Most Popular
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Blinken calls on China to press N. Korea to end its 'dangerous' behavior
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New celebrity-endorsed therapy for face contouring requires only a pair of rubber bands
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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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Rapper jailed after public street fight with another rapper
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[Weekender] How DDP emerged as an icon of Seoul
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[KH Explains] No more 'Michael' at Kakao Games
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Woman gets suspended term for injuring boyfriend with knife
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Doctor group's incoming head renews call for govt. to scrap medical school quota hike for dialogue
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NewJeans pops out ‘Bubble Gum’ video amid troubles at agency
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[Yang Sung-jin] Perception of gaming in Korea
In an episode illustrating the efficient use of symbols, Victor Hugo once sent a telegram to his publisher that simply read “?” What he received was an equally simple “!” Hugo wanted to know how his book was doing, and the exclamation point revealed it was doing quite well. When the same symbols are used in multiplayer online games, they serve different purposes. In “World of Warcraft,” a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by U.S.-based Blizzard Entertainment, players often come acro
Nov. 19, 2014
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Creativity, corporatism and power of crowds
NEW HAVEN ― Economic growth, as we learned long ago from the works of economists like MIT’s Robert M. Solow, is largely driven by learning and innovation, not just saving and the accumulation of capital. Ultimately, economic progress depends on creativity. That is why fear of “secular stagnation” in today’s advanced economies has many wondering how creativity can be spurred.One prominent argument lately has been that what is needed most is Keynesian economic stimulus ― for example, deficit spend
Nov. 19, 2014
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[Park Sang-seek] The Eurasian initiatives and South Korea
Recently, “Eurasian Initiative” and “New Silk Road” have become catchphrases in Central Asia, China and South Korea. The U.S. announced a “New Silk Road” initiative back in June 2011, Chinese leader Xi Jinping proposed a new overland Silk Road initiative and a maritime Silk Road project in September and October 2013, respectively, while Russia officially launched the Eurasian Union in May 2014. South Korean President Park Geun-hye has joined this Eurasian integration movement by announcing her o
Nov. 19, 2014
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Empowering women for sustainable development
Change is in the air: Today women have better access to education, health services and jobs, as well as a greater voice in politics. Progress, however, in women’s empowerment has been slow and uneven. Growth and development gains have not been shared equally, both across the globe and within regions, with development gaps wider for poor and ethnic groups and those at the lower end of the income strata. Violence, conflicts and climate adversities have disproportionately impacted women, magnifying
Nov. 19, 2014
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[Lee Jae-min] Issues in FTA with China
The year 2014 has been quite productive for Korea in terms of free trade agreements. Australia, then Canada and China, and now New Zealand have agreed to free trade deals with Korea. While all these FTAs are important for Korea, the one with China, Seoul’s largest trading partner, marks a watershed moment for Korea’s FTA policy started in the early 2000s. Many things are still on the drawing board and both countries will now conduct “legal scrubbing” to polish the text to reflect what has been a
Nov. 18, 2014
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Better economic policy won’t save Japan
When I was a wee thing, just a slip of a girl launching herself into the mad and exciting world of economic policy reporting, you used to hear a lot of talk about Japan’s Lost Decade. From World War II to about 1990, Japan posted the most miraculous economic transformation of the 20th century. Self-flagellating magazine articles and paranoid novels were written by anxious Americans who saw ― all too clearly! ― that Japan’s mighty economic engine would soon overpower lazy, atomistic Americans, fo
Nov. 18, 2014
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Putin-bashing at G20 meeting was juvenile
At the Group of 20 meeting in Brisbane, Australia, over the weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin was slighted in numerous ways, big and small. “I guess I’ll shake your hand,” Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said to his face. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, in a public statement, made a mocking reference to the Russian Navy vessels parked off Papua New Guinea ahead of the summit: “I didn’t feel it necessary to bring a warship myself.”The Australians sent a relatively insignificant
Nov. 18, 2014
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Obama’s troop boost in Iraq is hard to fathom
President Barack Obama said he intends to double the number of American troops in Iraq from 1,500 to 3,000.It is difficult to say why he made that decision. As a presidential candidate in 2008 Obama promised to end the war in Iraq, reversing President George W. Bush’s 2003 decision to invade on what turned out to be false premises. Iraq did not possess a weapons of mass destruction program and did not have ties to al-Qaida. Obama’s administration then followed Bush’s lead in concealing the fact
Nov. 18, 2014
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[Kim Seong-kon] Is Korea a capitalist country?
South Korea is a strange country, where capitalism, socialism and communism blend and coexist. Our economic system is capitalist, our social structure is socialist, and our mindsets are communist. We adopt capitalism for our economic development, but strive for socialist welfare and demand equal distribution of wealth.It is no wonder South Korea is called a land of contradictions. For instance, had it not been for the benefits of capitalism, Koreans would not have accomplished such outstanding e
Nov. 18, 2014
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There’s more dignity in defying death
The seamless vision of life, as the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin once noted, is the only way to insure individual dignity. We are only as strong as the weakest links in our human chain, so the way we treat the young, the sick and the elderly is the truest bell weather of our evolution as a compassionate society.Lately, though, that compassion has been lacking, and I suspect it’s due in no small part to our cavalier attitude toward unborn life. If you are capable of dehumanizing something at it
Nov. 18, 2014
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[David Ignatius] Obama’s Beijing surprise
WASHINGTON ― The photograph on Tuesday last week from Beijing was as carefully arranged as a display of Ming china: Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping discussing the world’s business as they walked, side by side, across a bridge with ornate, brilliantly illuminated guideposts. The artfully staged image conveyed a message: China has arrived as a great power. Its leader stands nearly as tall as the American president (and he’s ready, as he showed later, to speak American-style, without notes,
Nov. 17, 2014
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Japan Inc. still has its head in the sand
When things go wrong, what is it with Japanese corporate chieftains? Shigehisa Takada, the chairman of Tokyo-based Takata Corp., is facing a spiraling scandal after news that another victim ― a pregnant woman in Malaysia ― was killed by one of his company’s airbags. The U.S. Senate is holding hearings on the issue next week, and a U.S. grand jury has subpoenaed company officials. And yet Takada remains AWOL, leaving company flacks to assure reporters that he “deeply apologizes” for the five deat
Nov. 17, 2014
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[Shashi Tharoor] The politics of selecting U.N. secretary-general
NEW DELHI ― Election cycles are growing longer worldwide. In the United States, for example, ambitious politicians are already campaigning hard in bellwether states for the 2016 presidential election. Yet some races ― such as that for the next United Nations secretary-general, which will also be held in 2016 ― still occur largely under the radar. This should change.A race for U.N. secretary-general, which is usually fought so discreetly that it seems almost clandestine, bears little resemblance
Nov. 17, 2014
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World powers are again forming alliances, as they did before WWI
At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the Great War was over. But the “War to End All Wars” famously didn‘t live up to its billing. Still, it had greater impact on the world than any event of the last thousand years. The question is whether another such war might be looming today.It was in World War I that humanity first practiced the industrialization of human slaughter ― 16 million people were killed, more than 17 million were wounded.Nobody could seem to stop it. During
Nov. 17, 2014
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Israel must pull back, before Armageddon
While Shiites and Sunnis kill each other in Syria, an even more dangerous religious war could soon explode in Jerusalem, involving Jews, Muslims, and Christians.I refer to the mounting Israeli-Arab tensions over control of the Temple Mount, or Haram al-Sharif, as Muslims call it, in Jerusalem’s Old City, which is Judaism’s holiest site and the third holiest for Islam. “The Temple Mount is a powder keg, and arsonists have the upper hand,” blared a Wednesday headline in the Israeli newspaper Ha’ar
Nov. 17, 2014
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[Peter Singer] The ethics of fighting Ebola
It may, in the end, turn out to be fortunate that a handful of people in developed countries ― four in the United States and one in Spain ― have contracted Ebola. Tragic as this was for Thomas Duncan, the only one of these patients who has died, if all of the more than 13,000 cases and nearly 5,000 deaths had occurred in Africa, Ebola would never have aroused nearly as much attention in rich countries.In this respect, Ebola is ― or, rather, was ― an example of what is sometimes referred to as th
Nov. 16, 2014
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[Ram Garikipati] Shady projections on FTA
Now that the dust has settled, and the free trade deal between Korea and China has been sealed, it is time to look at the validity of various claims being made on its economic impact once it is implemented sometime next year. I am not referring to the merits or demerits of the FTA and the bruises to the agricultural sector, but to the economic projections that are being thrown around by the government officials.There is no denying the high expectations for the trade deal compared to the FTAs wit
Nov. 16, 2014
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Politics in Myanmar gets complicated
The conflict in Myanmar was once easy to caricature: brutal generals on one side, pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi on the other. At this point, however, to sustain Myanmar’s halting political opening, the world needs to adopt a less black-and-white view.Abroad at least, Suu Kyi’s is still the most-heeded voice on Myanmar. Her pessimism about ongoing reforms ― ahead of her meeting with President Barack Obama this week, she warned the world not to be “over-optimistic” about their progress ― has
Nov. 16, 2014
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Failure or success in English education?
It is no wonder that many students hate English. English education is tremendously unfair to the study-obsessed youth of Korea, who are condemned to mediocrity or failure in English due to the promotion of archaic memorization as the main study strategy and the harm done by translation, both of which discourage thinking in English. Can we imagine being able to function in our native languages without thinking in them? Why should learning a foreign language be so different? Memorization interfere
Nov. 16, 2014
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Defining and dividing a world of rich, poor
BERLIN ― From celebrations here in united Germany marking the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall to those in the United States over midterm elections delivering a more evenly divided Washington, what a few weeks it has been for division, past and present. It would be understandable if Koreans looked at the media coverage from Germany and themselves wondered when reunification will come to a divided Korea.How apropos it has been to watch the U.S. midterm election returns from here in this
Nov. 16, 2014