  I review a recent attempt to reproduce the isospin $I= 0$ and 2 amplitudes
for the decay of a kaon into two pions by estimating the relevant hadronic
matrix elements in the chiral quark model. The results are parametrized in
terms of the quark and gluon condensates and of the constituent quark mass $M$.
The latter is a parameter characteristic of the model. For values of these
parameters within the current determinations, the $\Delta I= 1/2$ selection
rule is well reproduced by means of the cumulative effects of short-distance
NLO Wilson coefficients, penguin diagrams, non-factorizable soft-gluon
corrections and meson-loop renormalization.
