SPOTLIGHT

• Film

  

  ‘Burning’ fails to make Oscar final nominee list

  Korean film “Burning” has failed to make the final list of nominees for the Oscars.The final nominees for the 91st Academy Awards were revealed Tuesday. In December, “Burning” had been shortlisted in the Foreign Language Film category, becoming the first Korean movie to be included. The film was selected by the Korean Film Council to represent Korea at the film event. Last year, “Okja” by Korean director Bong Joon-ho was shortlisted in the Visual Effects category, but it was a Netflix original f

• Social affairs

  

  Seoulites help crack down on over 45,000 illegal prostitution ads

  A Seoul citizen watchdog organization reported over 50,000 illegal online prostitution advertisements in 2018, helping police crack down on illegal establishments and adult entertainment establishments. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government on Wednesday, the watchdog organization reported 52,677 sex trafficking advertisements online and smartphone applications. Advertisements for dating for pay and on-site massages, widely perceived as a means of prostitution, made up the majority 82.7

• Politics

  

  Moon Jae-in makes Foreign Policy’s list of 100 global thinkers for two consecutive years

  President Moon Jae-in has been named in Foreign Policy’s list of Top 100 Global Thinkers for the second year running. The 100 nominees were split into 10 groups, with Moon grouped under readers’ choice – a category chosen through online readers’ poll. (Foreign Policy)The magazine’s blurb on Moon said “despite repeated setbacks and deadlock,” the South Korean president “relentlessly pushed negotiations forward,” “forg(ing) an opening between the West and North Korea was one of the world’s definin

• Social affairs

  

  Men taking paternity leave rise 46.7 percent on-year in 2018

  The number of male employees taking paternity leave in Korea rose 46.7 percent on-year in 2018 amid a shift in social perception and workplace culture, the government said Wednesday.A total of 17,662 male workers went on paternity leave last year, up 46.7 percent from 12,042 people in 2017, according to data from the Ministry of Employment and Labor.“The rise in paternity leave is due to changes in the social atmosphere, alongside various policies such as increased income replacement ratio durin

LATEST NEWS

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  North Korea

  S. Korea's chief nuclear envoy sees 'rapid progress' for future

  South Korea's top nuclear envoy who recently attended working-level consultations between North Korea and the United States in Sweden said Wednesday that there will be "rapid progress" in efforts to stage more talks between Pyongyang and Washington.Lee Do-hoon, special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was at a meeting in a suburb of Stockholm where North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui and U.S. State Department Special R

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  Social affairs

  Adoptee deported by US sues S. Korea, agency

  Adam Crapser lives in limbo, a stranger in South Korea, the country of his birth. Forcibly separated from his wife, children and friends in America, he is isolated by language and culture, left alone to navigate this sprawling city he's been expelled to four decades after being sent to adoptive parents in Michigan at age 3. Crapser was abused and abandoned by two different sets of adoptive parents in the United States then deported after run-ins with the law because none of his guardians filed c

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  World Business

  London retains tech startup crown

  　London is Europe’s most attractive city for technology startups, despite a sharp slowdown last year, a study showed.　With Brexit looming, the mayor’s promotional agency, London & Partners, said 1.8 billion pounds ($2.3 billion) had been invested in fledgling tech businesses in 2018.　That represented a near 30 percent slump compared with 2017 and was the first slowdown in six years, L&P said in a statement.　But London’s 2018 total was still double that of Berlin, which stood in second place, whi

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  Foreign Policy

  South Korea-US military cost-sharing deadlock drags out as US demands $1 billion

  South Korea’s struggle to reach an agreement with the US for the cost of maintaining US troops here intensified when the gap between the total amount of Seoul’s contributions demanded by the US and that which Seoul was able to accept, as well as differences over the contract period, widened in December as a result of instructions from the very top in Washington, sources said Wednesday. Through a diplomatic channel, the US demanded in late December that South Korea pay $1.2 billion for costs rela

• Columnists

  Trump’s brain drain

  America’s quality universities are among the key sources of its greatness. Every year, top students from all over the world vie for access to graduate and undergraduate programs in the US, and American universities occupy most of the top spots in global rankings. Moreover, the basic research conducted at US universities has been a primary driver of innovation and economic growth, as well as the source of a disproportionate share of Nobel prizes.America’s universities cater to a wide variety of s

• Columnists

  China wants to dominate internet

  For the past year, the US and China have been engaged in a wide-ranging trade war. Nominally, the dispute concerns intellectual property violations, forced technology transfers and other unfair practices. In reality, though, this clash is a symptom of a much larger strategic showdown -- one in which Chinese President Xi Jinping seeks “decisive victory.”Aided by technology, China is embarking on a new kind of geopolitical strategy. As the Chinese Academy of Sciences explained, the goal is to buil

• Columnists

  Make no mistake, Davos, fat cat backlash is coming

  Ten years ago, the Davos conference asked the question: “What must industry do to prevent a broad social backlash?” The answer probably wasn’t “Double, triple or sextuple the wealth of the most prominent conference attendees, while letting median household incomes stagnate back home.” Yet that’s what happened. Make no mistake: The backlash is coming.　There has always been a whiff of hypocrisy at Davos, where elites expand their carbon footprint, eat $43 hot dogs and throw lavish parties in the n

• Columnists

  Plenty of Uber drivers love their jobs too

  The “gig economy” has become the cause celebre for people who think labor needs help from government in its struggle with capital. Politicians from the radical left and anti-establishment parties say the rise of casual work is a sign that work relationships are sliding back in time and that the state must step in to address this decline in standards.　John McDonnell, the UK Labour Party’s economics spokesman, says “zero-hour contracts” and the gig economy have produced workplace “insecurity not s

• Columnists

  Moon walled by confirmation bias

  Confirmation bias seems to be hampering President Moon Jae-in from changing his perspective and beliefs to evidence and facts.It is a psychological term denoting a tendency to cherry-pick information that confirms one’s preconceived ideas. It prevents people from considering other important information when making decisions.Moon said in his New Year’s press conference on Jan. 10 that employment indexes fell short of expectations and that his government regards the economic situation very gravely

• Editorial

  Tax-led growth

  Economic revitalization will be difficult without change of policy direction

GRAPHIC NEWS

OPINION

• Columnists

  

  Society that invites a Mona Lisa smile

  Leonardo Da Vinci’s monumental painting “Mona Lisa” is one of the most widely discussed paintings of all time because of its subject’s ambiguous smile. People have argued that depending on the viewer’s distance and angle, her smile looks different. Sometimes it looks happy, other times sad. Some people find the smile to be deriding and sarcastic, while others perceive it as a smile of condescension, like someone who knows everything. That is why Mona Lisa’s smile always refers to an enigmatic sm

• Columnists

  

  Tesla doesn’t need to sell cars in China to succeed there

  When Elon Musk broke ground on Tesla’s Gigafactory in Shanghai earlier this month, he wasn’t just thinking about how many Teslas he’ll sell in China. He was thinking about how many he might be able to share.　Musk isn’t alone. Global automobile manufacturers are scrambling to develop services that will allow Chinese car owners to rent out their vehicles when they’re not driving them. According to one recent analysis, such services could hire out as many as 2 million cars in 2020, up from roughly

THE INVESTOR

• Deals

  

  Woori Financial’s asset management arm to buy Smart Savings Bank

  Woori Financial Group’s asset management subsidiary is set to buy Smart Savings Bank, a Korean non-banking lender, which is likely to become the first acquisition after it was recently restructured to a holding company structure, according to industry sources on Jan. 23.“(Woori Private Equity Asset Management) will submit documents for the Financial Supervisory Service approval at the latest by early next week,” the source told The Investor. Woori Bank headquarters in Seoul, Korea

• Blockchain

  

  Korea still has potential to lead blockchain: experts

  Despite the nose-diving value of digital currencies in the past several months, crypto and blockchain industries still have growth potential and are worth paying attention to, according to experts at Chain Plus, a two-day conference being held in Seoul. “The blockchain and crypto industries have faced challenges due to strict regulations, but there is still some room for growth,” said Charles Pyo, member of the Presidential Committee on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, at a panel

• Bio & Medicine

  

  Yozma, Bio Leaders to set up JV in Israel

  Korean firm Bio Leaders announced on Jan. 23 that it will set up a biotech incubating entity in Israel with venture capital firm Yozma Group.“The official contract to establish the joint venture will be signed in March. We have been negotiating with Yozma since October,” a Bio Leaders official said in a statement.The new JV seeks to develop new drug therapies for cancer based on the know-how of Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science. The Korean company also plans to use its own pi

• Mobile & Internet

  

  Tinder, not just a dating app in Korea

  Tinder wants to be more than an app for hooking up in Korea. Instead, it is hoping to build a community, according to its chief executive on Jan. 22. “There isn’t just one culture for Tinder,” said CEO Elie Seidman during his first press conference in Korea. “What we see around the world is that the main thing you get is a reflection of the local culture.”  Tinder CEO Elie SeidmanTinderIn Korea, the culture Tinder wants to help mold is based on open communication made possible by

K-POP HERALD

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  Suga’s duet partner Lee So-ra explained

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  Hyun Bin, Son Ye-Jin deny dating rumors

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  Heechul raids office of show producers

HERALD INTERVIEW

• Diplomatic Circuit

  

  Gamelan music, an elixir for monotonous modern life

• Music

  

  A rare glimpse of the ‘factorylike’ K-pop idol training system

• Film

  

  Hip-hop film seeks to show realities of life in the Philippines

• People

  

  Englishmen in Seoul, London and all over YouTube

PHOTO NEWS

• Industry

  

  An afternoon in a hanok

  North European and classic American styles have prevailed among interior design fanatics in South Korea in recent years.But before the invasion of Western culture, it was mostly wooden furniture -- made from either maple or paulownia -- that was favored by aristocrats in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Korea Furniture Museum in Seongbuk-dong, northern Seoul, invites visitors to take a break -- and perhaps, travel back in time -- inside hanok, or traditional Korean houses, where more than 2,500

VIDEO

• Food

  

  Seoul’s sweet rendezvous with chocolate, ‘Salon du Chocolat’

• Music

  

  WJSN sings about complications of love in ‘La La Love’

• Television

  

  GOT7’s ‘Real Thai’ offers adventure, authentic side of Thailand

• Industry

  

  How Imvely became South Korean women’s fashion and beauty icon

FEATURES

• Industry

  

  NPS braces for first test of stewardship code

  The National Pension Service is increasingly under pressure to apply stricter yardsticks on their investments and management at invested firms, with growing risks from owners resulting in revenue and stock price drops. Political debates are also coincidentally brewing over whether the emphasized exercise of voting rights on governance issues would lead to more responsible investment of the state pension operator or to excessive state or social influence in the business realm. In July last year,

• Social affairs

  

  Waste bin-free public restrooms get mixed response

  Japanese exchange student Aoi still remembers the “shocking moment” when she saw a trash bin in a Korean restroom stall for the first time.“As there are no such trash bins in toilets in Japan, I was shocked when I saw the bin overflowing with used toilet paper,” Aoi said.“The stink from the bin and the dirty toilet paper scattered on the ground caused panic immediately. I still have a fear of opening a restroom door, guessing whether it would be clean or not.”Aoi is one of many people who been d

• Automode

  

  Tale of two sports cars in wintery Korea

  GM’s new Camaro SS is a rough diamond to Mercedes-Benz’s refined CLS 400 d 4Matic

• Industry

  

  China, ASEAN countries emerge as biggest consumers of Korean agro-fishery products

  SEJONG -- South Korea’s agro-fishery products are gaining popularity in China and Southeast Asia on the back of their reputation for quality, freshness and safety.According to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, exports of fishery products hit an all-time high of $2.386 billion in 2018, surpassing the former record of $2.383 billion set in 2012.While the largest and second-largest export destinations for marine products were Japan with $760 million and China with $390 million, exports to Japan