Twenty years ago this month, President George W. Bush stood before the United Nations and warned that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a “grave and gathering danger,” setting the stage for an invasion six months later based on false premises about super-destructive weapons and purported connections to the 9/11 attacks. The war ultimately killed 4,500 Americans and more than 100,000 Iraqis, and cost the...

Despite skepticism and foreseeable hurdles, President Yoon Suk-yeol’s “audacious initiative” to North Korea deserves attention. But it does so only if the Yoon administration has a workable roadmap to beat the odds stacked by domestic and international concerns. Yoon has embarked on a familiar economic path. In his Liberation Day speech on Aug. 15, he unveiled a slew of aid projects in exchange ...

Korean people commonly say that the image of the Korean Peninsula on a map seems to resemble a rabbit. The comparison is telling: Since a rabbit is a docile animal constantly threatened by ferocious predators, it matches the geopolitical situation of Korea, surrounded by belligerent neighboring countries. On the other hand, some optimists have come up with an opposite theory, that the Korean Peni...

We have been here before -- catastrophe, carnage, collapse, climate calamities, war. This hottest summer of discontent is prelude to a freezing winter of gas shortage, inflation and more conflicts. As Europe, China and parts of America are facing heat waves and drought, a global food calamity is looming. Without any exit strategy on the Ukraine war, we face a prolonged period of stalemate, devas...

Australia continues to be a source of bemused fascination to students of Western parliamentary democracy. After a pantomime period not so long ago in which the country changed its leader five times in five years, it has now been revealed that our most recently defeated prime minister, Scott Morrison, contrived over the past two years effectively to appoint himself minister to no fewer than five o...

Every time Vladimir Putin’s obliging generals dispatch a soldier to the front lines of their “special military operation” in Ukraine, they give him a gift from their supreme commander. It is a lengthy and very creative essay rewriting the history of their homeland and the country they’ll be invading. It is titled: “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” And it ends with the proud a...

This week marks the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between South Korea and China. Diplomatic recognition grew out of South Korea’s push to improve relations with former Eastern Bloc nations in the run-up to the Seoul Summer Olympics in 1988. In the year following the Olympics, communist forces began to collapse in much of Eastern Europe, and South Korea established diplomatic relations ...

Prosecutors from Seoul and Daejeon separately conducted search and seizure operations at the Presidential Archive last week to secure materials on two major controversial events during the Moon Jae-in administration. With recent bad memories of political reprisals under the pretext of righting past wrongs, there are concerns that this could mean the beginning of a new round of retaliation after a...

The results of the vote over a constitutional amendment that could have removed the right to abortion in Kansas gave rise to two common reactions: surprise (that a red state would vote in favor of abortion rights) and hope (that the process could be replicable elsewhere). Neither response, though, tells the full story. The real lesson in Kansas is that direct democracy -- can be a bulwark again...

Donald Trump and his Republican Party minions have presented a dog’s breakfast of explanations, evasions, accusations, and lies about the classified documents -- including top-secret files -- that federal agents reclaimed from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago basement this month. But ultimately, Trump’s best defense, if he is criminally charged, will be blackmail. Authorized by Attorney General Merrick Garlan...

Foreigners today are well aware of South Korea’s reputation as an economically successful and culturally influential country. Most especially, many young people across the world are huge fans of K-pop or Korean films and TV dramas such as “Parasite,” “Kingdom,” or “Squid Game.” Aside from the cultural domain, Korean technology, too, is widely known to the world, thanks to Samsung, LG and Hyundai....

Last week Secretary of State Anthony Blinken released the Biden administration’s long-awaited Africa strategy during his visit to South Africa. Perhaps the most notable shift in tone during Blinken’s five-day, three-country tour of the continent was his reference to African states as geostrategic players -- a clear response to the fact that America’s staunchest rivals on the continent (China, and...

Last week the Biden administration announced what would be included in the 18th package of security aid from the US to Ukraine. Worth $1 billion, it represents “the largest single drawdown of the US arms and equipment to date,” according to Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of Defense for policy. That brings the total to $8.5 billion since Russia invaded in February, which means even as inflation in...

In this broiling summer, when we are shaken by threats that could shatter our most globally revered national monument -- America’s cherished democracy -- a menacing development suddenly occurred half-a-world away. We glanced at it. Then we forgot about it amid the nonstop news gush about our domestic disarray. But attention must be paid. Because this could be how the next world war starts, on th...

As the United States sends stockpiles of weapons to Ukraine, another transatlantic mobilization is underway. Freed from two years of COVID restrictions, Americans are once again traveling in large numbers. Market observers have predicted a sixfold increase in American tourism to Europe. If you’re wondering what shipments of weapons and planeloads of tourists have in common, the answer is: Quite ...