Definitely in. Will post my actual polity ASAP.
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Name: Federal Republic of Baekdu
Type of Government: Federal Parliamentary Republic
Head of State: State-President Lee Yaerin
Head of Government: Consul Son Danbi
Positive Traits:
Cloning: Baekdu society has perfected the art of human cloning. Clone labor was long used throughout all sectors of society, especially in the service industry, but since the democratic revolution and Abolition Act freed the clones from their enslavement, the labor savings involved are negligible. The newly freed clones do provide the Republic with a high degree of manpower for colonization projects, however.b((Faster colonization rate and/or higher initial colonial population))
Revolutionary Fervor: With the revolutionary government ending the practice of clone slave labor and bestowed legal equality upon minorities and foreigners, Baekdu citizens are willing to do what it takes to ensure democracy is preserved. Each and every Baekdu citizen is committed to fight to the last in defense of their own planets and those of other democratic societies; the revolutionary spirit makes Baekdu troops experts in defending their planets and the citizenry of their worlds would quickly be in open revolt if taken over by a non-democratic power. ((Better planetary defense; planets conquered by non-democracies will revolt very frequently as long as Baekdu citizens are there))
The Eyes and Ears of the Republic: The Federal Intelligence Service is one of the best in the Galaxy; Baekdu agents have contacts in high places in most humanoid polities and are experts at several kinds of operations. Backed by sophisticated technology, strong diplomatic skills, and the powerful allure of Baekdu's libertine culture (with its wildly popular pop music and teledramas), FIS agents are adept at influencing other states, improving relations with democracies and inspiring citizens in autocracies to rise up against their oppressors. They can easily penetrate most well-guarded secret plans of most polities in the Galaxy. Of course, none of this is very effective against hive-minds, robot collectives and other polities that are difficult for humans to interact with due to their very nature as a species. ((Improved relations with democracies; easier to cause revolts in non-democracies; intelligence gathering is easier))
Your Country Needs You!: The National Revolutionary Army, the armed component of the republican and abolitionist groups that overthrew the corporate state and now make up the main armed forces of the Republic, are disciplined, well-trained and well-equipped, likely able to defeat an average human force twice its size in open combat. Its sterling reputation has also prompted many people, "organics" and clones alike, to sign up. ((Improved ground combat and manpower for army))
Negative Traits:
Si Vines Libertas, Para Bellum: The people of Baekdu are experiencing democracy for the first time after nearly three hundred years of quasi-fascist corporate rule, and have no intent of going back. This makes negotiating with non-democratic powers difficult at the best of times, and can lead to calls for "wars of liberation" from hawkish Delegates at worst. Between this natural antagonism and autocratic regimes often scapegoating democratic dissidents as Federal Intelligence Service agents, the Republic does not get along with non-democracies well at all, and there is great potential for border incidents owing to this deep mutual mistrust. ((Generally poor relations with non-democracies; higher chance of incidents with nearby non-democracies))
Inter-Service Rivalry: Despite inheriting a perfectly competent space navy, if one heavily geared towards policing rather than military use, from the corpocracy, the National Revolutionary Army’s role in liberating the planet has resulted in the government prioritizing land over space forces. This usually results in more funding being granted towards army rather than navy projects and inefficencies in researching and adopting new technology for the Republican Navy. ((Difficulty in researching and adapting new technologies for ships))
Fractious Government: "Say what you want about the corpocracy, at least they made the shuttles run on time" goes a popular saying among the disgruntled. The compromises required to create a functioning democracy that was acceptable to the deeply divided Baekdu populace have resulted in a number of awkward political features that limit governmental efficiency. Cumbersome planetwide referendums and knife-edge governing coalitions are a fact of life in Baekdu politics, and occasionally, it can appear miraculous that anything gets done at all. ((Governmental efficiency is handicapped))
Financial Issues: Between the high levels of funding for the National Revolutionary Army, the Federal Intelligence Service, a robust welfare state, education, the arts, and many other projects, the Republic's budget is often quite large. All this money has to come from somewhere; this, combined with high levels of taxation means that while its citizens enjoy low income inequality and are well-fed, educated, cared for, and defended , economic growth is generally fairly low compared to many other polities. ((Generally reduced economic performance))
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Species Description:
Baekdu people are human, and consist of two major ethnic groups: Hangun and Mercians. Baekdu are immigrants from the Baekdu region of the planet Xin, and are closely related to but ethnically and culturally distinct from the Xin Li; they colonized the planet hundreds of years ago when they left the Xin Li homeworld in response to the Great Treaty. Mercians are the indigenous population of the planet. A very small but resilient community of Xin Li, who sympathized with the Baekdu cause and left the planet with them, also remain, but they have mostly assimilated. While the Hangun colonists and their advanced technology often put them in an advanced position compared to the natives, their dominance was never solidified until the establishment of the corporate government, or “Corpocracy.” As the corporate state was run mostly by ethnic Hangun, wealth and power was almost exclusively in their hands before the revolution; today, it is still highly concentrated but is beginning to be redistributed. Mercian groups played an important role in the Revolution; today, the Minister-President of Neo Wonsan is a Mercian, the first in Baekdu history since the Pre-Corporate Era.
Consul Son, a relatively typical Baekdu
In addition, there is a large population of human clones. Ever since cloning technology was developed in the late pre-corporate era, private firms have held the needed technology for this very capital and knowledge-intensive process. Clones were "genomed" for a very specific purpose for most of Baekdu's history; some are service workers, some are factory workers, some are soldiers, and so on. Due to the need to have a pliable labor force, an intoxicating drug called “soap” was were continuously administered to them; the drug was designed to selectively cause brain damage so that clones could not function effectively in normal society outside of their given purpose. Many could only speak the lines drilled into their heads from birth by their overseers. Corporate clones were produced, controlled with an invented religion and used as slaves for their working lives, and ruthlessly "recycled" into "usable biomass" upon their (usually fairly swift) death. Outrage at the treatment of clones, sparked in large part by a book called
My Orison written by a rebellious clone, helped contribute to the revolution.
Under the Republic, clones were emancipated and granted equal rights, and the state took control of all cloning technology. Without the use of soap, clones live relatively long and productive lives, can reason and speak normally, and are mostly indistinguishable from an average human. "Genoming" clones for specific purposes remains legal, although soap remains highly illegal. Motions have been floated occasionally to ban the practice as an infringement of freedom of choice.
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Homeworld Description:
Baekdu, the planet on which the Republic is based, is an Earthlike planet that is approximately 80% ocean without counting floating cities. It was named for the Baekdu region on the planet Xin, from which most of its population came from. It has four large continents, each of which is virtually covered in city, and one large floating city nearly equal in size to the continents. There are also tens of thousands of other island cities that fall under the purview of one of the five mega-cities. The weather is generally temperate, with mild summers and very cold winters.
A port district on the western part of Neo Wonsan
The Baekdu people established four original colonies, one for each for the planet's continents. They were named for the greatest cities of the Baekdu region on their homeworld. In order of size, they are Neo Seoul, Neo Wonsan, Neo Pyongyang, and Neo Pusan. A large floating city, Baekdu City, is the planetary capital, containing the Federal Assembly, High Court and the Blue House (the President’s residence.) While several large areas of the cities have been set aside as parks and large floating platforms the size of cities covered in trees have been built to combat pollution, the planet is almost totally urbanized and the Republic imports many of its resources, either from other polities or mineral-rich asteroids.
Form of Government Description:
The Federal Republic is a parliamentary republic. It has a unicameral legislature called the Federal Assembly with 500 members called Delegates (50 for each of the five cities and the colonial Departments.) The Republic's Head of State is the State-President (대통령 / Daetongryong), who is elected for a five-year term planet-wide; invested with little actual power, she may engage in diplomacy and present treaties to the Assembly, and also appoints the Head of Government. Said head of government is the Consul (집정관 / Jibjeonggwan), who is traditionally the leader of the largest party of the governing coalition. Assembly elections are held every five years with two-term limits.
One of the most distinctive features of Baekdu democracy are planetwide referendums. Using a centrally organized voting service that all citizens can access at any time on any network-enabled device, citizens may vote on propositions submitted by the populace and approved by the Federal Assembly in a simple majority. Somewhat more controversially, a veto from the Consul on any bill may be overridden by a two-thirds majority of the population (abstentions counting against the votes.) This makes governing difficult at times, but it lends the system a greater degree of democratic legitimacy.
Consul Son is a member of the Radical Party, a social-democratic party that seeks cooperation with other polities. The other major parties are the Alliance for Prosperity, a self-styled libertarian and pro-business party that is often associated with neo-corpocratic groups; the Syndicalist Union, which advocates for "all power to the unions" and syndicalist socialism; and the Nationalist Party, a party that has close ties with the Army and demands the spreading of the revolution. Minor parties, such as clone’s rights parties, Daegunists and Mercian nationalist parties, occasionally take a few seats in the Federal Assembly as well, but only occasionally have major effects on policy.
The flag of the Republic consists of the flag of the Commune of Neo Seoul in the canton (the first state established by the democratic revolutionaries), with white and blue stripes representing peace and liberty.
History:
Pre-Corporate Era:
History:
For tens of thousands of years, the planet Baekdu had been inhabited by humans. The aboriginal natives, called the Mercians, are of unknown origin; some speculate they were descendants of a botched colonization operation by an ancient empire, while others believe they might have been exiled convicts. Regardless, they lost all knowledge of space travel, cryogenics and other advanced technologies over time and regressed to a semi-industrial society; these primitives barely understood the basic principles behind atomic energy. They carried on living in relative isolation until several hundred years ago, when the Baekdu people arrived. Having fled from a devastating civil war against the ethnic Xin on their homeworld, they established several large cities after making agreements with the Mercians to lease portions of their territory. The Baekdu bought Mercian land in exchange for advanced technology and cold, hard cash; for all the shock and terror that the natives initially went through, they adapted fairly well to the changes and integrated into the society peacefully. Many intermarried and took Baekdu family names; many others did not, stubbornly sticking to their lifestyle even as super-advanced Baekdu technology transformed the planet. As the four cities got larger and larger, most Mercian settlements were absorbed into "Aulandtowns" within the cities. (The Mercians called the planet "Auland," thought to have originated as a corruption of their the common expression "This land is our land.")
The city governments were all democratic republics, with the exception of one instance when a rogue Mayor suffered brain damage and tried to crown himself
Daegun, a title literally meaning "great prince" in the style of the dukes of the Baekdu homeworld of old on Xin. The cities prospered under this rule and, as they expanded to include nearly the entirety of their respective continents and created many floating outposts on the oceans, began to slowly move towards a united planetary government. A united, democratic and free Baekdu was nearly a reality - and perhaps might have been, were it not for the actions of one man.
Kim Jaesang, CEO of the powerful CelNova corporation, had managed to corner the market on human cloning technology and became far and away the richest man on the planet. It was said that he had enough political power and influence to rival several small states combined, and he likely did. He eventually managed to find a large supply of sympathetic politicians and businessmen in the city of Neo Seoul, and ran for Mayor on the principle that the inconveniences of democracy were stunting economic growth. With the Mayoralty in his pocket - and his territory of nearly two million people secured - he proceeded to promise that “[he would] double our GDP for every four years we don’t have an election,” and for a surprisingly long amount of time he managed to keep his promise. Other cities began to warm to this idea of corporate governance, and corpocratic parties began winning elections worldwide in large numbers. Eventually, with all the cities barring Neo Pusan under corpocratic regimes, the Baekdu Corporation - a massive, privately-owned superstate - was created by the regimes’ ruling executives and assumed the governmental powers of the corpocratic states.
Corpocratic Era:
((NOTE: All listed rulers in the Corpocratic Era were styled "Chief Executive Officer" unless otherwise noted))
The Golden Age
Eternal Chairman Kim I Jaesang, 0-5 AF
Eternal Director Kim II Eunbin, 5-34 AF
Kim III Sungahn, 34-72 AF
Park I Yaerin, 72-78 AF
Park II Ryonghae, 78-108 AF
The next hundred years saw a massive reorganization of Baekdu society: the last undeveloped areas of the planet began to disappear under layers of concrete, the system of clone slavery gradually became institutionalized, and the memories of democracy were eradicated from most history books. The Corpocracy, as it was known, tolerated no dissent but otherwise did not interfere in the private lives of its citizens, providing enough law, order and prosperity to keep most citizens content. Practical space travel was developed, and the average citizen became rich beyond their wildest dreams under the new system. This was referred to as the "Golden Age" of the Corpocracy.
Jaesang’s rule as CEO was brief, but he was at the time finely remembered as a uniter of the planet (or at least all of it besides Neo Pusan.) The integration of most of the world’s resources produced immediate dividends, and his production of unlimited prosperity under the Corpocracy seemed to be coming true. He was not, contrary to popular belief, officially deified upon his death; however, his image was heavily promoted, and if people wanted to call him a god, the Baekdu Corporation didn’t say no. He was officially given the title of
Eternal Chairman as a compromise with the Cult of Juche, an increasingly popular religion that sprang up that glorified Kim as a savior of the human race.
The gates to the CelNova Corporation's former offices were turned into a shrine for the not-insignificant cult of personality Kim Jaesang gained after his death
For all this, though, the Corpocracy perhaps owed more to his daughter Eunbin’s rule. When Neo Pusan and the remaining democratic floating cities banded together in a grand alliance to try to stop the corpocratic menace, her response was simple: “They shall surrender, or they shall die.” Neo Pusan was invaded and subjugated, while the remaining cities were simply leveled with nuclear weapons. With that, the Baekdu Corporation truly stood atop the world. She entrenched authoritarian policies and was a major proponent of a completely totalitarian state with omnipresent surveilence, but the ideas fell out of favor with the rest of the Board as unnecessarily costly. A compromise was reached: the thought of the consumer was not a concern as long as they did not organize as laborers and did not criticize the system of government. This allowed many of forms of culture to flourish during this early era, despite the authoritarian system. Interestingly, despite being the Director of Biotechnology, she cared little for the clones and did not see the virtues of mass clone labor.
Cloning had existed as a procedure for nearly fifty years, and had previously been very limited in application. The clone indenture system, including soap dosing and “recycling,” was adopted by her son Sungahn. His other main virtue was codifying the system of succession. The Board of Directors was composed of Directorates, each managed by a household and their employees. The Board had absolute power over their respective fields of interest. (Though, theoretically speaking, all corporate shareholders could vote, the corporation was nearly completely owned by the Board. Minor shareholders changed the results of only 15 corporate decisions in the entire 298-year corpocracy, and only made a difference in the election of 1 CEO.) The CEO was then elected by the shareholders, and served for life barring a vote of no confidence from the Board. To prevent petty obstructionism, if the CEO survived a no-confidence vote, the proposer of the vote would be put to death.
When Sungahn died, this system was tested, and Park Yaerin, head of House Park and the Directorate of Information, became CEO. She mysteriously took her own life 6 years later, and her son Ryonghae took power. His thirty-year rule saw the launch of the first practical spaceship, which was used to mine asteroids for useful resources to fuel the economy. While economic growth looked to continue to rocket upward under his rule, scholars generally have the end of his reign mark the end of the times of “infinite prosperity” and the Golden Age.
The Silver Age
Min I Hyoyeon, 109-115 AF
Kim IV Hanseol, 115-155 AF
Lee I Hyeju, 155-168 AF
Min II Danbi, 168-199 AF
Kim V Taegun, 200-221 AF
Lee II Miryo, 221-229 AF
Son I Gain, 229-236 AF
After Ryonghae’s death, feuding between House Kim and House Park allowed a dark horse candidate, Min Hyoyeon of the Directorate of Space Forces, to capture the CEO’s office. She retired after six fairly successful years, paving the way for the new leader of House Kim, who was inagurated as Kim IV Hanseol. He was wildly popular and expanded the space program, with the corpocracy building the first practical space warship, among other things. The stretch of five CEOs following him had fairly productive tenures as well, with a steady pace of technological and wealth advancement. However, several underlying economic factors triggered a market crash with the announcement of CEO Son’s retirement, leading to massive instability and several attempted strikes. This instability resulted in an epic feud between House Min and House Son that nearly ripped the Corpocracy apart. This period was called the “Decade of Darkness".
The Decade of Darkness
Min III Hyojin, 236-237 AF
Son II Byungjun, 237-239 AF
Son III Daesang, 239 AF
Park III Ryonghae, 239 AF
Daegun-Chairman Min IV Inyoung, 239 AF
Interregnum, 239-240 AF
It must be noted that by the most generous of definitions the “Decade of Darkness” lasted only four years, but whatever the inappropriateness of its name, it nearly brought down the entire corpocracy. Even though the Corpocracy was still quite prosperous, it gradually began to stagnate after that initial century. Productivity was continuously falling and the breakneck growth that left people with trust in, or at least tolerance of, the system was beginning to break down. CEO Lee II Miryo’s re-opening of the “wastelanded” areas of the former democracies for explotiation helped offset this for a while, but it could not ultimately be reversed. Over the last twenty years, House Min and their Directorate of Space Operations and House Son and their Directorate of Production came to dominate the board, having massive paramilitaries loyal solely to them. Each, unbeknownst to the other, sought to take the holdings of the rest of the Board and instate themselves as "Baekdu Daegun", or King of Baekdu, and take absolute power.
The opening salvo of this struggle was fired when the head of House Min successfully won the CEO election to replace Son Gain, who by all accounts wanted no part of her brother Byungjun’s plans to crown himself Daegun and later regretted stepping down. He and his allies then walked out of the Board. The Min-dominated Board then made a motion to expel House Son and its allies from the Directorates, but Byungjun revealed he had one more ally amongst those who stayed: Lee Myunghun of the Directorate of Corporate Security, who at the time controlled the corpocracy's nuclear arsenal. With the threat of nuclear annhiliation over their heads, he boxed CEO Min III Hyojin into a corner and forced her resignation. His own reign went little better; he came tantalizingly close to crowning himself Daegun by bribing several important Min allies and consolidating power in the CEO’s office. In fact, he was on his way to announce to the board that the Corpocracy was dissolved and replaced with the Kingdom of Baekdu when his shuttle was blown up by a member of House Min’s Black Hundred paramilitary group.
The year 239 brought utter chaos, as an impotent Board watched whoever had the balance of power in the turf wars between pro-Min and pro-Son security forces march into the boardroom and declare themselves CEO, which was valid until the enemy recaptured the area. In a peculiar moment, when both the pro-Min and pro-Son Directorates had abandoned the Board, the remaining neutral Directors elected the current head of House Park, who along with House Kim and House Jung’s Directorate of Nuclear Security (created at the start of the year to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into either group’s hands) had stayed neutral, as CEO. He “ruled” for only sixteen days before the head of House Min came back to the Board asking for help, at which point he was made CEO once again. The infamous Min IV Inyoung then promptly dissolved the Board one last time, declared himself Daegun, and sent a declaration to House Son to surrender or face open war.
The Interregnum, also known as the Son-Min Wars, raged across the planet in brutal street-to-street fighting for nearly three years. Loyal corpocratic forces watched helplessly as the Min and Son Daegunates caused wanton destruction through cities planetwide. Were this any ordinary conflict, one of the two houses would likely win and abolish the Corpocracy permanently, but Director Kim had a brilliant plan. He created a massive clone army to pacify both the Daegunates’ forces and grew the clones using recycled biomass from their own dead soldiers. It was barbaric by any stretch of the imagination, but the Corpocracy’s now limitless supply of troops wore down the upstarts. They ultimately surrendered, and after a thorough purge of their ranks, the Board was reinstated and Director Jung was named the first legitimate CEO in five years. The Corporcracy had survived by the skin of its teeth, but would never again hold very much legitimacy in the eyes of anyone from the masses to its own Directors.
The Decline and Fall
Jung I Yuri, 242-257 AF
Kim VI Jaesang, 257-261 AF
Kim VII Jaesang, 261-280 AF
Lee III Hyori, 280-290 AF
Jung II Seohyun, 290-295 AF
CEO Jung knew the Corpocracy had to be retooled if it was to survive, and to her credit, her reforms bought the regime another half-century to live. She returned to CEO Kim Eunbin’s authoritarian policies, creating a police state and an all-consuming “corporate culture” with corporate-controlled labor organizations to ensure loyalty to the Corpocracy. She ruled with an iron fist and tolerated no dissent; this, ironically, caused underground political activity to flourish. For the first time in nearly two hundred and fifty years, there were serious people who advocated (in total secrecy, of course) that a return to democracy might benefit the people of Baekdu.
She was followed by two basically competent but unremarkable CEOs of House Kim, who struggled to solve a very basic but serious problem: Profitability was also beginning to decline across the board. The Corpocracy was simply running out of markets to sell to, and its astronomical rate of GDP growth was consistently falling. Despite the start of colonization projects to other worlds, its reign was still in peril. The Corpocracy might have been able to weather all this, however, had it not given in to its own hubris.
In the year 280, CEO Kim VII Jaesang passed away, and his successor, Kim Pyongguan, lost the ensuing CEO election to the then 15-year old Lee Hyori, Director of Corporate Security. Obsessed with becoming CEO, and enraged that he was passed over for a child, he decided he needed to conduct a grand experiment that could reverse the sense of decline that pervaded the corpocracy and impress his virtues upon the Board of Directors. He hit upon an idea: if he created a high-functioning clone, a clone that could replace corporate middle managers, he would have access to nearly infinite easily-controlled computational power that would save his Directorate millions. He set his scientists to work on the project. The result, as he put it, “[went] horribly right.”
The project’s name was Sonmi-939. Genomed based on a restaurant staffer’s blueprint, she was instructed in critical thinking and basic history. Kim’s greatest mistake, however, was letting his charge loose unsupervised in the Hwangmyun Library, the largest repository of pre-Corporate knowledge on the planet. Sonmi began studying the histories of the old world and put together a telecast promoting democracy, exposing the fact that corporate clones were not valued employees but slaves, and a philosophy emphasizing parts of life other than making profit. The telecast, “My Orison,” was smuggled out by a democratic resistance group and disseminated to major news outlets around the planet. Sonmi-939 was swiftly and publicly executed, but the damage had been done.
Sonmi-939 before her execution
The next ten years saw increasing disruption in corpocratic society. Strikes, nearly unheard of for over two hundred years, became increasingly common. A planetwide general strike was brutally suppressed in 290 AF, only to be followed less than two years later by another which ended in the proclamation of the “Commune of Neo Seoul.” Neo Seoul, by this time, was home to nearly two billion people and was the size of a continent, so this was no small rebellion. Lee Hyori, now CEO Lee III Hyori, refused to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons to break up the commune. A resulting vote of no confidence from the Board ousted her and installed Jung Seohyun as the new CEO. Jung was not as gun-shy as her predecessor and ordered a tactical nuclear warhead detonated over the east part of the Commune as a show of force. Public opinion was turned massively against the corpocracy, which was amplified by Lee very publically defecting to the Commune. She was elected as its President in a landslide and vowed to bring down the Corpocracy by any means.
Open war erupted days later. Unwilling to use more nuclear weapons in the face of intense public backlash, the Corpocracy decided an invasion would have to do. Though the invasion would have likely succeeded quite easily with air support, Director of Space Forces Min Sungahn defected to the Commune days after Lee, taking a large portion of the Corpocracy’s orbital defenses and such with him. The Commune managed to push back the Corpocracy in a matter of weeks, and when a second revolutionary commune appeared in Neo Pyongyang, followed by a third in Baekdu City itself, the Corpocracy knew the writing was on the wall.
While they pushed back the corpocratic forces, the three Communes unified their armed forces into the so-called “National Revolutionary Army” and issued an ultimatum: nothing less than an unconditional surrender of the Baekdu Corporation and establishment of a democratic republic would be acceptable. This declaration was greeted with a corpocratic nuclear weapon dropped on the broadcast center where the broadcast initiated from. Unfazed, the democrats continued their battle for the fate of the planet. The corpocrats would hold out for nearly three more years, but eventually Baekdu City Hall was stormed by the elite Republican Guard, and the Corpocracy was defeated.
Republican Era:
President of the Republic Lee Hyori, 296-308 AF (Independent, leaning towards the Nationalist Party
Consul Kim Hyeju, 309-314 AF (Nationalist Party)
Consul Son Danbi, 314-319 AF ( Radical Party)
President Lee won three terms and was wildly popular, with many calling her the “Mother of the Republic,” “Goddess of the Revolution” and many other things. In a show of modesty and revolutionary spirit, she shunned all titles and was only to be referred to as “Madame President” or “Citizen Lee.” (Her adoring public stuck with her nickname from the Neo Seoul barricades, “Hyorish”.) She oversaw, among other things, adoption of a new calendar designed to purge corpocratic influence (she was inaugurated on 10 Thermidor, An I, the date that the calendar was officially adopted), the emancipation of clones, the redistribution of corporate wealth, and the beginning in earnest of the Republic’s first colonization projects. The settlements were eventually incorporated as Departments with full representation in the Federal Assembly, but they were still largely underdeveloped. Though she won three elections nearly unanimously and could have easily won a fourth, she stepped down instead, saying “I did not resign as CEO simply to become one again twenty years later.”
For all her wild successes and creation of democracy, her term exposed several flaws in the Republic’s constitution. A lack of term limits and the powerful presidency made many outside Baekdu City and Neo Seoul wary of the power an unsavory figure in the position could attain; thus, a second Constitutional Convention was called and the Republic was transformed from a presidential to a parliamentary system, in which form it remains today. With Consul Kim Hyeju’s efforts to reach out to other nearby polities, the Republic seeks to promote democracy and spread the revolution throughout the galaxy. The Republic will stand by its allies and show no fear of any of its enemies.
