Most Popular
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40 flights canceled on Jeju Island due to bad weather
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Pandemic left Korea more depressed than before: report
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N. Korea slams US, other countries for seeking alternative to UN sanctions monitoring panel
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Gov't appears to shelve punitive measures against mass walkout by doctors
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Govt. asks hospitals to mitigate impact of medical professors' absence
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S. Korea, China, Japan in talks to hold trilateral summit May 26-27: official
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S. Korea's working-age population to dip nearly 10m by 2044 amid low births
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Doggy patrol team on the move to protect their cities
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Sales of eco-friendly cars top 100,000 in Q1 in S. Korea
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[Herald Interview] Director of 'Goodbye Earth' aimed to ask how we would face apocalypse
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[Jeffrey D. Sachs] Polluters must pay for cleanup
NEW YORK ― When BP and its drilling partners caused the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the U.S. government demanded that BP finance the cleanup, compensate those who suffered damages, and pay criminal penalties for the violations that led to the disaster. BP has already committed more than $20 billion in remediation and penalties. Based on a settlement last week, BP will now pay the largest criminal penalty in U.S. history ― $4.5 billion.The same standards for environ
Nov. 30, 2012
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Why People’s Daily found Kim Jong-un sexy
It may turn out that the editors of the English language edition of the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece, People’s Daily, were only kidding when they ran a 55-image slideshow based on “Kim Jong-un Named The Onion’s Sexiest Man Alive for 2012.” But if it turns out that they weren’t, the explanation for how such an article ended up in China’s most important tribunal isn’t so hard to parse. In three distinct ways, the Onion’s satire was perfectly engineered to appeal to editorial biases ― some
Nov. 29, 2012
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[Bindu N. Lohani] Managing climate change risks
The jury may still be out on the link between climate change and natural disasters. But one thing is clear: weather-related disasters are increasing in both frequency and intensity. Witness the string of severe recent floods across Asia ― from Pakistan, to Thailand, to the Philippines ― and Hurricane Sandy in the U.S., which have vividly shown us how extreme weather events can bring entire countries to a virtual standstill. Volatile weather extremes are hitting Asia and the Pacific more often th
Nov. 29, 2012
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China’s new passport maps trigger controversy
The Mainland Affairs Council and the Presidential Office have both stepped up and asked the PRC government to not endanger the status quo by including two pages of scenery from Taiwan, as well as a map of the PRC’s claimed territory showing dashed lines going around Taiwan’s eastern seaboard, in its new microchip passports. The dashed lines extend southward to cover a vast disputed area in the South China Sea, triggering protests from rival claimants including Vietnam, the Philippines and even I
Nov. 29, 2012
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Nuclear policies should be based on realism, not popular emotions
How should Japan achieve a stable supply of power, which is indispensable for people’s livelihoods and economic growth? Energy policies will become a major issue in the House of Representatives election to be held Dec. 16.Nuclear power policies by the ruling and opposition parties have come under the spotlight due to the crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant following the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami.It will be difficult to resolve many issues facing
Nov. 29, 2012
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[Andrew Sheng] Handbook on ending corruption
Hurricane Sandy chased me out of Boston and since I could not get out via New York, I took a flight in the opposite direction to Mumbai. India has the most wonderful bookshops, full of the latest global hits at reasonable prices, but also Indian books that are not easily available abroad. Indian writers have a flair for the English language that is inimical and lyrical, reflecting the deep cultural respect for articulation, best summarized by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen’s book titled “The Argumen
Nov. 29, 2012
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Put redistricting into the hands of voters
Ohio, the mother of all tossup states, gave its 18 electoral votes ― and with them, the White House ― to Barack Obama on Nov. 6. Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown won reelection. Yet Republicans won 12 of Ohio’s 16 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.Obama won by five points in Pennsylvania, where Democrats also swept four statewide races. But Republicans took 13 of the state’s 18 U.S. House seats.Democrats who had hoped to reclaim a majority in the House came up way short, even with
Nov. 28, 2012
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[David Ignatius] Obama’s challenge: Think big
BERLIN ― “Why We Can’t Solve Big Problems” says the provocative headline in the current issue of MIT Technology Review. This package ought to go in President Obama’s reading pile as he ponders his January inaugural address and second-term agenda. Jason Pontin, the editor-in-chief of the MIT review, introduces his theme by recalling the high age of space exploration ― the incredible decade in which the United States, from a standing start, achieved President John F. Kennedy’s promise to put a man
Nov. 28, 2012
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Solution to Korea-China maritime disputes
It may be surprising to learn that, of the many maritime disputes in Asia, one of the most violent in the past few years has occurred between South Korea and China in the Yellow Sea.On Oct. 16 a 44-year-old Chinese fisherman died when hit by a rubber bullet fired by a member of the Republic of Korea Coast Guard, which had stopped a Chinese trawler fishing illegally in South Korea’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Past incidents include the death of two Chinese fishermen in December 2010, the kill
Nov. 28, 2012
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Facebook needs a dislike button for Abe’s ideas
For Shinzo Abe, it isn’t enough to see Sony Corp. and Panasonic Corp., two icons of industrial Japan, reduced to junk-debt status. The man who probably will become prime minister next month might do the same for the yen. That is the upshot of his desire to browbeat the Bank of Japan into unlimited easing. Granted, his Liberal Democratic Party did that for most of the half-century it was in power until 2009. But Abe’s designs on the BOJ smack of a monetary jihad that would do more harm than good.
Nov. 28, 2012
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[Kim Myong-sik] Is a DNA test necessary for a sore fingertip?
Gangjin, my hometown on the south coast, has no ob-gyn clinic in the entire county with a population of 40,000. For years, the county office has unsuccessfully tried to recruit a doctor to open a maternity facility in the main town, offering a decent salary as well as a furnished space for free use. No qualified doctor has applied.Residents have cars, so they can take their wives to the cities of Gwangju or Mokpo for checkups and delivery. But women fear an emergency, and fatalities from pregnan
Nov. 28, 2012
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Abraham Lincoln’s master class in politics
Before scheduling any budget negotiations at the White House, on Capitol Hill or at Camp David, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders should go see Steven Spielberg’s classic new film, “Lincoln.” It’s the best movie about Washington politics I’ve seen. The centerpiece is the American icon, Abraham Lincoln; it brilliantly captures him doing what politicians are supposed to do, and today too often avoid: compromising, calculating, horse trading, dealing and preventing the perfect from b
Nov. 27, 2012
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[Lee Jae-min] Investor-state dispute settlement
With the expiry of the six-month cooling-off period, Lone Star officially started an international investment dispute against the Korean government last week by filing its notice of arbitration with the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington, D.C. This is the first international investment dispute for Korea under a bilateral investment treaty since Korea’s subscription to the investor-state dispute settlement (commonly called as ISDS) mechanism in 1975. Korea is
Nov. 27, 2012
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Hatoyama’s political retirement a welcome development in Japan
Former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has announced that he will not run in the Dec. 16 House of Representatives election, long after his leadership was harshly and incessantly called into question.Hatoyama played the main role in helping his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) win the 2009 lower house election, thus bringing a change of government. However, he is also the one who amplified the public’s distrust in politics by making a plethora of irresponsible off-the-cuff remarks, mostly over a pla
Nov. 27, 2012
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ASEAN must avoid new South China Sea storm
ASEAN members need to do a better job at high-level meetings in preventing another South China Sea storm from cracking their cohesion and credibility. Disputants have made their positions quite well known to China on other occasions. There was no need to overshadow pressing summit business in trying to advance or protect claims. Coming so publicly and soon after their foreign ministers’ unprecedented failure to issue a communique four months ago, the disagreement at the ASEAN Summit is doubly da
Nov. 27, 2012
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Paula Broadwell’s radar tracks generals, not Fed
I had pretty much forgotten about the Federal Reserve, what with the presidential election, the fiscal cliff, the brouhaha over Benghazi, and the bevy of buxom gals mixing with Army brass at Centcom. Even without the distractions, it’s hard to muster much interest when the central bank has pledged to hold its benchmark interest rate near zero for years and its bond-buying program has become part of the daily routine. I had just about concluded that no, I wasn’t seeing double, and that yes, Jill
Nov. 27, 2012
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[Kim Seong-kon] Is bottle half-full or half-empty?
Once again, the Chinese novelist Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize win reminds us of the role of film in promoting a literary work. To scholars of Chinese literature, Mo Yan has long been a celebrated writer for his critically acclaimed works. To the general public, however, Mo Yan is better known for internationally renowned films like Zhang Yimou’s “Red Sorghum” and Chen Kaige’s “Farewell My Concubine,” which are based on Mo Yan’s novel and play, respectively. The former was awarded the Golden Bear Award a
Nov. 27, 2012
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Why hungry Indians need skinnier politicians
India is caught in an ugly societal whodunit: Although the per capita gross domestic product for the country’s 1.2 billion people has almost doubled over the past decade, to $838, malnutrition and hunger are still rampant, especially among children. A months-long series of investigative reports by Bloomberg News highlights that India’s failure to adequately feed its people is a crisis born not from want of money but, more damningly, from lack of political will to confront pervasive corruption an
Nov. 26, 2012
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[David Ignatius] Unity proves elusive in Syria
WASHINGTON ― The Syrian opposition took a big step forward this month by forming a broad political coalition that includes local activists who started the revolution. But the opposition’s military command is still a mess, and until it’s fixed, jihadist extremists will keep getting more powerful. As I wrote after my trip inside Syria in early October, a stronger command-and-control structure is crucial in creating an opposition force that can accomplish two essential tasks: defeating President Ba
Nov. 26, 2012
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Europe is breaking: How many EUs will there be?
Prospects for the survival of the euro area are looking up, raising a new question to dominate debate about the continent’s future: Will there be one European Union, or several? To save itself from oblivion, the euro area is embarking on an unprecedented degree of integration that was left undone when Europe started a common currency just over a decade ago. If all goes according to the plans of a handful of leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, there will eventually emerge a bankin
Nov. 26, 2012