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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[Grace Kao] Hybe vs. Ador: Inspiration, imitation and plagiarism
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Nominee for chief of anti-corruption body pledges 'independence, effectiveness'
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Uber won’t flop like Groupon
Uber Technologies Inc. recently raised $1.2 billion at about a $17 billion valuation, a number that has raised quite a few eyebrows. To be sure, there are reasons to doubt Uber’s long-term success, but that doesn’t make it a bad investment.The first objection to Uber’s valuation is that the total taxi and limousine market is only worth around $11 billion in the U.S. Perhaps it’s worth double that worldwide. Surely Uber isn’t going to simply capture the entire market without competition?The probl
June 16, 2014
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Online journalism is suffering print’s fate
If you want the pithiest summation of the problem facing modern journalism, here it is: dollars in print, dimes on the Web, pennies on mobile.That’s advertising revenue we’re talking about. Journalism is what economists call a “two-sided market”: Media companies sell news and entertainment to you, and they sell you to advertisers. Outside of some specialty trade publications, subscriptions have never covered the cost of producing newspapers and magazines. In fact, they rarely exceed the cost of
June 16, 2014
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[David Ignatius] Are attacks on U.S. coming?
WASHINGTON ― As al-Qaida splits and morphs into different affiliates and offshoots, U.S. counterterrorism officials worry about what one calls a “potential competitive dynamic” in which different factions ― including the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, now sowing civil war in Iraq ― seek to bolster their credibility by attacking the United States. This new danger of attacks on the U.S. homeland is what concerns the Obama administration most about the splintering process that has created ISIS, a
June 15, 2014
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CIA makes an ill-advised foray into Twitterverse
PARIS ― On June 6, the Central Intelligence Agency joined the social media platform Twitter with its first tweet: “We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet.” Presumably this is an attempt by the agency to develop its “brand.” Here’s why this is a really bad idea:― The CIA doesn’t need a brand. If anything, the agency is supposed to be all about discretion and secretiveness, meaning that it should be defined solely by its conspicuous absence. In fact, if the CIA ever wanted to
June 15, 2014
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[Yu Kun-ha] Korea ready for spirited fight in World Cup
The world is gripped by soccer fever with the World Cup underway in Brazil. During the next few weeks, about half of the world’s population will be riveted to their TVs to watch the planet’s biggest quadrennial soccer event.Many Korean soccer fans are having sleepless nights to watch all the live action from the opposite side of the globe. They have to stay awake until the early morning, as all games start after 1 a.m. But World Cup fever here is more subdued than in previous years. One factor i
June 15, 2014
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Why this merger boom is different
As one can sense from all the news about mergers and acquisitions lately, these deals are booming again worldwide. What’s new this time is that markets are rewarding the buying companies and not just those being sold. Why is this happening?Global M&A activity since January has increased at its fastest pace in 14 years. Big transactions, in particular, are surging; there have been roughly twice as many above $10 billion in value so far this year than at this point in 2013.What is striking about t
June 15, 2014
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Our culture behind Wisconsin girls’ stabbing case
What kind of culture produced those two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls charged with stabbing a classmate 19 times?Our culture.The 12-year-olds were charged as adults. Police said they wanted to kill their classmate so they could cement a pact with an evil, fictional character that lives only on the Internet.We won’t know for some time what really drove the girls to grab that knife and hold their friend down and stab her, if indeed that’s what happened. But we do know about the culture they live in.
June 15, 2014
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Is Japan turning to voodoo economics?
Sour grapes are in season in Tokyo as Shinzo Abe’s predecessor steps up and slams the prime minister’s tax plans.But beneath the bad feelings and twinge of regret, Yoshihiko Noda makes a very timely point when he accuses Abe of buying into Ronald Reagan’s debunked theories on trickle-down prosperity. “It’s a kind of voodoo economics,” Noda said of the “Abenomics” program that has thrust Japan back into the global spotlight.Noda made those comments, which are sure to irk Abe’s team, to my Bloombe
June 13, 2014
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[Robert Reich] Punish corporate wrongdoers
General Motors has fired 15 employees after an internal investigation into the company's handling of defective ignition switches that lead to at least 13 fatalities.But the only way to stop lawbreaking at GM or any other big corporation is to prosecute the people who break the law. And so far, no one at GM has been prosecuted.“What GM did was break the law. ... They failed to meet their public safety obligations,” scolded Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx after imposing the largest possib
June 13, 2014
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[David Ignatius] Al-Qaida on the rise again
WASHINGTON ― The capture Tuesday of Mosul, the hub of northern Iraq, by al-Qaida-linked militants is an alarm bell that violent extremists are on the rise again in the Middle East. And it’s a good time for President Obama to explain more about how he plans to fight this menace without making the mistakes of the past. Obama needs to alert the country to the renewed extremist threat partly to clarify the record. Just 19 months ago, he won reelection arguing that his policies had vanquished the mos
June 12, 2014
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Jeb Bush and the three amigos for presidency
The Republican field for president has one stable center of gravity right now ― Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Cruz doesn’t dominate with ideas or fundraising prowess or his political network. He dominates with orthodoxy. As the most inflexible and unyielding conservative presidential prospect in a party with an inflexible and unyielding base, Cruz represents the pure religion against which the beliefs of other candidates are judged.You can see the effects of Cruz’s gravitational pull on the retrograde
June 12, 2014
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[Jonathan Eyal] China’s dangerous power play in choppy waters
A passing phase or a dangerous and permanent strategic challenge to Asian stability for years to come? That, in a nutshell, is the debate about China’s current behavior in the South China Sea, which appears almost deliberately designed to provoke most of the region’s nations.But even if no categorical answer can be provided to this question, it is clear that China has crossed a fundamental psychological barrier.Beijing is no longer engaged in just a reactive or theoretical assertion of its right
June 12, 2014
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Jokowi comes of age, Prabowo aged by his past
In the run-up to Monday night’s presidential candidate debate, the conventional wisdom among constituents was that Joko “Jokowi” Widodo was a softly spoken leader with a quiet assertiveness, while Prabowo Subianto was the leadership figure reared with a military background.After making a career out of quips and anecdotes, many wondered whether the former mayor of Surakarta could hold his own against the strong figure of a trained and experienced military officer.It is hard to be truly neutral in
June 12, 2014
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[Volker Perthes] Europe in a multipolar world
BERLIN ― One aspect of the Ukraine crisis that both Russia and the West need to understand is that the rest of the world appears to be relatively unconcerned about it. Though the West, along with Japan, may view the crisis as a challenge to the global order, most other states do not feel threatened by Russia’s annexation of Crimea or designs it may have elsewhere in Ukraine. Instead, many view this crisis as being largely about Europe’s inability to resolve its own regional disputes ― though a s
June 11, 2014
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[Kim Ji-hyun] Why we all need a backup
Call me outdated, but I’m not on a cloud, not even Google Drive. Despite having covered tech news for some time and written about the endless potential of cloud computing, I just never got around to actually get myself that kind of backup. My laziness finally came to bite me in the back when my phone suddenly died last week. Yes, yes, I know it happens to everyone at one point in their lives but I truly had not imagined it would happen to me.Or at least I wanted to ignore it because I had starte
June 11, 2014
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[Kim Myong-sik] Old and new meet graciously in DDP exhibition
“Gansong” Jeon Hyeong-pil was born in 1906 and died in 1962. Anyone who regrets that the great art collector’s 56-year life was too short can feel his rebirth while viewing the Gansong Exhibition in the new Dongdaemun Design Plaza.The dedication in March of the DDP as a center for promoting industrial and artistic design was no doubt one of the greatest cultural events in decades along with the opening of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul late last year. The huge amoeba-shaped edi
June 11, 2014
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Obama’s swap for Bergdahl: A presidential power play?
In the wake of the prisoner swap that resulted in Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s release by the Taliban, questions are rightly being asked about the deal’s legal justifications. In fact, the Obama administration did not comply with statutory requirements that it provide notice to Congress before transferring prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, and it has not fully explained how it believes its unilateral decision can be legally justified.It seems likely, however, that the administration is relying on inherent
June 11, 2014
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GM’s scandal is a warning to all of us
The opening sentence of the 325-page internal investigation report on a death-dealing scandal at General Motors paradoxically runs too long yet gets right to the point:“In the fall of 2002, General Motors personnel made a decision that would lead to catastrophic results ― a GM engineer chose to use an ignition switch in certain cars that was so far below GM’s own specifications that it failed to keep the car powered on in circumstances that drivers could encounter, resulting in moving stalls on
June 11, 2014
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[Lee Jae-min] Remember-me-not and Korea
People are set to forget. German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus’ (1850-1909) famous research shows that we start to forget 10 minutes after the study, losing 50 percent after an hour, 70 percent after one day, and 80 percent after one month. This human forgetfulness is sometimes a blessing. During his lecture trip to Korea in 2013, Eran Katz, an Israeli record holder for “memory” in the Guinness Book of World Records, praised “forgetting” as good for a healthy mind by releasing one’s brain spac
June 10, 2014
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China and India, made for each other
Ten years ago, Indian economist and politician Jairam Ramesh coined a word that captivated pundits and investors: “Chindia.”The idea that China and India might join forces, to cooperate as much as they compete, was both seductive and fleeting. Observers were heartened by promises from then-Chinese President Hu Jintao and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to enact sweeping internal reforms and embrace regional cooperation ― neither of which happened. The leaders of the world’s most populous na
June 10, 2014