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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[KH Explains] No more 'Michael' at Kakao Games
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Rapper jailed after public street fight with another rapper
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Woman gets suspended term for injuring boyfriend with knife
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Samsung chief bolsters ties with Germany’s Zeiss
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NewJeans pops out ‘Bubble Gum’ video amid troubles at agency
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Med schools expect 1,500+ new admission slots next year
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Nominee for chief of anti-corruption body pledges 'independence, effectiveness'
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[Grace Kao] Hybe vs. Ador: Inspiration, imitation and plagiarism
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[Robert J. Fouser] Seoul as a global city?
In almost every ranking of important cities in the world, London, Paris, New York and Tokyo almost always appear in the top five, and always in the top 10. They are global centers of business and finance, art and design, media and publishing, fashion and trends. A similar ranking of cities 50 or 100 years ago would have revealed similar results. This leads to some interesting questions: What is it about the Big Four that makes their dominance so durable? What is the outlook for the future? What
July 15, 2014
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Time to close Indonesia’s $21 billion cookie jar
As Indonesians head to the polls, the outside world is antsy about where the next president might take Southeast Asia’s biggest economy. The nationalistic tone of the contest has investors fearing the pro-market reforms of outgoing Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono will fall by the wayside.Question is, how will we know if the geopolitically vital country with the world’s biggest Muslim population is moving forward or lurching backward? It all may come down to one word: subsidies.The financial support Ind
July 15, 2014
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The Supreme Court vs. boomers and progress
On its surface, last Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Harris v. Quinn was about unions. But it’s actually about all of us, and the future we want for our country, particularly in light of the baby boom generation reaching retirement age.Every day, 10,000 Americans turn 65 ― that’s one person every eight seconds. By the time you finish reading this piece, a dozen more people will have turned 65. The baby boom generation is catalyzing an unprecedented “elder boom” in America. Nine out of
July 15, 2014
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Is Hamas trying to get Gazans killed?
Mahmoud Abbas, the sometimes moderate, often ineffectual leader of the Palestinian Authority, just asked his rivals in Hamas a question that other bewildered people are also asking: “What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?” The Gaza-based Hamas has recently fired more than 500 rockets at Israeli towns and cities. This has terrorized the citizenry, though caused few casualties, in large part because Israel is protected by the Iron Dome antirocket system.In reaction to these indiscrimin
July 15, 2014
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[Kim Seong-kon] Are we good at foreign affairs and diplomacy?
These days, you can have as many identities as you want. When I delivered a lecture at an American university recently, the person who introduced me to the audience announced, “Today’s guest speaker is a professor and journalist from South Korea.” A journalist! That title was something new to me but I liked it. Presumably, the American introducer knew that I was a regular columnist for The Korea Herald and thought that I deserved the title. A few days ago, while browsing the Internet, I found a
July 15, 2014
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[Rachel Marsden] Disguise for profiteering
PARIS ― Billionaire Hungarian-American oligarch George Soros is an extremely concerned humanitarian who can be counted on to put his considerable bank balance where his concerns are. Lately, those concerns have included Ukraine and other former Soviet satellite states; Syria; immigration rights in America; the U.S. banking system; and the Great Lakes region of Africa, where all the mining opportunities just happen to be. Perhaps he could lay off the generosity long enough for us to recover from
July 14, 2014
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The shrinking role of religion in modern America
Surveying the response to last month’s Hobby Lobby decision, I was struck by a comment from progressive Massachusetts senator and possible Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren.Speaking about the ruling, Warren remarked: “I cannot believe that we live in a world where (we)would even consider letting some big corporation deny the women who work for it access to the basic medical treatments or prescriptions that they need based on vague moral objections.”I won’t address inaccuracies i
July 14, 2014
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Coulter, not soccer, to blame for moral decay
Ann Coulter knows how to get our attention, which is not always a good thing. Nikita Kruschev got our attention, as did Miley Cyrus, Sandra Fluke and George Zimmerman. The mere fact that we’re listening is not a propitious sign. However, it does mean that whatever falls from Ann’s mouth will generally be talked about by the sort of people who either think she is a goddess of common sense or who think she peddles horse manure.I don’t fall into either category.To me, the objectively brilliant pund
July 14, 2014
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[Trudy Rubin] Iraqi leader must step aside
Having ignored Iraq since 2009, the Obama team is now desperately trying to devise a way to prevent its total collapse ― and to roll back the jihadi state newly established on a third of Iraqi territory.The only slim hope of doing either requires the ouster of the leader whom the United States has backed for nearly a decade, Iraq’s paranoid prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.Al-Maliki’s sectarian Shiite politics have driven Iraq’s Sunnis ― a fifth of the country’s population ― into the arms of the
July 14, 2014
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Why Adidas beat Nike at the World Cup
In the 2014 World Cup of sporting goods companies, Adidas has beaten Nike hands down. The mechanics of that victory are remarkably similar to those of Germany’s success on the field: It’s all about smarts versus flash.In the global sportswear market, Nike Inc. is No. 1 with a 17 percent share. Adidas AG is second with 12 percent. In soccer, where the two have a combined 70 percent share, the positions are reversed. Nike has been working hard to catch up: Its soccer sales amounted to $2.3 billion
July 14, 2014
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Obama, Merkel and the spy who used Gmail
Angela Merkel is just about the most pro-American German chancellor the U.S. could hope for. How stupid, then ― there really is no better word ― for the U.S. to allow its intelligence agencies to make life so difficult for her.Over the last week, German prosecutors have initiated investigations into the Central Intelligence Agency’s attempts to recruit two low-level government bureaucrats of questionable value and even more questionable competence. (One offered classified information over Gmail.
July 14, 2014
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[David Ignatius] Obama’s global challenge
WASHINGTON ― In President Barack Obama’s sometimes maddeningly cautious foreign policy, you can see him struggling to answer what may be the hardest question of his presidency: How should the United States project power in a disorderly world without making the same mistakes it did in Iraq and Afghanistan? Obama, whose deliberative approach often resembles that of a Supreme Court justice rather than a politician, has developed a conceptual framework for combating terrorism and instability. It loo
July 13, 2014
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Middle East nations take separate paths
LAGUNA BEACH ― During a recent trip to the Middle East, I was struck by the growing gap between countries ― so much so that, more than ever, I came away convinced that it makes no sense today to talk of the region as a coherent whole. Rather than pursuing internal convergence, this important part of the world is now following at least three paths, characterized by large divergences that will persist ― and likely grow ― for years to come.On one path are countries like Iraq, Libya, and Syria, whic
July 13, 2014
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[Peter Singer] Do regions have a right to secede from countries?
BARCELONA ― The European Union has brought 28 countries into a closer political and economic union. Paradoxically, it has also made it more feasible to contemplate the breakup of some of those countries.Independence for a small state outside of a political and economic group like the EU would be risky nowadays. Within the EU, however, the barriers between states ― and thus the economic and political risks of independence ― are lower.Consider Scotland, where a popular referendum on independence w
July 13, 2014
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Chicago Democrats a protected species
Prominent Chicago Democrats have had an easy time with the national media for decades ― as easy as shaking a ring of keys to distract an anxious child in church.Former Mayor Richard M. Daley rode a bicycle in photo ops and put a few plants on the roof of City Hall, leading the national news networks to cast him as the “green” mayor, not as the absolute boss of a broken and corrupt political system that piled debt on the city and drained its future for the benefit of the insiders.President Barack
July 13, 2014
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Shevardnadze: Silver fox of dictatorship and democracy
MOSCOW ― Throughout his years in power, Eduard Shevardnadze was known as the “silver fox,” a man who seemed to glide effortlessly from leader of Soviet Georgia and Kremlin Politburo member to Mikhail Gorbachev’s reform-minded foreign minister, before reemerging as post-Soviet Georgia’s pro-Western president, ironically opposing Gorbachev. He regarded himself as a hero who liberated Georgia from Russia’s tight embrace. He was also one of the most corrupt politicians his country ever saw.By the en
July 13, 2014
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[Joseph E. Stiglitz] U.S. delusions Down Under
NEW YORK ― For better or worse, economic-policy debates in the United States are often echoed elsewhere, regardless of whether they are relevant. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s recently elected government provides a case in point.As in many other countries, conservative governments are arguing for cutbacks in government spending, on the grounds that fiscal deficits imperil their future. In the case of Australia, however, such assertions ring particularly hollow ― though that has not sto
July 11, 2014
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[David Ignatius] Rethinking Wilson’s points
WASHINGTON ― As American policymakers ponder the future shape of the Middle East, they should perhaps recall that the United States was opposed to the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, the famous “line in the sand” that is now said to be dissolving. American’s opposition back then was based on its rejection of the secret diplomacy between Britain and France that produced the plan to divide the Ottoman Empire after World War I. The U.S. opposed this neo-colonial carve-up of the region and called instea
July 10, 2014
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Why Germany crushed Brazil
Germans are having a hard time believing what happened Tuesday night in Brazil. Sure, they are celebrating their country’s 7-1 win over the home favorites in a World Cup semifinal ― street musicians on Berlin’s S-Bahn are playing “for the German champions” today ― but newspaper headlines speak of incredulity rather than sheer joy.“Unimaginable, incomprehensible, inconceivable,” said the headline in the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine. “Is it really true?” wondered Munich’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Eve
July 10, 2014
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How to maintain China’s falling suicide rate
Suicide is a major public health issue across the world. It is the cause of 800,000 premature deaths globally, according to latest statistics.In the 1990s, China had one of the highest suicide rates (23.2 per 100,000 people). An estimated 250,000 suicides were reported every year in the 1990s, accounting for about a quarter of all suicides in the world. In fact, suicide was the fifth leading cause of deaths in China.Besides, more women than men committed suicides in China during the period, whic
July 10, 2014