Most Popular
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Korean labor force to shrink by 10 million by 2044: report
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[AtoZ Korean Mind] Does your job define who you are? Should it?
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Allegations surrounding BTS resurface, enraged fans demand apology
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Students with history of violence will be barred from becoming teachers
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Top prosecutor pledges 'speedy, strict' probe into first lady's luxury bag allegations
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Medical feud leaves hospitals in financial crisis
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Samsung mocks Apple over iPhone alarm glitch
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'Queen of Tears' riding high on Netflix chart
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'Super Rich in Korea' will leave viewers appreciating Korea more: producers
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Chip up cycle won’t stay long: SK chief
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Why U.S. workers are getting short-changed
A spate of one-day strikes by fast-food workers has renewed the focus on the abysmal pay for so many at the bottom of the U.S. labor market. Amid all the discussion, a theme keeps cropping up: Labor’s share of national income has plunged while corporate profits have climbed to record highs.The numbers are telling. After peaking in the early 1980s at about 66 percent, U.S. workers have seen their share of the national pie decline to about 58 percent, the lowest since at least the end of World War
Aug. 15, 2013
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[Ma Jian] Bo’s trial not to end the scandal
LONDON ― After a year of unexplained delay, the trial of Bo Xilai, the former Communist Party secretary of Chongqing municipality, is finally about to begin. Bo faces three charges: corruption, bribery, and abuse of power. But his real offense is that he challenged the Chinese Communist Party’s way of doing things. Moreover, his wife’s conviction of the widely publicized murder of British businessman Neil Heywood has severely embarrassed the CCP.When the court finally convicts Bo ― and he is cer
Aug. 15, 2013
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Free flow of information for better quality of life
Countries with Freedom of Information laws “have lower incidence of corruption” and a better quality of life than nations that just recently enforced such a measure or have none at all, according to a study by former Inquirer reporter Edson Tandoc Jr., a Fulbright scholar and doctoral candidate at the Missouri School of Journalism.If reminders of his previous words still fail to prod Philippine President Benigno Aquino III to act more quickly on the long-pending FOI bill, perhaps that piece of e
Aug. 15, 2013
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Is Japan on the road to going militaristic again?
Last Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took part in a ceremony marking the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945, an event which, combined with the following atomic bombing of Nagasaki, compelled Japan to surrender nine days later on Aug. 15, ending the Second World War.Also on Tuesday last week, Japan launched its largest warship since the war. The vessel was launched at Yokohama, where Commodore Mathew Perry came with his U.S. Asiatic fleet in 1853 to open Japan to t
Aug. 15, 2013
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[Andy Ho] Will TPP send tobacco regulations up in smoke?
In 2010, 14.3 percent of adults in Singapore were smokers. The goal is to reduce this to under 10 percent by 2020.However, a soon-to-be multilateral free trade agreement threatens our local anti-smoking efforts. This is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Moving this month in Brunei into its potentially final round of talks, the TPP will establish an FTA encompassing Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam.Drafts of the FT
Aug. 15, 2013
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With so many job openings, why so little hiring?
An odd puzzle is taking shape in the labor market: Over the past three years, the number of job openings has risen almost 50 percent, but actual hiring has gone up by less than 5 percent. Companies are advertising a lot more jobs, in other words, but not filling them. To get some sense of how significant this is, consider that if, since June 2010, hiring had risen a third as much as advertised jobs have (rather than only a 10th), and nothing else were different, job creation would be roughly 500
Aug. 14, 2013
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[Graciana del Castillo] Leveling Afghan playing field
NEW YORK ― Afghanistan’s security and political situation remains plagued by uncertainty, stemming from the withdrawal of United States and NATO combat troops, the upcoming presidential election, and the stalled peace negotiations with the Taliban. Recognizing that continued economic insecurity will exacerbate this perilous situation, the government has announced a new package of economic incentives aimed at attracting foreign direct investment. The package includes the provision of land to indu
Aug. 14, 2013
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Jeff Bezos could be good for journalism
I used to live in Washington, D.C., and I worked at The Washington Post. Now I live near Seattle and work at The Seattle Times in a building just next door to Amazon.com’s sprawling complex.Those facts add up to just a few degrees of separation for the journalists and non-journalist friends curious about my thoughts about Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos’ purchase of the Post.Sorry, but I have no insights beyond speculation. Bezos, a private guy anyway, is not walking around the South Lake Unio
Aug. 13, 2013
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[Jeffrey Kingston] Abe must end Yasukuni dispute
Every year around this time, in the run-up to the Aug. 15 anniversary of Japan’s surrender in 1945, feverish speculation ensues about whether Japan’s top politicians will visit the Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo. Chinese and South Koreans ― not to mention many Japanese ― abhor such visits because the shrine honors the souls of 14 Class A war criminals. Visitors say they have every right to honor the 2.5 million other Japanese war dead celebrated at Yasukuni; they compare the shrine to the U.S.
Aug. 13, 2013
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[Tony Blair] Signs of hope amid turmoil in Middle East
LONDON ― Syria is a living nightmare. Egypt hovers on the brink. But, as the opening of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority shows, there are signs of hope. And, though it may seem counter-intuitive, the region’s turmoil is finally bringing to the surface its fundamental problems in a way that allows them to be confronted and overcome. Now is a time not for despair, but for active engagement.No one put the chances of reviving the Israel-Palestine peace process at more than mi
Aug. 13, 2013
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Abe’s Japan is blind to scary nuclear reality
Forget Abenomics. Ignore Shinzo Abe’s efforts to rejuvenate Japan’s diplomatic and military clout. Look past the quest to rewrite the constitution. History will judge this prime minister by one thing alone: what he did, or didn’t do, to end the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. It’s mind-boggling how disengaged Japan’s leaders have been since their “BP moment” ― the March 2011 near-meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant. Abe’s predecessors Naoto Kan and Yoshihiko Noda virtually ign
Aug. 13, 2013
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[Kim Seong-kon] Is today’s Korea really a Confucian society?
Moderation is a virtue not only in the East, but also in the West. It is well known that Confucius stressed the importance of being moderate, but so did Aristotle and Shakespeare. For example, Aristotle said, “The virtue of justice consists in moderation as regulated by wisdom.” Shakespeare also emphasized the importance of moderation even in passionate love: “Love moderately. Long love doth so. Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.” Benjamin Franklin, too, included “moderation” as one of his
Aug. 13, 2013
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Expect many more unsettling terror alerts
A full generation of Americans has come of age since the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union late in 1991. Those who lived that nearly half-century of tensions, with its threats of mutual nuclear destruction, tend to mistakenly recall a tidy geography: The West, chiefly the U.S. but also its NATO allies, poised decade after decade in readiness to combat the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies to the east.In truth the Cold War played out at random times, on multiple continents, among
Aug. 12, 2013
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[Robert Reich] Why no ruckus about economy?
Job growth is sputtering. So why aren’t the captains of American industry and finance ― the nation’s top CEOs, the titans of Wall Street, the corporate movers and shakers ― demanding that more be done to revive the economy? They have the political clout to make it happen.It can’t be they don’t know that job growth is sputtering. The data are indisputable. July’s job growth of 162,000 jobs was the weakest in four months. The average workweek was the shortest in six months. The Bureau of Labor Sta
Aug. 12, 2013
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Greece needs a 21st-century Marshall Plan
At their White House meeting last week, U.S. President Barack Obama assured Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of his support as Greece prepares for talks with creditors on additional debt relief amid record-high unemployment. The U.S. should also endorse a new blueprint for recovery based on one of the most successful economic assistance programs of the modern era: the Marshall Plan. It is clear by now that the European Union’s policies in Greece have failed. Projections that government spend
Aug. 12, 2013
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Spying made simple
So, the White House announces the emergence of a “significant” terrorist threat; the State Department issues a worldwide travel alert and shuts down 21 diplomatic missions; the Pentagon places U.S. forces throughout the Middle East on heightened alert, and the president of the United States ... books a gig on “Tonight.”The decision to chat up Jay Leno seemed a bit incongruous at first, but on second thought, it wasn’t a bad idea at all. The late-night talk show gave the president a chance to exp
Aug. 12, 2013
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[Joseph E. Stiglitz] Changing of the monetary guard in the offing
NEW YORK ― With leadership transitions at many central banks either under way or coming soon, many of those who were partly responsible for creating the global economic crisis that erupted in 2008 ― before taking strong action to prevent the worst ― are departing to mixed reviews. The main question now is the extent to which those reviews will influence their successors’ behavior.Many financial-market players are grateful for the regulatory laxity that allowed them to reap enormous profits befor
Aug. 12, 2013
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[Peter Singer] Need to dethrone king coal
MELBOURNE, Australia ― Earlier this year, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million (ppm). The last time there was that much CO2 in our atmosphere was three million years ago, when sea levels were 24 meters higher than they are today. Now sea levels are rising again. Last September, Arctic sea ice covered the smallest area ever recorded. All but one of the ten warmest years since 1880, when global records began to be kept, have occurred in the twenty-fir
Aug. 11, 2013
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Providing good journalism isn’t complicated
My father used to say that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who do what they say they are going to do, and everybody else. I thought of that maxim when I heard that the Graham family was selling the Washington Post to Jeff Bezos, the chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc. When Amazon went public in 1997, Bezos was the frontman, evangelizing his vision of not only the world’s biggest bookstore but also the world’s dominant retailer. This, from the CEO of a company that was lo
Aug. 11, 2013
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Meet the mysterious Mr. th3j35t3r
Major media outlets have featured him as representative of a new generation of “patriot hackers.” He sent an old laptop to the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., where it’s now on display. He claims to have launched hacking attacks on websites ranging from jihadist forums to WikiLeaks. Last week, a guest on the syndicated radio program “Coast to Coast AM” described the individual hiding behind “The Jester” moniker (or “th3j35t3r” in hacker lingo) as “not somebody in someone’s basement
Aug. 11, 2013