One year ago, Soyoung Lee was a crowd of climate activists demonstrating on Seoul’s streets in a campaign sparked by the founder of the global school strike Greta Thunberg. Today, she is the youngest member of the South Korean parliament and a trigger in the government’s new green deal, endeavoring to create billions of available jobs in renewable energy sources and help the infected economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

Lee’s transformation highlights the rapid progress the global wave of youth climate activism has executed in a significantly short time. There is public hope that South Korea will set a global exemplar by stimulating the shift from fossil fuels – despite it being a country long considered one of the “world’s worst climate villains.”

Lee debates that South Korea will have more stranded assets the longer it delays transition away from fossil fuel usage. “It makes economic sense to change. These kinds of businesses will not be viable in the future.” The new green deal will dominate new session discussions in the national assembly – another indication that displays the progress where climate, in the context of government consideration, has moved up the political agenda.

In raising awareness about this issue, Lee specifically credits the school strike movement. She has dauntly campaigned for decarbonization for many years already and has worked as a young and successful lawyer on climate litigation suits. However, she adds that there was only little public support until recently.

She makes a clear estimation that only 10 among the 300 legislators are gravely committed to environmental issues regarding climate change. “It is definitely still not mainstream,” she comments. “But the green new deal is now at the center of political discussion for the first time. We need to see whether this means a sudden revolutionary change or the start of something incremental."