The Economist.

Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

I'm Rosie Bloor.

Today on the show, India's Cockroach Party,

and remembering Iranian author and artist Majan Satrapi.

First up, though.

Hello, great. It's very nice to be to you, though. Hello, nice to meet you, Christopher Lockwood. Nice to meet you, Noah Snyder.

Where will the president be sitting just so I can place the microphone in the best place?

My colleague Chris Lockwood and I recently paid a visit to an opulent blue-tiled complex in

Central Seoul, known as the Blue House.

Noah Snyder is our East Asia Bureau Chief.

It's the home of South Korea's political leaders, and we were there to interview

E.J. Myeong, South Korea's current president.

He's been in power for just over a year now, and he took over following his predecessor's

turbulent rule, which ended in a declaration of martial law and subsequent impeachment.

We walked through well-manacred grounds and into a central building, up a broad staircase

and passed a textile showing the entirety of the Korean peninsula in what seemed like full bloom, and into a grand meeting room.

Their president, E, really projected a kind of calm and confidence.

This is a normal way to go to signal that South Korea is back on track and that he is guiding a country in the right direction,

that the country can move past this abnormal period of chaos and forward towards a brighter future,

and perhaps, as he puts it even one, where South Korea can be a nation that leads the world.

Now, that may be aspirational, but it suggests, again, the confidence that he's operating with at this point in his presidency.

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