Most Popular
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'Super Rich in Korea' will leave viewers appreciating Korea more: producers
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Probe of first lady on Dior bag allegations set to begin
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Top prosecutor pledges 'speedy, strict' probe into first lady's luxury bag allegations
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Korean battery makers heave sigh of relief over 2-year IRA reprieve
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Over 80,000 millionaires, 20 billionaires in Seoul: report
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Indonesia’s KF-21 fighter jet deal cut back -- what’s next?
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[KH Explains] Can tech firms' AI alliances take on Nvidia?
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Police seek arrest warrant for med student who killed girlfriend
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Local filmmakers criticize ‘The Roundup: Punishment’ monopoly of screens
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Will China's self-sufficient dream in HBM come true?
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[Lee Jae-min] Calm needed in Costco fiasco
If people can buy a year’s supply of products from Costco from a single visit, the U.S. retail giant must have seen a year’s supply of inspectors in just one day. Last Wednesday and this past Sunday, the Seoul city government sent dozens of inspectors to Costco Wholesale’s warehouses in Seoul to conduct thorough investigations into virtually all activities of the retailer in Seoul.Wednesday’s inspection is said to have detected as many as 41 violations of a plethora of city regulations: a constr
Oct. 17, 2012
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The lessons of the war between China, India
NEW DELHI ― This month marks the 50th anniversary of China’s military attack on India, the only foreign war that communist-ruled China has won. Yet that war failed to resolve the disputes between the world’s two most populous countries, and its legacy continues to weigh down the bilateral relationship. While their economic heft is drawing increasing international attention, their underlying strategic rivalry over issues ranging from land and water to geopolitical influence in other regions usual
Oct. 17, 2012
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Myth of meritocracy underlies U.S. election
Let me tell you about the worst thing I ever did to my son. When he was 4, I took him to a small basement apartment in a Manhattan brownstone. I then paid a man to give my son an intelligence test.The test was an attempt to deliver my son from the chaos of “normal” public school in my adopted hometown of Harlem into a gifted-and-talented program on the tony Upper West Side. My son performed pretty abominably. This did not shake me, as I was not very confident in how well I would have done had I
Oct. 17, 2012
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[Kim Myong-sik] Useless election arguments over maritime border
The line runs westward from the Han River estuary immediately above Ganghwa Island, goes a little down to the south and then creeps to the west to the tip of Yeonpyeong Island. From there the line moves northwest all the way to the cluster of three islands, Socheong, Daecheong and Baengnyeong. Between Yeonpyeong and Socheong, the line precariously runs close to the North Korean coast, leaving only a few kilometers (miles) of space to the land. This is the Northern Limit Line or NLL for short.Peo
Oct. 17, 2012
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Debate highlights critical-thought problem
PARIS ― America has collective attention deficit disorder, and in one way it’s a bigger threat than terrorism, cybersecurity dangers and the never-ending Middle East drama: Those other problems at least have the potential to be solved.We witnessed this phenomenon last week during the first presidential debate. Washington pundits and policy wonks tried to sift through the rhetorical sandstorm for logical solid ground amid such concepts as Mitt Romney’s revenue-neutral tax cuts and Barack Obama’s
Oct. 16, 2012
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[David Ignatius] In Egypt, waiting for results
MENOUFIA, Egypt ― You can see what the Egyptian revolution has achieved, 20 months on, by visiting this rural area of the Nile Delta that was the birthplace of the deposed dictator, Hosni Mubarak: Everything is different outwardly, but beneath the surface, almost nothing has changed yet. The revolution’s impact is most obvious in the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood won the parliamentary elections here, even in this former regime stronghold. And people seem free to say what they think, including
Oct. 16, 2012
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[Lim Hyang-ok] Anipang enthralls women, men, young and old
If you take the subway, you will notice that people are either dozing off ― quite an art form in Korea! ― or looking at their smartphones. Women, men, young and old are looking at their smartphones and nowadays playing smartphone games.And not just any game. The game de rigueur is Anipang. Anipang is a compound word ― “ani” comes from the first syllable of animal and “pang” is the onomatopoeic sound for an explosion. It’s a very simple game. All you have to do is align, either vertically or hori
Oct. 16, 2012
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When politics turns to theater
The first debate between incumbent U.S. President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney was widely judged to have gone in the latter’s favor. He came across as more focused, personable and yes, presidential, than the unusually tepid performance by Obama. No sooner had pundits declared the clash between the two vice-presidential candidates last week a draw, and minds were already focusing on the next big showdown between their respective bosses on Tuesday. Thus has the U.S. presi
Oct. 16, 2012
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Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai: Everyone’s daughter in the fight for girls’ education
As she fights for her life in hospital, Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban for demanding that she and other girls go to school, is rightly becoming the icon for 32 million girls worldwide who are out of primary school.Today, the girl from the Swat valley of Pakistan, who was forced to flee her village when the Taliban forced the closure of her school, should be adopted by the world. As she fights the Taliban, who labeled her campaign for girls’ education an “obscenity,” her
Oct. 16, 2012
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[Kim Seong-kon] In this age of trans-nationalism
When I look around, I find many extremes in our society. For example, our progressive and conservative historians confront each other as if they were archenemies. Our writers, artists and teachers, too, are divided by two mutually exclusive ideological groups. And our left-wing and right-wing politicians hopelessly antagonize each other as well. It is either friend or foe. In fact, such extremes can be found in every nook and cranny of our society these days. A few days ago, I went to Seoul Fina
Oct. 16, 2012
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[Peter Singer] God and woman in Iran
PRINCETON ― My grandmother was one of the first women to study mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna. When she graduated, in 1905, the university nominated her for its highest distinction, an award marked by the presentation of a ring engraved with the initials of the emperor. But no woman had previously been nominated for such an honor, and Emperor Franz Joseph refused to bestow the award upon one.More than a century later, one might have thought that by now we would have overcome
Oct. 15, 2012
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It’s time to promote a third option in Syria
The conflict in Syria was “extremely bad and getting worse.” That’s what Lakhdar Brahimi, special envoy to Syria for the United Nations and the Arab League and one of the world’s most skillful diplomats, told the Security Council in late September. The major powers listened but offered no new ideas on how to end the crisis. We need to change direction.Up to now, two strategies have been pursued. Kofi Annan, the former U.N. secretary-general and Brahimi’s predecessor as special envoy, tried to ne
Oct. 15, 2012
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Rushdie: ‘Vampires shrivel in the sunlight’
Salman Rushdie just published his memoir about his years under the “fatwa” by Ayatollah Khomeini. It is named “Joseph Anton” after the alias he used in those years. He was interviewed by Patt Morrison for an article that recently appeared in the Los Angeles Times. ― Ed.Q: In the new book you write that the protagonist ― you ― chooses ethics and the universality of freedom over fundamentalist religion and moral relativism. Is this the defining conflict of the epoch?A: I think so. I really wanted
Oct. 15, 2012
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Military actions: a way of life in the U.S.
A great power without a significant enemy? That’s what the U.S. has become.Osama bin Laden is dead. Al-Qaida is reportedly a shadow of its former self. The great regional threats of the moment, North Korea and Iran, are regimes held together by baling wire and the suffering of their populaces. The only incipient great power rival on the planet, China, has just launched its first aircraft carrier, a refurbished Ukrainian throwaway from the 1990s on whose deck the country has no planes capable of
Oct. 15, 2012
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[Itamar Rabinovich] The message carried by the drone in the desert
TEL AVIV ― A drone recently penetrated Israel’s airspace from the Mediterranean. It was allowed to fly for about half an hour over southern Israel before being shot down by the Israeli air force over a sparsely populated area. It is still not known who dispatched the drone and from where, but it is now assumed that it was launched from Lebanon, either by Hezbollah, acting in Iran’s service, or by forces of the Iranian regime itself.If that is indeed the case, the episode should not be regarded a
Oct. 15, 2012
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Venezuela’s depressing electoral statement
Score another lamentable election victory for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The fiery, anti-U.S. revolutionary now has another six-year term to continue with the plans he launched after his first election in 1998 to dismantle Venezuela’s free-market economy and pursue his anachronistic socialist agenda.Not long ago, American leaders would’ve had good reason to be concerned about the national security implications of another Chavez term. Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven reserves
Oct. 14, 2012
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[David Ignatius] Romney’s Mideast position
CAIRO ― Like other commentators, I found many echoes of Barack Obama’s Middle East policy in Mitt Romney’s supposedly tough critique of it at Virginia Military Institute on Monday. I suppose that’s reassuring ― that Romney generally sees the same set of problems that Obama does, and in many cases would take pretty much the same action, though girded in “no apology” rhetoric. I also found many points in the speech that made sense. The one anomaly in the speech was the way Romney lavished praise o
Oct. 14, 2012
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Why men don’t wear engagement rings
In the 1930s, Fortune magazine called weddings a “depression-proof” business; these days, the term is “recession resistant.” That isn’t exactly true, but there’s no denying that the U.S. wedding industry is big business today: Even in a sluggish economy, the average cost of a wedding in 2011 was $26,501, according to a Brides magazine survey. Much of the debt incurred by marriage-bound couples and their families stems directly from a desire to follow tradition ― to purchase the goods and service
Oct. 14, 2012
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Celebrity economist rushes to save India
The first time I met Raghuram Rajan, the Indian economist couldn’t sit still. It was over coffee in Bangkok in November 2008, less than two months after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. imploded and almost took the global financial system down with it. Rajan had become a big draw by then, having warned as early as 2005 that a crash was coming. On that day in Thailand, he had a more local crisis on his hands: The hotel’s WiFi was out. “I’ll be back ― I need to make a call and make sure the world eco
Oct. 14, 2012
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[Eli Park Sorensen] The uncanny minds that play on our sensitivities
Most people have experienced receiving an uncanny phone call from an excessively loquacious person ― only to discover, usually after a few moments, that one is listening to an automated voice advertising some product. In his essay “On the Psychology of the Uncanny” from 1906, the German psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch suggested that feelings of anxiety often emerge in cases where we have difficulties discerning whether an entity is an automaton or human consciousness. “The life-size machines that per
Oct. 14, 2012