also repeatedly testified Yoon told him to take advantage of martial law. He said Yoon described it as an opportunity to “arrest” a list of 14 political and legal adversaries and to “clean everything up” – which Yoon denies.

Is that all of Yoon’s legal troubles?

Possibly not: Yoon also faces the prospect of another legal battle.

Police have been investigating Yoon on suspicion of the special obstruction of public duty since around January 3, a police spokesperson told Reuters on February 22.

The crime is punishable by up to five years in jail.

A South Korean court issued an arrest warrant for Yoon on December 31 in the criminal investigation over his martial law decree. The warrant, however, was not executed until January 15 after Yoon did not comply, remaining holed up in his heavily fortified presidential compound as the Presidential Security Service blocked investigators for days.

In the months since Yoon’s martial law declaration, South Korea has been in political disarray with parliament also voting to impeach its prime minister and acting president Han Duck-soo. Finance minister Choi Sang-mok is now acting president.

Additional reporting by Reuters and the Associated Press.

Australia learned about Chinese live-fire naval drills off the country’s coast that forced dozens of flights to be diverted via an alert from a commercial pilot, authorities said on Monday.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy’s unprecedented show of firepower in waters between Australia and New Zealand has raised alarm in both countries in recent days as a clearer picture emerges of how much warning Beijing gave about the exercises.

The first notice of the Chinese drills in the Tasman Sea came in a radio transmission on an emergency frequency monitored by a Virgin Australia passenger jet on Friday, according to Australian officials.

The Virgin pilot relayed the information to Australian aviation authorities, who then issued a “hazard alert” via air traffic control, Airservices Australia CEO Rob Sharp told a parliamentary hearing.

Airservices Australia Deputy CEO Peter Curran told the hearing that at least 49 aircraft diverted their flight paths on Friday to avoid the flotilla of three Chinese warships conducting the exercise.

The New Zealand and Australian governments said China did not issue a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) about the drills, which they said took place in two rounds in the Tasman Sea on Friday and Saturday.

A NOTAM tells aviators about airspace changes and can be issued up to seven days before events like the live-fire drills, according to US authorities.

China’s Ministry of Defense said Sunday that the exercises conducted in international waters complied with international law and did not affect aviation safety. It also slammed Australia for “hyping up” the drills and making “unreasonable accusations.”

Though the drills were held in international waters, Beijing could have given Australia and New Zealand a heads-up much sooner in the interests of safety, naval experts said.

Defense analyst Jennifer Parker, a former Australian naval officer, wrote in a blog post Sunday that the Chinese ships did not violate international law and were well within their rights to conduct the live fire drills where they did, in the open ocean.

“It’s not aggressive, it’s just what warships do on the high seas,” Parker wrote. “There is no legal obligation for foreign warships to notify coastal nations over 300 nautical miles away about live firing activities on the high seas.”

But Parker said the Chinese ships may not have followed best practices, under which live-fire drills should maintain a safe distance from commercial flight routes.

“Indications from flight diversions suggest that the Chinese warships may have been too close to civilian air transit routes. If this is the case, it represents poor practice that warrants diplomatic discussion,” she wrote.

Analyst Carl Schuster, a former US Navy captain, was blunter.

“Forcing aircraft to divert from their internationally recognized routes is considered unsafe and irresponsible,” Schuster said.

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Saturday that while China’s drills complied with international law, Beijing “could have given more notice.”

Judith Collins, the defense minister of New Zealand, said China’s warning should have come hours earlier.

“There was a warning to civil aviation flights, that was basically a very short amount of notice, a couple of hours, as opposed to what we would consider best practice, which is 12-24 hours’ notice, so that aircraft are not having to be diverted when they’re on the wing,” she told public broadcaster Radio New Zealand (RNZ).

‘Standard procedure’

By Tuesday, the Chinese ships had moved to about 160 miles east of Hobart on the southern island of Tasmania, and Australian and New Zealand defense forces were monitoring their movements, the Australian Defense Ministry said.

Australian officials said Monday that flight diversions continued throughout the weekend but did not cause any major disruptions to air traffic.

In such circumstances it’s best to exercise caution, analysts said.

“Airliners listen out on the standby radio to the 121.5 international distress frequency. The naval group will contact the aircraft on 121.5 before it reaches a ’threat’ range and demand it alter course to avoid overflight,” said Byron Bailey, a former Emirates airline senior captain.

“It is standard procedure not to overfly a naval battle group,” he said.

Bailey recounted how, when flying a 777 airliner over the Persian Gulf, a US Navy aircraft carrier strike group once ordered him to alter his course to avoid going over the US flotilla.

The PLA Navy ships – a frigate, a Type 055 destroyer and a replenishment vessel – had been sailing down the coast of Australia since mid-February, according to the Australian Defence Force.

Collins, the New Zealand defense minister, said the Chinese naval exercises were unprecedented in those waters.

“We’ve certainly never seen a task force or task group of this capability undertaking that sort of work,” Collins told RNZ.

While the exercises may be a first for China in the southern waters, such maneuvers are standard practice around the world, including by Australia and its allies in the South China Sea.

“Australia does this on our deployments, and we should avoid overreacting,” said Parker, the Australian analyst.

That fact was noted by Chinese netizens on social media, where the PLA Navy deployment has received significant attention.

“Our 055 went to Australia for live-fire exercises, and they conducted them twice,” one person wrote on X-like platform Weibo, referring to the powerful Chinese surface vessel in a post that hinted at tensions around the South China Sea’s contested Paracel Islands, which Beijing calls the Xisha Islands.

“We should have used this way to communicate long ago. I think the Australian side will understand! If you intrude my Xisha Islands, I will come to your doorstep.”

But Bailey, the former Emirates senior captain and a former Australian air force fighter pilot, said it was China that was being provocative.

The PLA Navy drills were “unprofessional and deliberately disrespectful,” he said. “The PLAN was just ‘giving the finger’ to Australia and New Zealand.”

Broadcaster YTN aired dashcam footage showing the towering deck of the overpass suddenly collapsing and slamming onto the road below.

The massive road network is still being built and no passenger cars were around the construction site.

Acting Interior and Safety Minister Koh Ki-dong urgently ordered relevant agencies, including the fire and police departments, to “mobilize all available equipment and personnel for rescue efforts, while ensuring the safety of firefighters,” according to the ministry’s press release.

Millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa rely on money sent to them by relatives living abroad.

But it costs more to send this money — known as remittances — to sub-Saharan Africa than any other region in the world, according to the World Bank.

In recent years, a number of African-founded financial technology (fintech) companies have emerged, with the aim of bringing down costs and carving into the dominant market share of traditional players like Western Union and MoneyGram.

The potential benefits are huge; the less it costs to send money to Africa, the more money is likely to be sent. An increased flow of foreign currency can act as a lifeline for both individuals and national economies.

Worth $54 billion to sub-Saharan Africa in 2023, remittances account for more than a fifth of GDP of the Gambia, Lesotho, and Comoros, and more than a tenth of Liberia, Cape Verde, and Guinea-Bissau. They are more valuable to Kenya than its key exports.

And estimates are generally assumed to be lower than the real figure due to the prevalence of unrecorded payments made through informal networks.

“Not only do (remittances to low-and-middle income countries) exceed foreign direct investment and official development assistance (combined), but it also somehow remains constant,” said Christian Kingombe, managing partner of “impact investment” advisor 4IP group, and formerly with the African Development Bank. “So it is really a very important source of development,” he added.

The problem with cash

Sending money to sub-Saharan Africa costs the sender an average of 8.37% of the total value of the transaction, as of Q2 2024, according to the World Bank, compared to 5.53% in South Asia. How can fintechs bring that number down?

The first challenge is to move customers away from making cash payments.

A survey by Visa found that 12% of global consumers still send remittances by mail as cash, checks or money orders.

Processing cash is more expensive than digital money, explained Andy Jury, CEO of Mukuru, a big remittance player serving Africa and founded by a Zimbabwean entrepreneur, that processes both cash and digital payments, because cash requires a large physical infrastructure, including booths, tellers, and supplies of cash.

While the average cost of sending money to sub-Saharan Africa is the highest in the world, the cost of digital remittances to the region is less than the global average. If more Africans sent money home via digital services rather than cash, average remittance fees should fall, but receiving money online requires the internet, which is used in sub-Saharan Africa by only 37% of people, according to the World Bank.

Even when users have access to mobile apps, it’s not always easy to persuade them to move over from the tried and trusted cash model.

“Imagine a world in which you’ve grown up in a cash-to-cash ecosystem — it’s a sort of leap of faith to leave your money in this esoteric, intangible thing,” explained Jury. “(But) if you get somebody to use it, they educate themselves on the benefit, and they can get that ‘aha!’ moment. That’s the most powerful conversion tool.”

It’s mainly young people who are making the switch, said Nicolai Eddy, COO of NALA, a remittance fintech founded in Tanzania that facilitates payments to 11 African countries and last year raised $40 million from investors. “It’s really like 35 (year olds) and below where there’s a huge focus on the digital side of things,” he said. “People in their fifties and sixties, they’re used to the person at the shop who they know, and they just continue to go there.”

Building trust is a challenge, but with a growing youth population and a steady flow of migrants moving abroad, the potential user base is expanding.

Bypassing the middlemen

Luring customers over from cash is one piece of the puzzle. But digital payments have their own costs.

Historically, sending money to Africa via a remittance company has been a complex process involving many different parties. “It’s so bloody difficult to move money around,” said Jury.

The middlemen — mainly the third parties used to move money between banks, and the foreign exchange traders who find and negotiate the best rates — all want a cut, and they can drive up costs and cause delays.

In recent years, fintechs — like NALA, Flutterwave, LemFi, Chipper Cash, Leatherback, and many more — have emerged with a model of cutting out the middlemen and enabling instant payments.

Many of these new fintechs hold liquidity in every country in which they operate, explained Eddy. This allows them to deposit funds directly into the local bank account or digital wallet of the receiver instantly. Often, these companies use their own software wherever possible to move money around, as well as having their own teams to negotiate on the foreign exchange market, removing the reliance on third parties.

“We’re cutting out two steps, in some cases it’s like five or six steps,” explained Eddy.

But bypassing the middlemen is not easy. As well as developing in-house software, it means working directly with banks and governments to acquire licenses to transfer money internally within African countries, each of which has different requirements.

Sending money between African countries can be especially costly; in Q4 of 2023, fees were an average of 33% for remittances of $200 from Tanzania to neighboring Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda.

“We’ve got 50 different payment use case licenses in 15 different territories, and that’s taken nearly two decades to build up,” said Jury. “Very few environments have alignment in terms of what they require; one market might require a passport as proof of identity, another one might take a driver’s license. All of that variability increases the costs.”

Although still in its infancy, the Pan African Payment Settlement System (PAPSS) is designed to unify regulation across different African countries.

“I love that sort of stuff because it creates harmony,” said Jury. “Whether it’s centrally dictated, whether it’s ourselves creatively integrating (with other fintechs), we’re constantly on the lookout for those things.”

Regulation

The UN has targeted a global average of 3% for remittance fees. According to Eddy, the biggest inhibitor for fintechs in Africa to lower their costs is the fees charged by banks and digital wallets for locally depositing money to receivers. He wants governments to limit fees for things like sending money to family. “If they cap those fees for those types of transactions, we could be processing at 1% (total fees),” he said.

But according to Dr Joseph Antwi Baafi, senior lecturer at Akentien Appiah-Menka University of Skills Training and Entrepreneurial Development in Kumasi, Ghana, governments should focus on helping to reduce operating costs for remittance fintechs and the companies that operate digital wallets in Africa.

“Governments (can play) a huge role in terms of infrastructure support, in terms of tax support, to help these network operators to operate at their full capacity and full efficiency. And that will bring down charges,” he said.

For Jury, the key to success is to tailor the product to the user’s needs.

“If you come at this with a Silicon Valley mind(set) where you’re going to take a small proposition, throw lots of money (at it) and scale it up, you come unstuck very quickly,” Jury said.

“But if you can take a global platform or infrastructure and ensure you appreciate the local idiosyncrasies and invent something that’s relevant to a customer, there’s a massive, massive tidal wave of opportunity coming.”

Taiwan’s coast guard detained a cargo ship and its Chinese crew on Tuesday and said it was investigating whether the vessel had deliberately cut an undersea internet cable, in the latest possible breach of the island’s communication lines.

The vessel suspected of damaging the cable connecting Taiwan to its outlying Penghu Islands carried a “flag of convenience” and was crewed by eight Chinese nationals, Taiwan’s coast guard said in a statement.

A “flag of convenience” vessel is one that flies the flag of a country other than the country of ownership.

The ship “Hong Tai,” registered in the West African nation of Togo with Chinese funding, had been lingering near the cable in waters off the southwestern coast of Taiwan since Saturday evening and did not respond to multiple broadcasts from Taiwan’s coast guard, the statement added.

Shortly after the ship dropped anchor in the early hours of Tuesday, Taiwan’s telecom company Chunghwa Telecom detected that the cable had been disconnected.

The coast guard said it intercepted and boarded the vessel, before escorting it back to a port in the city of Tainan for investigation.

Taiwanese authorities said they could not rule out the possibility of a Chinese “gray zone operation,” a coercive or subversive act that falls below the threshold of war.

“Whether it was an intentional act of sabotage or purely an accident needs to be further probed,” the coast guard said in the statement, adding that the matter is now under investigations by prosecutors “in accordance with national security-level guidance.”

In recent years, multiple undersea telecoms cables around Taiwan have suffered suspicious damage.

In January, Taiwanese authorities said a Chinese-linked cargo vessel could have cut an international undersea cable off the island’s northern coast.

In 2023, Taiwan officials blamed Chinese ships for two incidents in which cables connecting Taiwan’s main island to its outlying islands of Matsu were damaged, causing an internet blackout. They stopped short of saying the acts were deliberate.

The incidents have raised concerns among Taiwan authorities of “gray zone” activities that could hamper the island’s internet and communications with the outside world.

Those concerns come as Taiwan has faced increasing intimidation from Beijing, which claims the self-ruled democracy as its own territory and has vowed to take control of it, by force if necessary.

They also follow a string of incidents in recent years of damage to undersea infrastructure worldwide, including communications cables. Two high-profile incidents in the Baltic Sea involved Chinese ships and remain under investigation.

According to NATO chief Mark Rutte, more than 95% of internet traffic globally is carried via undersea cables, with some 1.3 million kilometers of such cabling securing an estimated $10 trillion dollars of international trade daily.