A political memoir has South Koreans asking whom politicians serve

“IT IS LIKE dipping my pen in my family’s blood,” writes Cho Kuk in the opening lines of “Cho Kuk’s Time”. Mr Cho was forced to resign as South Korea’s justice minister in the autumn of 2019 after just 35 days in office, felled by a scandal that shook the government. In the time-honoured tradition of politicians writing memoirs, he uses his blood-soaked pen to explain how he was wronged, so wronged: Mr Cho and his family were just innocent victims, persecuted by entrenched forces that would stop at nothing to retain their power.