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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Nominee for chief of anti-corruption body pledges 'independence, effectiveness'
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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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KT launches new mobile plans for foreign residents
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Indonesia’s reluctance to remember September 1965
Horrible things happened in Indonesia between autumn 1965 and spring 1967. There is that eternal battle between memory and forgetting, a reality which reasserts itself when you go into any discussion of the horrors that were inflicted on Indonesians after Sept. 30, 1965. On the night of Sept. 30, the world was informed, a plot by the country’s communist party to seize power had ended up in the murder of six generals of the army. A seventh one survived. He was General Suharto. And he would go on
Oct. 3, 2013
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Learn from mistakes and stop the wastage
Malaysia’s Auditor-General’s Report 2012 tabled in parliament on Tuesday has once again thrown up the usual slew of cases involving mismanagement of funds to downright corruption.Some of the cases highlighted are bound to raise a chuckle or two, like how the customs department had to destroy 602,089 ringgit ($185,829) worth of shoes bought for its staff because they did not meet specifications.We are used to seeing customs destroying goods confiscated in the line of duty but to destroy 7,659 pai
Oct. 3, 2013
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Criminalizing anti-Buddhist acts is not very Buddhist
Is “Knowing Buddha” ― a group of Thai Buddhists who are relentlessly tackling what they see as a disrespectful act against the image of Buddha ― the new face of Thai Buddhism?The year-old group has been battling manufacturers of all sorts of products around the world that exploit the image of the Buddha to make money. The goods range from skateboards, lampstands, armchairs and underwear to bars named after the historical Buddha such as the Buddha Bar in Paris and Buddha Tattoo.While I sympathize
Oct. 3, 2013
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[Kim Myong-sik] Is bringing overseas artifacts home desirable?
Culture Minister Yoo Jin-ryong seems to have barely weathered a storm of public censure with sincere explanations about his alleged remarks hinting the possibility of returning to Japan Buddhist statues that a group of Koreans stole from Tsushima. He faced sudden embarrassment when the Japanese media quoted their Culture Minister Hakubun Shimomura, coming from a meeting with Korean and Chinese culture ministers in Gwangju last week, as saying that Korea would be considering sending the stolen ar
Oct. 2, 2013
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[Lee Jae-min] Cooperation from Bali to Bali
The problem of multilateral trade negotiations is that, increasingly, negotiators are confined to the mandates and directives of their governments, with little leeway at the negotiating table. That is just natural: What they say will be transcribed into official documents and what they agree to will be put into treaty texts which will remain legally binding until terminated. Under these circumstances, everything said and delivered should be tightly controlled.To the contrary, a forum designed to
Oct. 2, 2013
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[J. Bradford DeLong] The taper and its shadow
BERKELEY California ― The central banks of the North Atlantic region have vowed not to raise their short-term nominal interest rates until the economies under their stewardship show substantial recovery. So far, that has not happened. On the contrary, these economies continue to be battered by the fiscal headwinds of austerity; by uncertainty over whether America’s Republican Party will, in fact, undermine the “full faith and credit” of the United States by allowing the federal government to def
Oct. 1, 2013
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Are you worried about cancer? Get married
When I mentioned my bout with breast cancer to a new acquaintance, his first question was, “Are you married?”It was an unusual reaction ― a more common query is whether I have kids. Later he told me that his daughter-in-law had been diagnosed with breast cancer while still in graduate school and that she and his son had moved in with him. He understood better than most people that being married makes it easier to cope with cancer.The very next day the Journal of Clinical Oncology released a stud
Oct. 1, 2013
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[Kim Seong-kon] Amazing world of psychology and brain sciences
In the past few decades, scientists have successfully unveiled the mystery of the chromosome map and acquired unprecedented genetic engineering skills. Now they are beginning to make advances in brain science, which is closely related to psychology. In order to perceive how the human brain works and how humans behave, scientists are conducting various experiments. And the results are quite intriguing and enlightening. Psychology is now beginning to flourish in Korea. For example, psychology is a
Oct. 1, 2013
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Europe’s voters wisely stick with frugal leaders
For the last three years, the Anglo-American and south European news media have presented German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the scourge of the recession. But on Sept. 22, she won an overwhelming victory in Germany’s parliamentary elections. Her Christian Democratic Union obtained 41.5 percent of the votes cast, its best result since 1990, five seats short of a majority in the Bundestag.Her success should give us pause to reconsider what has happened in Europe since the global financial crisis e
Oct. 1, 2013
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The widening gulf between Americans and their military
Spending a couple of days at West Point, especially coming from Washington, is uplifting.The majesty of the setting high above the Hudson River ― where George Washington set up his headquarters in 1779 ― inspires. Compelling, too, is the character of the cadets at the U.S. Military Academy.Whether they are asking vigorous questions in social science class or displaying the precision of the Long Gray line on parade, the cadets inhabit a world imbued with the auras of Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas Ma
Oct. 1, 2013
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[Zaki Ladi] The global cooperation crisis
PARIS ― The rise of emerging economies worldwide has generated much optimism, in terms not only of economic development, but also of global cooperation. But the shift to a multipolar world order has not bolstered multilateralism. In fact, the opposite is true: the logic of national sovereignty has staged a comeback, with major economies consistently undermining cooperation on issues ranging from security to trade to climate change.Consider the muddle in the United Nations Security Council over S
Sept. 30, 2013
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A national family-leave law? It’s a start
Democrats are about to try, and almost certainly fail, to secure paid parental and family leave for most American workers. That could still be an achievement, if it starts a conversation about how to provide American workers with the flexibility they need to manage family needs.California and New Jersey, the two states with paid family leave programs, have shown how it can benefit not only mothers and children but also employers. In California, which has offered paid parental leave since 2004, m
Sept. 30, 2013
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Why China will disappoint pessimists yet again
China’s eagerly anticipated “hard landing” hasn’t happened yet, and recent indicators make me wonder (not for the first time) if it ever will. In the past two months, the Chinese economy has actually shown signs of accelerating.Constant pessimism in financial markets about the country’s prospects is only partly guided by economic analysis. There’s also the faith-based view that growth as rapid as China’s simply can’t go on ― and that a non-democratic country really shouldn’t expect to prosper. M
Sept. 30, 2013
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Economy cannot be all that’s slowing health costs
A new set of projections released last week by Medicare’s actuaries has drawn much attention, in part because it suggests the deceleration in the growth of health costs we’ve seen over the past few years is ephemeral. The actuaries attribute the slowdown to the “lingering effects of the economic downturn and sluggish recovery” and to increases in cost sharing.Both of these explanations have serious shortcomings ― and that, in turn, suggests something larger is in fact at work.The assertion that
Sept. 30, 2013
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[Naomi Wolf] Onstage confrontation between spies and scribes
NEW YORK ― The recent guilty plea by Donald Sachtleben, a former FBI bomb technician charged with leaking classified information, after government investigators identified him by secretly obtaining the phone logs of some Associated Press reporters, represents the latest chapter in the ongoing drama over United States security officials’ behavior.A few days earlier, another chapter played out in a New York City television studio: spies and recipients of leaked information confronted each other on
Sept. 30, 2013
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Shanghai free-trade zone is a symbol, not a threat
Hong Kong is dead. Economic roadkill on China’s way to world domination. Starting this weekend, a free-trade zone opening in Shanghai will supplant the former British colony as the gateway to the world’s most dynamic economy. That’s the chatter in the city of 7 million people, where some business leaders fear becoming China’s Chicago, long ago eclipsed by New York as a financial and cultural center. Shanghai’s new free-trade zone, opening for business Sept. 29 on 11 square miles of land, will of
Sept. 29, 2013
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America’s labor market by the numbers
NEWPORT BEACH ― Politicians and economists now join investors in a ritual that typically takes place on the first Friday of each month and has important consequences for global markets: anticipating, internalizing, and reacting to the monthly employment report released by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Over the last few years, the report has evolved in a significant way ― not only providing an assessment of the economy’s past and current state, but, increasingly, containing
Sept. 29, 2013
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[Park Sang-seek] Why do some dictatorships last longer?
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father, Hafez al-Assad. Together the al-Assad family reign stretches to 42 years. The Syrian political system is nominally a democratic republic. In the case of North Korea, its founder and head of the state, Kim Il-sung, has been succeeded by his son, and his son by his grandson over 62 years. But Syria and North Korea are neither the same kind of political system nor a traditional monarchy. A question arises: Why is this kind of power succession c
Sept. 29, 2013
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[Jean-Marie Guehenno] The West’s 2nd chance in Syria
NEW YORK ― The last-minute agreement between Russia and the United States to put Syria’s chemical weapons under international control gives the West, which had run out of good options, a second chance to reach what always should have been its strategic goal: peace in Syria and an end to its people’s suffering.Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov took advantage of Western leaders’ failure to formulate a clear central objective. Did they hope to end Syria’s civil war by forcing a military stalem
Sept. 27, 2013
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Don’t be alarmed by Obamacare’s failures
House Republicans trying their damnedest to stop Obamacare in its tracks aren’t the only ones who foresee chaos when state health-insurance exchanges open next week. President Barack Obama himself has told Americans to expect “glitches” and “hiccups.”That’s an understatement. It’s the surest bet since the 1936 presidential election: Things won’t work perfectly when the gears begin turning on the giant new public health-insurance sales machine, the likes of which the U.S. has never seen. Exchange
Sept. 27, 2013