So, for context: Andrew Lee is a Seppo techbro capitalist who you may know for his hostile takeover of Freenode, or for his founding of Private Internet Access, a VPN which you may know from its incessant YouTube sponsor reads… or from Lee selling it in 2019 to Kape Technologies, an Isr*eli “cybersecurity” company that got its starts in adware and is currently owned by an Isr*eli billionaire who got his riches from founding a gambling software company. Oh, and Andrew Lee also has cryptocurrency interests, so that’s nice. Real upstanding guy all around, clearly.

Anyways, Andrew Lee, Korean name Yi Dangun, is the biological son of Korean-born immigrant Jay Lee, but he is also the adult-adopted son of distantly-related Jeonju-based small business owner Yi Seok, who happens to be the 10th son of Yi Kang, a prince imperial of the Korean Empire and son of Gojong, the penultimate emperor of Korea. For this reason, Yi Seok was a pretender to the Korean throne who wanted Korea to reinstate the monarchy with himself as king; and this accordingly meant that his adult-adopted son on the opposite end of the Pacific became “heir apparent”, from 2018 until Andrew Lee took over from Yi Seok as “head of the House of Yi” in 2022.

Much of Yi Seok’s monarchist pretenderism seems to be tied up in both his own personal business interests as well as the broader interests of businesses operating in Jeonju in general, and there’s also apparent ego-driven and Korean right-wing nationalist elements to it; for Andrew Lee I have a hard time seeing the pretenderism as anything other than a publicity stunt, ego boost, and signal of allegiance to Korean right-wing nationalism. In any case, with Andrew Lee’s taking over the “house” in 2022, he decided to take the monarchist pretenderism bit in the only logical direction it could go for a Seppo techbro, and proclaimed himself the “king” of the “Joseon Empire”, also referred to as the “Joseon Cybernation”, a “non-territorial” “successor” “state” to… the Kingdom of Joseon…? The Korean Empire…? It doesn’t seem like Mr. Lee quite grasps the difference, shocker. In any case, it’s a Whole Nation That Only Exists In Cyberspace, isn’t that sooo coool and, like, totally edgyyy and newww?

It’s also pretty clear to me that Antigua and Barbuda doesn’t take the “Joseon Cybernation” super seriously, clarifying that its diplomatic relations with the extant bourgeois dictatorship in Korea would not be impacted by its recognition of this self-declared “Joseon Cybernation”. It’s pretty clear that this techbro capitalist just dangled some money for fixing up schools and whatever in front of a random small country, and the A&B government was just like “sure we can stroke your ego and play into your publicity stunt lol”

Main.

christmas-crab-legs You should watch SPARKLE ON RAVEN: The Life of DrillGirl; it is a very good show. {Cēterum|Furthermore} {cēnseō|I think} {iūs auctōris|copyright} {esse dēlendum|must be destroyed}.