Most Popular
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[Exclusive] Korean military set to ban iPhones over 'security' concerns
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Korean, Romanian leaders discuss defense tech, nuclear energy
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S. Korea calls on Japan to confront history amid Yasukuni Shrine visit
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Yoon’s jailed mother-in-law excluded from latest parole list
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Hybe and Min Hee-jin, CEO of Hybe sublabel Ador, lock horns
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[Pressure points] Leggings in public: Fashion statement or social faux pas?
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Korea’s homegrown nanosatellite successfully launches into space
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[Herald Interview] 'Amid aging population, Korea to invite more young professionals from overseas'
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Over-50s, men, single-person households take up majority of those filing for bankruptcy
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Aging population to drive down Korea's housing prices from 2040: experts
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Improving Korea-Japan relations is possible: look at the Germany-Poland example
During the last two decades, relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea starkly improved in the economic and cultural dimensions while political cooperation still shows a Cold War scheme. For a real normalization process to start, the two countries should follow the example set by two former foes turned friends: Germany and Poland.Look at the dynamics of bilateral trade and normalization that Tokyo and Seoul seem to have achieved. In 2010 total volume of trade was more than $92 billion ―
Jan. 8, 2012
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Police leave victims in the dark
As I look over my 2011, I not only appreciate the good experiences of the year, but revisit the difficulties, foremost of which was a cyber crime I suffered while living in Korea. As a foreigner, dealing with law enforcement was more complex, and in my case, as damaging as suffering the cyber attack.Months have passed and time has given me perspective so that I can look at the experience objectively and offer suggestions to help others. As I’d lived in Korea for many years, I had a number of bil
Jan. 8, 2012
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Internet ill-equipped to discuss the God particle
A couple of weeks ago, scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced that they’d made “significant progress” in the search for a subatomic particle called the Higgs boson ― the so-called God particle.Two teams of physicists conducting separate analyses of data collected by the Hadron supercollider outside of Geneva, Switzerland, noticed a similar rise in indication of particle decay in approximately the same range ― 125 gigaelectronvolts.I have no idea how much a
Jan. 8, 2012
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[Javier Solana] Peril or promise in North Korea?
MADRID ― Two days after Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s leader, died in a train in his country, South Korean authorities still knew nothing about it. Meanwhile, American officials seemed at a loss, with the State Department at first merely acknowledging that press reports had mentioned his death.The South Korean and U.S. intelligence services’ inability to pick up any sign of what had happened attests to the North Korean regime’s opaque character, but also to their own deficiencies. American planes a
Jan. 8, 2012
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The Roma is Europe’s squandered minority
BUDAPEST ― Today, millions of Europeans are afraid and frustrated as they face unemployment, loss of savings and pensions, radically reduced social benefits, and other economic hardships. Their fears are warranted, because the current financial crisis is undermining the very union that was established to heal Europe’s wounds at the end of World War II. But, in the midst of the general suffering, one group ― the Roma ― has been ignored. Europe’s largest and most disadvantaged ethnic minority, wit
Jan. 6, 2012
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[David Ignatius] History and imperiled middle class
WASHINGTON ― It’s a sign of these unsettled times that the analyst who famously announced “the end of history” in 1989, when the Soviet empire was crumbling and liberal, free-market democracy seemed inevitable, has just published a new essay with the provocative title “The Future of History.” Francis Fukuyama’s article appears in the January edition of the journal Foreign Affairs. It offers a good introduction to what may be the biggest political issue of 2012 ― the decline of the middle class i
Jan. 6, 2012
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Collecting golden eggs from migrant labor
The persistent perception one gets from all the reports about our migrant labor is that we consistently welcome the billions in remittances from their blood, sweat and tears. Yet policies since the 1980s also display a superficial sense of urgency in ensuring the security and welfare of millions of our men and women working far from home, many of them in high-risk situations.The Malaysian news agency Bernama reported recently that Indonesian workers sent home $6.1 billion last year despite unres
Jan. 6, 2012
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Tohoku reconstruction vital to nation as a whole
Getting post-disaster reconstruction efforts onto a steady track is a great task for Japan this year. We should consider the new year as “the first year of full-scale reconstruction” from the Great East Japan Earthquake.The March 11 quake and tsunami left many people bereft of their loved ones and deprived of their longtime homes, while also severing communities’ life-sustaining ties of mutual support.The number of people who were forced to evacuate, and saw out the old year while living in temp
Jan. 6, 2012
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[Shashi Tharoor] Anti-corruption contest in India
NEW DELHI ― India ended 2011 amid political chaos, as the much-awaited “Lokpal Bill,” aimed at creating a strong, independent anti-corruption agency, collapsed amid a welter of recrimination in the parliament’s upper house, after having passed the lower house two days earlier. The episode, which leaves the bill in suspended animation until its possible revival at the next session, raises fundamental issues for Indian politics which will need to be addressed in the New Year.The need for the bill
Jan. 6, 2012
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Did psychopaths take over Wall Street asylum?
It took a relatively obscure former British academic to propagate a theory of the financial crisis that would confirm what many people suspected all along: The “corporate psychopaths” at the helm of our financial institutions are to blame. Clive R. Boddy, most recently a professor at the Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University, says psychopaths are the 1 percent of “people who, perhaps due to physical factors to do with abnormal brain connectivity and chemistry” lack a “conscie
Jan. 5, 2012
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Foreign Koreanness captured in the movies
With the recent release of the first two trailers for “Papa,” it looks like mainstream Korean cinema will continue to wrestle with the issue of immigration and multiculturalism into the new year. As new as this theme may seem for Korean film, “Papa” actually follows in the footsteps of last year’s very successful “Wandeuki” (English title: “Punch”) and 2010’s almost equally successful “Banga Banga” (English title: “He’s on Duty”), as well as a string of independent films that addressed the same
Jan. 5, 2012
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Malcolm Gladwell test has Japan turning Chinese
If you want to silence a room filled with Japanese politicians, suggest they should learn from China. The conventional wisdom favors the flip side of this dynamic: China should be studying Japan’s playbook. Japan, after all, is an example of both what China needs to do (create a vibrant domestic economy and high living standards) and what it mustn’t (slide into bad-loan crises and deflation). Yet I have one word for Japanese policy makers who dismiss the idea they should heed China’s example: Sh
Jan. 5, 2012
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[Naomi Wolf] The prospects for global protest movements in 2012
NEW YORK ― What does the New Year hold for the global wave of protest that erupted in 2011? Did the surge of anger that began in Tunisia crest in lower Manhattan, or is 2012 likely to see an escalation of the politics of dissent?The answers are alarming but quite predictable: we are likely to see much greater centralization of top-down suppression ― and a rash of laws around the developed and developing world that restrict human rights. But we are also likely to see significant grassroots reacti
Jan. 5, 2012
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Child labor worldwide and 1930 Tariff Act
The scourge of child labor has proven difficult to eradicate. The International Labor Organization estimates that 215 million children are still being exploited for work, much of it hazardous. In recent years, the fair-trade movement has presented itself as an answer, offering, at a premium, goods and commodities certified to have been produced without exploitation. It is thus all the more appalling that a fair-trade program in Burkina Faso has been shown, in an investigation published in Bloomb
Jan. 4, 2012
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After tumult of 2011, here are some global hotspots to watch in 2012
Could the world in 2012 surprise us more than it did in 2011? Certainly, after Japan’s earthquake, the Middle East’s upheavals and Osama bin Laden’s death, the bar on shockers will be high. The known unknowns for 2012 already form a daunting list: the fate of the euro zone; the war in Afghanistan and the “peace” in Iraq; turmoil in Syria, Egypt and across the Middle East; Iran’s nuclear-weapons program; Pakistan’s chronic instability; Kim Jong-un’s succession and China’s soft landing, to name a
Jan. 4, 2012
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Ron Paul’s surge may cause headache for GOP
Mitt Romney, who as governor of Massachusetts turned to John Sasso for help in getting a health- care bill through the state legislature, may want to solicit the Democratic operative’s advice again, this time on how to handle Ron Paul. Even before the voting started in Iowa on Jan. 3, Romney was a prohibitive favorite to win the Republican nomination, a 77.2 percent probability as of Dec. 31, according to InTrade.com, an online betting service. Texas Congressman Paul, with a committed following,
Jan. 4, 2012
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Two Models for Europe
MUNICH -- Interest rates for public debt within the eurozone have spread once again, just as they did before the introduction of the euro. Balance-of-payment disparities are steadily increasing. The sovereign-debt crisis is eating its way from the periphery to the core, and the exodus of capital is accelerating. Since the summer, 300 billion euros, in net terms, may well have fled from Italy and France.The printing presses at the Banque de France and the Banca d’Italia are working overtime to ma
Jan. 4, 2012
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[J. Bradford DeLong] America’s financial leviathan
BERKELEY – In 1950, finance and insurance in the United States accounted for 2.8 percent of GDP, according to U.S. Department of Commerce estimates. By 1960, that share had grown to 3.8 percent of GDP, and reached 6 percent of GDP in 1990. Today, it is 8.4 percent of GDP, and it is not shrinking. The Wall Street Journal’s Justin Lahart reports that the 2010 share was higher than the previous peak share in 2006.Lahart goes on to say that growth in the finance-and-insurance share of the economy ha
Jan. 4, 2012
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America’s financial leviathan
BERKELEY ― In 1950, finance and insurance in the United States accounted for 2.8 percent of GDP, according to U.S. Department of Commerce estimates. By 1960, that share had grown to 3.8 percent of GDP, and reached 6 percent of GDP in 1990. Today, it is 8.4 percent of GDP, and it is not shrinking. The Wall Street Journal’s Justin Lahart reports that the 2010 share was higher than the previous peak share in 2006.Lahart goes on to say that growth in the finance-and-insurance share of the economy ha
Jan. 4, 2012
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[Hans-Werner Sinn] Two models for EU in the absence of capital control
MUNICH ― Interest rates for public debt within the eurozone have spread once again, just as they did before the introduction of the euro. Balance-of-payment disparities are steadily increasing. The sovereign-debt crisis is eating its way from the periphery to the core, and the exodus of capital is accelerating. Since the summer, 300 billion euros, in net terms, may well have fled from Italy and France.The printing presses at the Banque de France and the Banca d’Italia are working overtime to mak
Jan. 4, 2012