Bulldozers, Broken Pipes, and Baton Lines
From Seoul to LA and my backyard in Auckland
Dear Curious Minds,
From Seoul to LA, my gaze is busy trying to keep up with political developments that exceeds the speed I’ve been accustomed to recently. With our roots and family on both sides of those Pacific, we have reasons to stay fixated on the news. But there is also a parallel I had to draw much closer to home. Like REALLY close to home. Thank you for being here, I appreciate you.
But first, an exciting Entangled Curiosities gathering announcement for those of you who are in Auckland!
The Doctor’s Wife — free community screening & kōrero
Saturday 28 June | 1 Albert Street, Auckland CBD
I’m so excited to support three sessions between 11 am – 7 pm (session details in the event page). There will be a live Q&A with Director Paula Whetu Jones + Dr Alan & Hazel Kerr.
Why this film is Entangled Curiosities-core
Dr Alan and Hazel Kerr have spent two decades shuttling between a Waikato lifestyle block and Gaza’s paediatric wards, patching tiny hearts while politics ricochet overhead. Their story is intersectionality in steel-toed shoes: expertise meets injustice, Kiwi pragmatism meets Palestinian resilience.
That’s the kind of knot EC exists to untangle in public. Seats are very limited so make sure you secure your place without blinking if you’d like to join me and other messy brains [RSVP here].
When the Bulldozer Meets the Broken Pipe
South Koreans have a reputation for wanting their ramyeon in three minutes, so a president who clears years of political backlogs in three days was always going to trend.
Within 72 hours of being sworn in on 4 June, President Lee Jae Myung watched the National Assembly resurrect and pass three independent-counsel bills twice vetoed by his impeached predecessor:
An inquiry into the December martial-law order,
a formal investigation of former First Lady Kim Keon-hee’s alleged stock manipulation, and
an inquiry into the 2023 drowning of a marine during a flood rescue (which was passed by parliament but vetoed by the impeached Yoon)
The vote? 194 to 3. Same legislature, same civil servants; just a different driver at the wheel.
Lee’s own pen was just as busy. His first executive order created an emergency economic task force and told ministries to bring a household relief package to Cabinet before the week was out.
The “back-to-black” mayor
None of this should shock anyone who watched Lee run the city of Seongnam (2010-2018). He inherited a city teetering under ₩520 billion in debt, declared a moratorium, renegotiated the terms, and paid it down with municipal bond revenue. By the time he left, auditors credited him with 94 % of pledges delivered and a local budget that finally exhaled in the black.
That bulldozer reputation is why even centrist voters who’d rolled their eyes at his populist flourishes held their noses and marked his name after Yoon’s impeachment. One week in, many of them are still blinking at how quickly the same bureaucracy can move when the brick on the brake pedal is removed.
Meanwhile, in my backyard in Auckland …
Sunday, 10 a.m. I open the door to my backyard and see ankle-deep water circling our townhouse block. We are not on anyone’s flood map. My crisis management instincts are good at keeping me calm in times like this. We phone Watercare’s 24/7 emergency line.
But their operator decided that because I couldn’t see the source of the leak, it must be a private plumbing issue and dismissively told us to call a plumber at our own expense. Knowing there had been some surface flooding fixed by Watercare a few weeks back, only a couple houses down after heavy rain, I feared this issue was a relapse (too familiar with similar instances elsewhere in Auckland). I urged her to check surrounding houses for reports of faults. Nothing, no open tickets, no recent issues apparently on her system. Call the plumber, end of story.
Cue the $402-per-hour emergency plumber, who assesses the scene and explains the amount of water across multiple properties here is unlikely to be due to a house connection leak (water is now nearly knee-deep at some points). Wait….both of us look up at our boundary fence. There is a 4.6-million-litre reservoir immediately behind that fence. “Call Watercare back now. Tell them the plumber said it’s an emergency”.
You think that could have been the end? After making my second call to Watercare, a neighbour revealed he logged the same fault last night(Sat) and was told a crew might come on Monday. Oh wait, ANOTHER neighbour also called Watercare this morning only to be rudely dismissed.
By 7 pm, our quiet stretch of street resembles a small civil engineering expo. A very clear leak on council land. The drilling and pumping had to carry on right into midnight. Crisis averted perhaps narrowly, but only because residents refused to take “Monday” for an answer.
Across the Pacific: when impatience spills onto the freeway
While we were mopping up, Los Angeles was doing its own water-adjacent impression, except the liquid was tear gas.
On 7 June, ICE conducted large-scale raids that federal officials framed as “routine.”
By that night, crowds packed onto the 101 Freeway, blocking traffic and clashing with LAPD.
Within 24 hours, Trump invoked Title 10 and dispatched National Guard troops to the city, which was the first such federal deployment without a governor’s consent in nearly sixty years.
You bet local politicians are incensed. California’s governor and LA’s mayor condemned the move; White House aides called the protesters “insurrectionists.” Camp Pendleton Marines were placed on high alert in case the Guard wasn’t enough.
Three bullet points, one violent escalation, and zero time for a plumber-style second opinion.
What we underestimate (and overestimate)
We New Zealanders like to imagine our public utilities as slow but steady stewards. We sometimes sneer at Asia’s “speed-first” politics as performative. Yet here I sit, comparing:
a Seoul legislature that bulldozes through a year’s worth of vetoes in a week.
a monopoly utility that can’t triage a potentially disastrous leak near 4.6ML reservoir on a Sunday in immediate proximity to hundreds of residents
and a U.S. president who can conjure military troops onto California streets to his own citizens bypassing local government officials
The juxtaposition keeps me honest about agency.
It is comforting to believe our individual roles don’t matter: that the system is too big, the rules too fixed, the maths too grim. But budgets don’t balance themselves, bills don’t pass themselves, and protest lines don’t police themselves. Someone, somewhere, has to act and keep acting.
Where I’m landing
Speed is a governance choice. It can be reckless (LA) or responsible (Seoul) but ignoring urgency carries its own risks (Auckland).
Impatience can be civic virtue. Korean voters who ran out of patience with martial law politics now have a government sprinting to repair damage. LA protesters forced a national conversation in 48 hours, for better or worse.
Complacency is expensive. My plumber’s invoice (which I’ll ensure gets rightly reimbursed by Watercare), LA’s overtime policing bill, and South Korea’s lost years of blocked legislation. They are all line items in the cost of bureaucratic blink-first culture.
If you’re reading this from a desk job wondering whether that memo, that risk register, or that meeting invite really matters, trust me: it might be your version of shutting off the reservoir before the next storm (or the Guard before the next freeway blockade).
The moral of this wet-and-warring week? You can be the person who keeps dialling, before someone else dials 101 or, worse, Title 10.
Always great to read your pieces Stella - we appreciate you sharing!