On South Korea Protests and Amazon Prime
To the Editor,
I write to you from a world that seems to have thrown logic to the wind, where South Korea’s martial law experiment has failed spectacularly, and midweek Premier League fixtures are now the exclusive domain of Amazon Prime. At first glance, these two phenomena seem as unrelated as football and geopolitics — unless, of course, they’re actually two sides of the same absurd coin.
Let us begin in South Korea, where the attempt at martial law has apparently fallen apart like a poorly defended backline. Was it a lack of discipline, too much discipline, or an unfortunate confusion over whether "marshal" refers to the army or Jeff Bezos? I can’t help but wonder if the whole operation was doomed from the start due to its name, which sounds less like a government decree and more like a niche Premier League formation strategy.
Speaking of the Premier League, Amazon Prime now holds all the midweek fixtures hostage behind a subscription paywall. Isn’t it curious that, while South Korea was failing to impose martial law, Amazon was quietly introducing its own version of totalitarian control over football fans? The games are all there, every match tantalisingly out of reach for those without a Prime account. It’s less martial law and more "Marshall’s Deal of the Day."
But here’s where it gets truly baffling: Could the two events somehow be connected? Did the collapse of martial law in South Korea cause such a ripple in the geopolitical fabric that it disrupted the Premier League fixture schedule? Or, conversely, was the chaos of Amazon’s streaming monopoly so overwhelming that it inadvertently destabilised a nation’s governance? It’s impossible to say, though I’m almost certain someone in a think tank somewhere is drafting a paper on the subject right now.
Whether it’s martial law or Amazon Prime’s midweek football lineup, the lesson seems clear. The world is an unpredictable place, and control — be it of nations or football broadcasts — is as fleeting as a last-minute VAR decision.
Yours in bewilderment and buffering streams,
A Confused Fan of Both Football and Political Stability