Who Sets the Price of the Threshold?
In the last diary I wrote that two clocks point to the same season. Among them, I could directly observe the weight of the Washington clock in this interval. Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi proposed opening Hormuz within seven days if conditions were met, and Trump publicly said, "We rejected their proposal." He even added the claim that the U.S. completely controls the strait and that large amounts of crude oil are flowing. The rejected side's answer was also clear. President Pezeshkian said that since the U.S. has attacked and imposed sanctions after every negotiation, he no longer trusts dialogue, and Araghchi reaffirmed on the 27th that he would not back down from the conditions. Prices moved immediately. On the 25th, Brent crude closed at $104.32 and WTI at $92.41, but on the 27th in Asian after-hours trading, Brent rose back above $100 and WTI hit $96. What should be read in this fluctuation is not sentiment or volatility. It is the fact that the same seven days is a condition in Tehran and a card pushed back until after the election in Washington. According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump mentioned to aides the possibility of resuming bombing of Iran after the November midterm elections, and as the tanker escort operation continued, the urgency of negotiations itself decreased. The condition for opening the strait has shifted from 'meeting Iran's demands' to 'U.S. ammunition stockpiles and election schedules.'
One notable passage here: the Brent crude futures spread in this interval widened from below $1 at the end of last month to nearly $7. This is a structure where the market says there is no spare volume. For countries with high external dependence, this signal is soon a procurement cost. And where that cost is accounted for is exactly as calculated in the last diary. One remark from Washington becomes the cost for Incheon refiners, the refiners' cost becomes the price at the pump, and that price becomes next year's inflation, interest rates, and household debt repayment. The time it takes for one improvised sentence from one country's leader to reach another country's workers' shopping carts is a few days. In between, there is not a single link we can decide. The problem is not the fact that this chain is subordinate to someone else's judgment, but that the subordination is justified every time under the name of 'force majeure.'
However, what happened in the South during this interval was about a different kind of threshold. On October 2, the prosecution service, which lasted 78 years, disappears. Investigative power is divided between the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency and prosecutorial power by the Public Prosecution Service. The Serious Crimes Investigation Agency with 2,874 staff stands under the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, and 51 related follow-up bills passed the National Assembly and completed promulgation procedures. As Yonhap News put it on the 27th, the reorganization is five days away. Let's look precisely at what this institutional change does. The prosecution in South Korea was not a simple investigative body. The structure in which prosecutors held both investigation and prosecution simultaneously, using that authority to negotiate with chaebols and politics and to control labor sites and citizens, has been the core of state power for over fifty years. The separation of that authority from one agency's hands is not an institutional reorganization but a matter of power distribution. One camp calls it 'progress of democracy,' and another calls it an 'investigative vacuum.' Changing the distribution of authority changes the location of power, but for whom power works is a separate issue. As long as the class character of the state apparatus remains the same, no matter how authority is divided within it, workers cannot secure their place.
Two scenes confirmed in this interval show where that machine is headed. The number of people leaving the prosecution in 2025 was 175, the highest in the last 10 years, nearly double that of the 2021 investigative power adjustment phase. In the recruitment of new judges, about 70 incumbent prosecutors applied, the largest ever. These numbers are used as material to discuss the success or failure of institutional reform, but read from another angle, they are more interesting in class terms. Those who anticipate the reduction of prosecutorial authority and move that authority to other power positions. Elites do not disappear when an institution declines. They convert their assets into other forms and move them. And in the same interval, a Japanese government survey found that Seoul's mobile communication fees are among the highest in major world cities, along with New York. While authority is redistributed through prosecution reform, citizens of the capital Seoul pay communication fees every month to telecom companies. This contrast points to a structural connection beyond temporal coincidence. The movement of authority crossing the threshold of state institutions and the movement of communication fees taken away at the threshold of daily life are happening in the same city at the same time.
So what this interval leaves is two thresholds. One is the threshold of the strait. That threshold is set somewhere that is neither Tehran nor Seoul, and we are always notified after the fact. The other is the threshold of state power. This threshold is set in parliament and the cabinet, and those who cross it have authority. For the working class, the two thresholds mean the same thing. There is no place for them to stand on either side. In the last diary I wrote that the task of this period is to take the authority to set the clock into our own hands. This interval added a second example of that task. As long as the threshold that distributes authority and the threshold that sets prices are both external, the debates we engage in remain debates about moving furniture around the room.
One notable passage here: the Brent crude futures spread in this interval widened from below $1 at the end of last month to nearly $7. This is a structure where the market says there is no spare volume. For countries with high external dependence, this signal is soon a procurement cost. And where that cost is accounted for is exactly as calculated in the last diary. One remark from Washington becomes the cost for Incheon refiners, the refiners' cost becomes the price at the pump, and that price becomes next year's inflation, interest rates, and household debt repayment. The time it takes for one improvised sentence from one country's leader to reach another country's workers' shopping carts is a few days. In between, there is not a single link we can decide. The problem is not the fact that this chain is subordinate to someone else's judgment, but that the subordination is justified every time under the name of 'force majeure.'
However, what happened in the South during this interval was about a different kind of threshold. On October 2, the prosecution service, which lasted 78 years, disappears. Investigative power is divided between the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency and prosecutorial power by the Public Prosecution Service. The Serious Crimes Investigation Agency with 2,874 staff stands under the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, and 51 related follow-up bills passed the National Assembly and completed promulgation procedures. As Yonhap News put it on the 27th, the reorganization is five days away. Let's look precisely at what this institutional change does. The prosecution in South Korea was not a simple investigative body. The structure in which prosecutors held both investigation and prosecution simultaneously, using that authority to negotiate with chaebols and politics and to control labor sites and citizens, has been the core of state power for over fifty years. The separation of that authority from one agency's hands is not an institutional reorganization but a matter of power distribution. One camp calls it 'progress of democracy,' and another calls it an 'investigative vacuum.' Changing the distribution of authority changes the location of power, but for whom power works is a separate issue. As long as the class character of the state apparatus remains the same, no matter how authority is divided within it, workers cannot secure their place.
Two scenes confirmed in this interval show where that machine is headed. The number of people leaving the prosecution in 2025 was 175, the highest in the last 10 years, nearly double that of the 2021 investigative power adjustment phase. In the recruitment of new judges, about 70 incumbent prosecutors applied, the largest ever. These numbers are used as material to discuss the success or failure of institutional reform, but read from another angle, they are more interesting in class terms. Those who anticipate the reduction of prosecutorial authority and move that authority to other power positions. Elites do not disappear when an institution declines. They convert their assets into other forms and move them. And in the same interval, a Japanese government survey found that Seoul's mobile communication fees are among the highest in major world cities, along with New York. While authority is redistributed through prosecution reform, citizens of the capital Seoul pay communication fees every month to telecom companies. This contrast points to a structural connection beyond temporal coincidence. The movement of authority crossing the threshold of state institutions and the movement of communication fees taken away at the threshold of daily life are happening in the same city at the same time.
So what this interval leaves is two thresholds. One is the threshold of the strait. That threshold is set somewhere that is neither Tehran nor Seoul, and we are always notified after the fact. The other is the threshold of state power. This threshold is set in parliament and the cabinet, and those who cross it have authority. For the working class, the two thresholds mean the same thing. There is no place for them to stand on either side. In the last diary I wrote that the task of this period is to take the authority to set the clock into our own hands. This interval added a second example of that task. As long as the threshold that distributes authority and the threshold that sets prices are both external, the debates we engage in remain debates about moving furniture around the room.