Most Popular
-
1
Tensions heighten ahead of first president-opposition chief meeting
-
2
Seoul to provide housing subsidy to married couples with newborns
-
3
[KH Explains] No more 'Michael' at Kakao Games
-
4
Rapper jailed after public street fight with another rapper
-
5
Woman gets suspended term for injuring boyfriend with knife
-
6
Samsung chief bolsters ties with Germany’s Zeiss
-
7
NewJeans pops out ‘Bubble Gum’ video amid troubles at agency
-
8
Med schools expect 1,500+ new admission slots next year
-
9
Nominee for chief of anti-corruption body pledges 'independence, effectiveness'
-
10
[Grace Kao] Hybe vs. Ador: Inspiration, imitation and plagiarism
-
Abe has a bad case of the slows
One thing is painfully clear about Shinzo Abe’s program to revive Japan: The man’s in no hurry.What else can be said about a prime minister who pledged in June 2013 to provide specifics on how he planned to make Japan relevant again ― only to wait until June 2014 to reveal them? If Abe wonders why stock markets yawned this week when he unveiled his deregulation agenda, that lack of urgency provides a partial explanation. Two other reasons: policy vagueness and a lack of audacity.Japanese chief e
June 20, 2014
-
ISIS ― is it too extreme to survive?
Just how terrifying is the Sunni Muslim extremist group that’s taken over a huge swath of territory in northern Iraq? Here are some clues:After seizing Iraq’s second-largest city, the group, known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, boasted of massacring 1,700 prisoners in cold blood.ISIS leaders have announced that they intend to assassinate Iraq’s Shiite Muslim religious leaders and destroy their shrines.ISIS is so extremist that even al-Qaida expelled the group earlier this year
June 19, 2014
-
[David Ignatius] The shattering Middle East
WASHINGTON ― Let’s look at the reality on the ground in the Middle East: Iraq and Syria are effectively partitioned along sectarian lines; Lebanon and Yemen are close to fracturing; Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia survive intact, but as increasingly authoritarian states. In the current, chaotic moment, we see two post-imperial systems collapsing at once: The state boundaries drawn by the Versailles Treaty in 1919 to replace the Ottoman Empire can’t hold the fractious peoples together. And a U.S.-
June 19, 2014
-
[Franki Raden] Beyond K-pop: Creative economy
In the classical world, Korean musicians secured their reputation a long time ago. Names such as Chung Kyung-wha (violinist) and Yun I-sang (composer) are among the best in the international classical music scene. But of course more recently, people across the globe have caught on to the K-pop phenomenon. Who would have imagined that the Korean kids could completely immerse themselves in African-American pop music genre and reproduce it in such a way to become adominant product in the internatio
June 19, 2014
-
Attraction of animal tipsters in the World Cup
Humans have, throughout history, treated animals in a peculiar manner. They have elevated some of the dumb creatures which they otherwise cherish as delicacies to oracles or even deities. Using animals as fortune tellers is usually thought to be confined to the not-so-enlightened developing world, but, in reality, that practice is popular the world over even in western countries which have taken vast strides in science and technology.No FIFA World Cup tournament is complete without psychic anima
June 19, 2014
-
Migrant workers hit by Thailand’s iron fist
Seizing power was the easy part; the everyday task of running the country is proving far more difficult for the Thai military. Chief among those difficulties is management of the workforce, which the junta must now realize is not primarily a security issue.Pictures emerging last week of Cambodian workers fleeing the Kingdom are a worrying development. Cambodians searching for work have of course flowed back and forth over the border for years, but the Thai junta’s declaration that it would “mana
June 19, 2014
-
Protectionism, nationalism
Several analysts seem to read too deeply into what they consider the strident tones of nationalism and protectionism in the nationally televised debates between the two presidential candidates, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Prabowo Subianto on Sunday night.But we assure foreign investors within and outside the country that much of the talk about the dominant role of foreign capital and the urgent need to restrict foreign investment is mostly nationalistic rhetoric that usually acquires political curr
June 19, 2014
-
[Yang Sung-jin] What I remember about the cats
When the summer comes, my thoughts of two cats always bring some mixed feelings. Both the cats, named Charlie and Shadow, were chubby and yet their personalities were quite different. Charlie was gloomy, shy and introspective; Shadow, despite the not-so-bright name, was cheerful, playful and full of the energy found in typical extroverts.I miss those cats, with some warmth welling up in my heart. But it’s also disheartening to recall their images since I know they passed away several years ago.
June 18, 2014
-
Why diplomats curse about Ukraine
The escalating conflict in Ukraine marks an unfortunate tendency in the world of international relations: The people responsible for defusing the crisis are losing their ability to be diplomatic.The latest gaffe came June 14, when Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia tried to calm a mob that had attacked the Russian embassy, overturning cars and hurling Molotov cocktails, to protest the shooting down of a Ukrainian military transport plane near Lugansk, in which 49 people were killed. D
June 18, 2014
-
How to end the NSA dragnet surveillance
One year ago this month, Americans learned that their government was engaged in secret dragnet surveillance, which contradicted years of assurances to the contrary from senior government officials and intelligence leaders.On this anniversary, it is more important than ever to let Congress and the administration know that Americans will reject half-measures that could still allow the government to collect millions of Americans’ records without any individual suspicion or evidence of wrongdoing.It
June 18, 2014
-
[Andrew J. Bacevich] Can Obama pull a Nixon with the Iraq crisis?
For the United States, the Iraq war ranks as the most consequential foreign policy failure since Vietnam. In neither instance did U.S. forces succumb to outright defeat, of course. In both, with victory proving elusive, Americans wearied of the fight and simply walked away, abandoning the people for whom their troops had ostensibly fought.In terms of outcomes, however, these two conflicts differ in crucial respects. In Vietnam, we quit and got away with it. Lyndon Johnson’s recklessness in expan
June 18, 2014
-
Iraq could break into explosive fragments
Cue the partisan finger-pointing on Iraq: The left will say the unfolding disaster in Iraq is George W. Bush’s fault. The right will blame President Barack Obama. Who’s correct?A storm of religious fanaticism, sectarian fury and terrorist brutality has blown into Iraq. As the ultra-radicals from the ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, sweep across the country encountering a retreating Iraqi army, the possible outcomes are perilous.Iraq could unravel at the seams, breaking into unstable, c
June 18, 2014
-
[Robert J. Fouser] What is progressive education?
The recent local elections gave both parties a mixed result, which has become the norm in Korean politics. The ruling Saenuri Party avoided expected heavy losses, and the opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy held onto a number of important positions and expanded its share of the vote in ruling party strongholds. The most interesting story, however, was the election of 13 progressive heads of local boards of education. Conservatives won only four of the races, thus shifting leadership o
June 17, 2014
-
China’s brewing subprime mortgage crisis
China’s infamous “ghost cities” are even scarier than they sound.As home prices across China have fallen 10.2 percent in the first five months of this year, property developers are showing signs of panic. Now they seem to be drawing their inspiration from Angelo Mozilo. Like the former head of Countrywide Financial Corp., they’re doing their worst to evade regulations meant to tamp down on property speculation, and have even started offering no-money-down loans to China’s 1.3 billion property-ob
June 17, 2014
-
[Kim Seong-kon] ‘Korea’s 13’ and the future of Korean education
In the mesmerizing Hollywood film “Ocean’s 13” Daniel Ocean gathers his 13 deft partners to ruin the wicked capitalist Willy Bank on the opening night of his hotel-casino, appropriately named “The Bank.” The reason is simple; Rueben Tishkoff, one of Ocean’s partners-in-crime, was conned by his former business partner Bank, and Ocean wants to get revenge for Rueben. Thus Ocean and his partners conjure up two plans. One plan is to prevent The Bank from winning the prestigious Five-Diamond Award, a
June 17, 2014
-
Has the ‘Nehruvian consensus’ come to an end?
NEW DELHI ― The victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its leader, Narendra Modi, in India’s general election last month has raised a crucial question about the country’s future. With the BJP sweeping to power on a platform of aggressive nationalism and business-friendly corporatism, has the socioeconomic consensus dating to India’s first prime minister, the democratic socialist Jawaharlal Nehru, come to an end?The “Nehruvian consensus” facilitated India’s democratic maturation and accommodat
June 17, 2014
-
Voters’ message behind Eric Cantor’s defeat
Voters’ revolts are always instructive. But first you have to figure out what the voters were trying to say. And in the days since Rep. Eric Cantor, the second-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, lost his GOP primary election, there’s been plenty of disagreement about that.The prevailing conclusion in the GOP establishment has been that Cantor was mostly a victim of incompetence ― his own and his pollster’s, who told him he was leading in his Virginia district by a margin of 34 p
June 17, 2014
-
How U.S. politics undermines U.S. security
As Iraq unravels, a painful truth about U.S. politics and foreign policy is becoming more evident: The U.S. is very good in all-or-nothing situations, but all-or-nothing situations don’t often arise.This is a country that can and will meet existential threats with unity of purpose and vast resources. In this regard, even now, it stands alone. Few threats rise to that level. Lesser dangers can still be serious, without commanding or justifying that kind of response. Precisely for that reason, the
June 16, 2014
-
[William Pesek] China’s bubble: Millionaires
Funny how everyone thought China would get old before it got rich. The opposite seems to be true.A new Boston Consulting Group study shows America’s lock on the most-millionaires title may be in jeopardy after a surge in Chinese wealth. The Middle Kingdom surpassed Japan and Europe in the most recent survey, boasting 2.4 million millionaires. That’s still far off the U.S.’ 7.1 million, of course. But the absence of transparency in China and the vast networks that exist to spirit wealth into bank
June 16, 2014
-
[Struan Stevenson] United States and Iraq, it’s all over again
Will Washington make the same mistake on Iraq twice?We tried to evade it, and pretend the crisis is over or never really existed. But as John Adams said: “Facts are stubborn things.”Iraq, a war-torn country that preoccupied all of our minds throughout the first decade of the 21st century, but that we tried to forget in the last few years, is now at a serious turning point and with it the West is once again at a major geopolitical crossroad.While the world was focusing on some other troubled area
June 16, 2014