When you relese a new image to the container registry under the same tag it does not mean anything to Kubernetes. If you run kubectl apply -f ... and the image name and tag remains the same, it still won't do anything as there is no configuration change. There are two options:

1. Give a new tag on each build and change the :contact to the new tag in the yaml and run kubectl apply

2. For dev environment only (do not do it in Stage or Prod) leave the same tag (usually a tag :latest is used) and after a new image is deployed to registry run kubectl delete pod demo-microservice. Since you've set image pull policy to Always, this will cause Kubernetes pull a new image from the registry and redeploy the pod.

The second approach is a workaround just for testing.

When you specify your image with the specific image tag Kubernetes will default container's imagePullPolicy to IfNotPresent, which means that image won't be pulled again, and previously pulled image will be deployed.

Kubernetes will change policy to Always only if tag is not present (which is effectively same as latest or if tag is set to latest explicitly.

Check what is actual imagePull policy on your Deployment template for particular container.

kubectl get pod demo-microservice -o yaml | grep imagePullPolicy -A 1

Try patching deployment

kubectl patch deployment demo-microservice -p 
 '{"spec": { "template" : 
  { "spec" : { "containers" : 
    [{"name" : "demo-microservice", 
    "image" : "repo/image:tag", 
    "imagePullPolicy": "Always" }]}}}}'

Make sure that imagePullPolicy for the container in question is set to Always.