Most Popular
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Tensions heighten ahead of first president-opposition chief meeting
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Seoul to provide housing subsidy to married couples with newborns
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New celebrity-endorsed therapy for face contouring requires only a pair of rubber bands
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Rapper jailed after public street fight with another rapper
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[KH Explains] No more 'Michael' at Kakao Games
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Nominee for chief of anti-corruption body pledges 'independence, effectiveness'
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Woman gets suspended term for injuring boyfriend with knife
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Med schools expect 1,500+ new admission slots next year
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Samsung chief bolsters ties with Germany’s Zeiss
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KT launches new mobile plans for foreign residents
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Cuba-U.S. relationship fix way overdue
A 45-minute phone call ― the first between presidents of Cuba and the United States in more than 50 years ― sealed an agreement that could end the pointless economic standoff that has held the island’s people hostage for generations.It will take an act of Congress, long overdue, to lift the U.S. embargo put in place shortly after Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba. But the steps announced Wednesday by President Barack Obama are a step ― make that a shove ― in the right direction.The U.S. will res
Dec. 25, 2014
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[Fong Chan Onn] Propelling ASEAN toward economic community
Malaysia will assume the chairmanship of ASEAN in 2015. However, a survey by the ASEAN secretariat in 2013 indicated that the average Malaysian lacked enthusiasm over being part of ASEAN.Who can blame us if the first thing that comes to our minds about having more porous borders is ― why doesn’t my char kway teow (fried flat noodles) taste the same anymore?Similarly, the ASEAN secretariat survey also showed that 3 out of 5 ASEAN citizens lacked a basic understanding of ASEAN.The result is hardly
Dec. 25, 2014
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Law and realpolitik in South China Sea
China’s rejection of the international process represented by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague is both a missed opportunity and a disappointing corollary to its intransigence on the South China Sea dispute. Beijing’s visceral opposition to third-party arbitration is based on the suspicion that the process is a means of exerting political pressure on it over territory it thinks is inherently Chinese. Thus, its recent position paper dismisses the special arbitral tribunal ― where th
Dec. 25, 2014
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Free economic zones should take center stage
Taiwan faces a multitude of challenges in its efforts to be involved in regional economic integration. One major challenge is that few free trade agreements have been signed with other countries. As a result, local exporters cannot enjoy tariff reductions that are granted to their trade competitors. This leaves local exporters with two options. The first is to slash prices by cutting down on costs or squeezing profit margins. This has damaging effects on business owners as well as employees and
Dec. 25, 2014
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[Robert J. Fouser] A healthy progressive politics
The Constitutional Court’s decision on Dec. 19 to disband the small leftist Unified Progressive Party upended Korean politics. By an 8-1 majority, the justices declared the party a threat to national security because of its sympathetic stance toward North Korea. The strongly worded judgment also forced the party to relinquish its five seats in the National Assembly and all of its assets and property. This marks the first time since 1958 that a political party has been forced to disband.As expect
Dec. 23, 2014
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Ready for oil at $20 a barrel?
When the U.S. Federal Reserve ended its quantitative-easing program in October, it also ended the primary driver of U.S. stocks during the past six years. So long as the central bank kept flooding the markets with money, investors had little reason to worry about a broader economy limping along at 2 percent real growth. Now investors face more volatile markets and securities that no longer move in lock-step. At the same time, investors must cope with slower growth in China, minuscule growth in t
Dec. 23, 2014
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[Kim Seong-kon] From Russia with love
In Ian Fleming’s 1957 spy novel, “From Russia with Love,” the British Secret Intelligence Service agent James Bond escapes from an assassination attempt by the Soviet counterintelligence agency, SMERSH, and triumphantly returns with a gorgeous Russian woman. Tatania, the beautiful Russian girl, is bait intended to lure Bond into a death trap, but she falls in love with the debonair British spy instead and defects to the West. Initially, James Bond is almost killed by a ruthless Russian assassin
Dec. 23, 2014
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A growing problem with a growing China
Former World Bank president Bob Zoellick encapsulated American policymakers’ hopes for a growing China: China should become a “responsible stakeholder” in the world economic and political system.To date this notion has largely been interpreted as foreign policy guidance. American diplomats work to channel China’s pursuit of regional security objectives into peaceful undertakings and without the threat of military force. They work to gain China’s cooperation in addressing worldwide issues like nu
Dec. 23, 2014
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Central bankers weren’t meant to be heroes
The U.S. recovery is starting to look halfway respectable. Europe’s economies, meanwhile, face the risk of a third recession in seven years. There’s a lesson in that contrast: Good economic policy means never having to ask your central bank to be a hero.It’s too soon to know how the story of the Great Recession will end. When the history is written, though, one theme will be paramount: It was the world’s central bankers, not its elected politicians, who had to deal with the crisis ― a task for w
Dec. 23, 2014
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Terrorists win a round over Sony’s ‘Interview’
If an anonymous group threatened in mid-December to harm bakeries without saying where, when or how, would every doughnut shop and cake vendor feel compelled to shut down through the holiday season? Of course not. Yet a threat by an anonymous group of hackers led the country’s major theater chains to close their doors to “The Interview,” Sony Pictures’ edgy comedy about a planned assassination of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. The hackers are engaged in terrorism, pure and simple, in an effort to st
Dec. 22, 2014
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[Park Sang-seek] How peaceful is the world?
Toward the end of each year, the world’s mass media outlets compete to select top 10 news events. This contest is enough to excite general readers but not educational enough to show them the future trends in the world. Recently, the World Economic Forum published a kind of guidebook titled “Outlook on Global Agenda 2015.” This pamphlet lists 10 trends in the world: deepening income inequality, the persistent rise in unemployment, lack of leadership, rising geostrategic competition, the weakening
Dec. 22, 2014
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[Andrew Sheng] Inequality and the future of economic growth
The year end is not a bad time to reflect where we are likely to proceed in a year of huge uncertainties. At the beginning of the year, the major headline events, such as Ukraine, ISIL, oil crash and Occupy Central were not on most people’s radar screen. As the year proceeded, there was realization that we are heading towards a period of slower growth and higher volatility, without much inflation as commodity and oil prices tanked to record levels not seen since the 1990s. The Global Citizens Fo
Dec. 22, 2014
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Unlocking ASEAN’s potential
SINGAPORE ― Can ten countries with different cultures, traditions, languages, political systems, and levels of economic development act in concert to expand their collective potential? That is the question with which the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has been wrestling for decades. Judging by their leaders’ ambitious vision for cooperation, the answer may be yes.What began as a straightforward push to reduce trade tariffs has evolved into a blueprint for a dynamic open market of 600 mil
Dec. 22, 2014
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My parents’ best gifts didn’t come wrapped
My parents didn’t spend too much time worrying about how my brother and I would turn out as adults. If we were happy doing whatever we were doing when we were kids, that was enough for them.We were not, in other words, taught to think only of our future achievements. There was never a “Do this now, even if it makes you unhappy, because you will be a better person for it,” rationale.My grandmother’s house, where my brother and I spent our earliest youth, was anything but childproof. To be honest,
Dec. 22, 2014
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[David Ignatius] Swinging for the fences
WASHINGTON ― The nadir for President Obama’s foreign policy was probably last April. His Republican critics were calling him “weak” and “indecisive” after Russia’s invasion of Crimea. A deflated Obama responded meekly that sometimes the best a president can do is to hit “singles” and “doubles.” Obama still isn’t hitting home runs. But he does seem to have rediscovered his stance as a leader. Last month, he made climate, military and investment agreements with China’s President Xi Jinping; this w
Dec. 21, 2014
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Putin talks tough but wants a deal
The picture Russian President Vladimir Putin painted of his country at Thursday’s annual press conference was Panglossian: Unemployment low, industrial production and the trade surplus up, more people having babies ― what could be better? As for the crashing ruble and oil price, these things would correct themselves ― within two years at the most.This was vintage Putin: unrepentant, belligerent and ― to anyone outside the bubble of Russia’s state-strangled media at least ― bordering paranoid-del
Dec. 21, 2014
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Thanking Bangladesh
NEW DELHI ― This month, India’s parliament took the first step toward a potentially momentous decision: to settle a boundary dispute with Bangladesh that dates back to the 1947 partition of the subcontinent. An agreement in this area would provide a major boost to the already warm bilateral relationship, not least by bolstering Bangladesh’s position in the region.The demarcation of the India-Pakistan border by the British was a slapdash affair, concocted by a collapsing empire in headlong retrea
Dec. 21, 2014
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Gender selection in a brave new world
Jayne and Jon Cornwill, an Australian couple, recently came to America with a bit of trouble.The trouble? Boys.They have three little boys, and three rambunctious boys were quite enough for the Cornwills, thank you. What the Cornwills wanted was a little girl.But all they got were boys. And this led to what is known in the sex selection business as profound “gender disappointment.”“It’s like mourning the death of a child you never had,” Mrs. Cornwill told British TV.Let that one sink in for a mo
Dec. 21, 2014
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[Christian C. Sahner] The Arab world’s vanishing Christians
PRINCETON, New Jersey ― This Christmas, like every Christmas, thousands of pilgrims and tourists will travel to the Middle East to celebrate the holiday in the land of the Bible. In Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem will lead a midnight mass, while in Syria ― where some Christians still speak dialects of Aramaic, similar to the ancient language Jesus spoke ― celebrations are likely to be subdued, curtailed by the dangers of a war that is tearing the country apa
Dec. 21, 2014
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[Robert Reich] The coin of the realm
A few years ago, hedge fund Level Global Investors made $54 million selling Dell Inc. stock based on insider information provided by a Dell employee. When charged with insider trading, Level Global Investors co-founder Anthony Chiasson claimed he didn’t know where the tip originated.The defense team for Chiasson and his co-defendant, Todd Newman of hedge fund Diamondback Capital Management LLC, argued that few traders on Wall Street ever know the true origin of the inside tips they use because c
Dec. 19, 2014