The Guardian’s picture editors select some of the most powerful photos from around the world

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Some analysts expect a lame-duck president for rest of five-year term after opposition Democratic party forecast to take 170 seats in 300-seat legislature

South Korea’s liberal opposition parties scored a landslide victory in a parliamentary election held on Wednesday, dealing a resounding blow to President Yoon Suk Yeol and his conservative party but likely falling just short of a super majority.

The Democratic party (DP) was projected to take more than 170 of the 300 seats in the new legislature, data by the National Election Commission and network broadcasters showed with more than 99% of the votes counted on Thursday morning.

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A presidential visit to a supermarket amid a cost-of-living crisis was supposed to garner public support, but ended up feeding suspicions the leader is out of touch

Yoon Suk Yeol is hardly the first elected politician to appear out of touch with ordinary voters during a cost-of-living crisis. But as South Korea prepares for key national assembly elections on Wednesday, its conservative president has been tripped up by a humble vegetable.

In recent weeks, green onions have gone from a simple staple of Korean cooking to a powerful symbol of voter anger over rising prices in Asia’s fourth-biggest economy.

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G20 countries spent $142bn in three years to expand operations despite a G7 pledge to stop doing so, study finds

The world’s biggest economies have continued to finance the expansion of fossil fuels in poor countries to the tune of billions of dollars, despite their commitments on the climate.

The G20 group of developed and developing economies, and the multilateral development banks they fund, put $142bn (£112bn) into fossil fuel developments overseas from 2020 to 2022, according to estimates compiled by the campaigning groups Oil Change International (OCI) and Friends of the Earth US.

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Set in the last residential tower block remaining in Seoul, this South Korean genre film puts the city’s haves and have-nots into deadly competition

Another day, another strong Korean genre film. And it’s another one treading the territory of social atavism, where that country’s films and TV always make a firm impact, from Snowpiercer to The King of Pigs to Squid Game . South Korea’s entrant for the 2024 international feature film Oscar, Um Tae-hwa’s Concrete Utopia is a bitter satire on its recent housing bubble. It is set in a devastated, pallid, post-apocalyptic Seoul where only a single tower block remains standing. National icon Lee Byung-hun (Joint Security Area, Squid Game) is on fantastic form as the tyrannical “Delegate” running the show inside the building.

The exact nature of what has wrecked Seoul is vague, with an earthquake mentioned and a giant pyroclastic cloud on show in the disaster scenes. Nor does it make a whole lot of sense that Hwang Gung Apartments isn’t immediately overrun by the millions of survivors outside. But that’s all pragmatic short-cutting in the interests of a neat allegory for haves and have-nots (while the destruction itself is also maybe a metaphor for the catastrophic energy of an overheated property market). Lee’s Delegate Kim – appointed after preventing a fire – rallies the apartment holders to turf out any outsiders. Soon even the nurturing Min-sung (Park Seo-joon), who initially takes in a pair of refugees, is on guard against the “cockroaches” and convinced of his own God-given superiority.

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The Gulf state is the new chair of a UN women’s commission. That reflects a bigger issue as governments attack or fail to prioritise gender equality

Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of the Beijing declaration , a landmark blueprint for advancing women’s rights. It marked the mainstreaming of feminist concerns, with 189 states signing up to the text at a conference in China, where Hillary Clinton, then first lady of the US, declared that “women’s rights are human rights”.

Yet when the United Nations celebrates that achievement, its commission for promoting and evaluating progress on gender equality will be steered by Saudi Arabia . A country known for its abysmal record on women’s rights was chosen unopposed this week to chair the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Even the personal status law it brandishes as a sign of progress in fact enshrines discrimination including male guardianship over women, and gives immunity to perpetrators of “honour crimes”. Women’s rights advocates have been jailed and there are multiple allegations of their torture .

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Readers respond an article by Jonathan Liew about those who make a distinction between between ‘true fans’ and ‘plastics’

Jonathan Liew is right that overseas fans should not be dismissed as tourists ( The cultural division of football fans only serves those who wish to exploit it, 19 March ). I have had a season ticket at Tottenham Hotspur for over 25 years, grew up less than 10 miles from the ground and had a grandmother who ran a pub on Tottenham High Road – very much, I think, qualifying as a true local fan. But back in 2010, I found myself exiled from my season ticket by a six-month stint working in Singapore.

I was, however, welcomed with open arms by the Singapore Spurs Supporters’ Club and watched with delight from there as Spurs qualified for the Champions League for the first time. Against my expectations, instead of being full of expats like me, the SSSC was almost entirely made up of local fans – it was set up by a group of friends who, like me, had been at Wembley in 1999 to see Spurs win the League Cup. The members of the SSSC were (and are) passionate, knowledgeable and hugely engaged with the club. The levels of excitement on their social media when Spurs were visiting Singapore was remarkable.

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Some professors will submit their resignations while others will cut their hours over a government plan to boost medical school admissions

Medical professors in South Korea have said they will reduce the hours they spend in practice, while some say they plan to resign, in a widening of a doctors strike in the country.

The move will begin on Monday in support of trainee doctors who have been on strike for more than a month over a government plan to boost medical school admissions.

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Coastguard says chemical tanker was carrying 980 tonnes of acrylic acid but no leaks reported

Eight people died after a South Korean-flagged tanker capsized in rough seas off Japan, the coastguard said.

“They were confirmed dead at a hospital,” a spokesperson told AFP on Wednesday. One other person was in a non-life-threatening condition while two others remained missing.

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