World roundup: May 16-17 2026

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You’re reading the web version of Foreign Exchanges. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, sign up today:Subscribe nowPROGRAMMING NOTE: Apologies for this but as I was writing tonight’s newsletter I began to feel rather unwell, and while I was able to finish the written newsletter I am going to have to forego our usual Sunday voiceover. Those who need assistance should be able to use the text-to-voice feature in the Substack app.TODAY IN HISTORYMay 16, 1916: The British government ratifies the Sykes-Picot Agreement, establishing it as the Allied blueprint for the post-war remains of the Ottoman Empire.May 16, 1961: The South Korean military, under army general Park Chung-hee, overthrows the country’s civilian government in the appropriately named “May 16 Coup,” instituting a period of military rule in South Korea that lasted in one form or another until 1993. Park himself ruled the country until his assassination by the head of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service in 1979. The military government is credited, if you want to call it that, with rapidly industrializing the South Korean economy, at the cost of basic rights and liberties.Park (center) and a group of South Korean soldiers mid-coup (Wikimedia Commons)May 17, 1980: The South Korean military, under General Chun Doo-hwan and members of a secret military society called Hanahoe, overthrows the country’s nominally civilian government in the “Coup d’état of May Seventeenth.” The coup ended the South Korean “Fourth Republic” and reified the political power Chun had amassed following the assassin…