Most Popular
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Opposition-led Assembly unilaterally passes bill to probe Marine's death
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Inflation eases in April, continues bumpy ride
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Russia sent more than 165,000 barrels of refined petroleum to N. Korea in March: White House
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Seoul to more than double military drones by 2026 to counter NK threats
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Key suspects grilled over alleged abuse of power in Marine death inquiry
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Seoul alerts overseas missions to NK terror threats
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‘Inside Out 2’ adds four new emotions, explores teenage life
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Questions raised over fair promotion of RM, NewJeans
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[Graphic News] Number of coffee franchises in S. Korea rises 13%
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S. Korean children, teens grow taller, mature faster than before: study
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[Kim Myong-sik] Dokdo and old teacher’s 19th-century chronology
During my junior high school years in the 1950s, we were taught Oriental history, mainly of China, in the first year, Western history in the second and the national (Korean) history in the senior year. It was shortly after the Korean War and teachers were strongly patriotic, and thoroughly anticommunist, of course.In the first and second years, we enjoyed the stories of the heroes of China, Europe and America as if we were reading fairy tales. But in the senior year, we learned chapter after cha
Sept. 19, 2012
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Arnault’s childish decision to pack his bags
It’s a shame that France’s two most powerful people, its president and its richest man, were unable to get beyond populist posturing and recrimination as they battled over taxes this week. They may have missed a golden opportunity to find common ground on restoring growth to their country’s beleaguered economy. The clash erupted after Bernard Arnault, the chief executive officer of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, acknowledged that he has applied for Belgian citizenship. He said this was a “
Sept. 18, 2012
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[Omar Ashour] Libya’s jihadist minority
DOHA ― “They are armed I am not going to fight a losing battle and kill my men over a demolished shrine,” said Fawzi Abd al-’Aali, the former Libyan interior minister, before he “resigned” last August. He was referring to the armed Salafi groups that were accused of destroying Sufi shrines. One of the accused groups was the Ansar al-Shariah Brigade, which was quick to support the demolition, but denied any responsibility for it.Ahmed Jibril, Libya’s deputy ambassador to London, has now accused t
Sept. 18, 2012
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Korea-Japan island dispute: Enough is enough!
Enough is enough! Obviously, the political leadership in Tokyo and Seoul never learned the First Rule of Holes: when you find yourself in one, stop digging. Each side seems to be going out of its way to make a bad situation worse, even while providing private assurances that it won’t let the situation get too far out of hand. In all likelihood it is probably impossible to start making significant repairs until after upcoming elections: December in Korea and who knows (but probably sooner rather
Sept. 18, 2012
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Time to end the habit of Western translation
Sept. 28 marks the 2,563rd anniversary of the birth of Confucius.Few people realize that the Bible discourages people from studying foreign languages. The story of the tower of Babel informs us that there is one humanity (God’s), only that “our languages are confused.” From a European historical perspective, that has always meant that, say, any German philosopher could know exactly what the Chinese people were thinking, only that he couldn’t understand them. So instead of learning the foreign la
Sept. 18, 2012
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[Kim Seong-kon] We need Samsung-, LG-endowed professors
When people reach a comfortable standard of living, they often turn to cultural activities such as watching movies, attending concerts and visiting art exhibitions to enrich their lives. When big corporations make a fortune, they donate money to libraries and museums as a goodwill gesture of returning their profits to society. Sometimes, they establish a cultural foundation through which they can promote cultural exchange. (The Daesan Foundation, for one, comes to mind). And when movie directors
Sept. 18, 2012
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Heart attack is no reason to disappear in China
What does it say about China when the man seen as the next president disappears for 13 days and leadership circles pretend nothing is amiss? The answer is that officials in Beijing still cling to their Kremlin-like ways. It is one thing for Ethiopia, with $32 billion of output, to be mired in similar intrigue (Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was confirmed dead last month after weeks of rumors and conspiracy theories). It is quite another when it takes place in a country whose economy might surpass t
Sept. 17, 2012
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[Mehdi Khalaji] Iran’s strategy for U.S. election
WASHINGTON, D.C. ― Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program have again hit a wall, but the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appears unconcerned. Indeed, Khamenei seems convinced that neither the United States nor Israel will attack its nuclear facilities ― at least not before the U.S. presidential election in November. Ironically, while Khamenei is no fan of democracy, he relies on the fact that his principal enemies are bound by democratic constraints. Khamenei controls Iran’s
Sept. 17, 2012
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To be presidential, Romney must first be truthful
Presidential campaigns sometimes turn on big moments that help voters ponder the central question they have about every challenger: What would this person actually be like as president? These aren’t the same as gaffes, which are slips of the tongue that may be politically damaging but say little about the candidates except that they misspoke. I’m talking instead about critical moments of miscalculation ― often made in desperation ― that illuminate important truths about a politician. In 1964, Ba
Sept. 17, 2012
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Castration as a measure against child rape
Imagine a town which has outlawed the most conventional form of criminal punishment, imprisonment. It believes that incarcerating a human being in a jail cell for five, 10 or 20 years is cruel and outdated. Instead, it reintegrates “criminals” back into the community with counseling and encouragement. It has concluded that locking up a human being, whatever his crime, is an infringement of his human right to freedom and liberty. The aforementioned example is a paradisiacal community. When one co
Sept. 17, 2012
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[Shashi Tharoor] India’s parliament held hostage by the opposition
NEW DELHI ― The ongoing disruption of the “monsoon session” of the Indian parliament has showcased both the resilience of India’s democracy and the irresponsibility with which its custodians treat it.Demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over the allegedly improper allocation of coal-mining blocks to private companies, the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party has stalled parliament’s work for three of the session’s four weeks. The repeated paralysis of parliament by slogan-shou
Sept. 17, 2012
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[Dominique Moisi] For whom the Syrian bell tolls
PARIS ― With every passing week, the Syrian conflict increasingly resembles the Spanish Civil War. The images of warplanes bombing civilians and destroying cities have turned Aleppo into a latter-day version of Guernica, immortalized in Picasso’s masterpiece. But the real similarities between the two conflicts are to be found in the behavior of the international community’s main actors, which have again taken opposite sides. On one side stand Russia and Iran, cynically determined to buttress Pre
Sept. 16, 2012
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Looking beyond religion in the Middle East
The chaotic violence that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three American staffers in Libya, and that resulted in a mob storming the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, has been garbed in religious language and references. However, the religious rhetoric from all corners distracts from the real issues: serious domestic political fragmentation in Libya and Egypt in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, and America’s place in the region.Media attention has focused on a polemic 14-minute movie trai
Sept. 16, 2012
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Japan must listen to the truth about its history
When it comes to Japan’s spirit of the development, Japanese believe in Iitokodori ― getting good things from others regardless of historical relations or cultural differences, only if they are beneficial to Japan. That suits an island country with few natural resources, and there is no doubt that Japan’s flourishing development is thanks partly to the inherent characteristics of Iitokodori.The problem is, though, Tokyo has never been reluctant to take any actions against other neighboring count
Sept. 16, 2012
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[Meghan Daum] Naomi Wolf’s vaginal sideshow
It’s a strange time to be a woman. I say this not because state legislatures enacted no less than 95 restrictions on reproductive rights this year. I say it not because, at the same time, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker repealed his state’s equal pay law and Wisconsin state Sen. Glenn Grothman conjectured that “money is more important for men.” Or because, just last month, an alarming number of male legislators demonstrated serious confusion about the birds and the bees.I’m saying it because Naomi W
Sept. 16, 2012
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[Eli Park Sorensen] Exchanging experiences among generations
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s autobiography “Living to Tell the Tale” (2002) begins with an anecdote from his youth. One day his mother asks him to assist her on a journey back to the world of his grandparents, Aracataca, the place where Garcia Marquez grew up. The grandparents have passed away, and their house is about to be sold. The house, however, turns out to be worthless, too old and damaged.In fact, the whole town has turned into a withering memory of bygone days, a place living in the past ra
Sept. 16, 2012
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Is Vladimir Putin the Russian Reagan?
It would seem that we’re now at the stage of global economic lunacy where the worldwide socialist slide is so far gone that the president of Russia is lecturing the world, and particularly Europe, about the risks of socialism.Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Vladivostok, Russia, Vladimir Putin promoted the merits of free-market economics. He said that by pulling the former Soviet satellite states into its sphere after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Europe chose to t
Sept. 14, 2012
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[Robert B. Reich] ‘Basic bargain’ and recovery
The question at the core of America’s upcoming presidential election isn’t merely whose story most voting Americans believe to be true ― Mitt Romney’s claim that the economy is in a stall and Obama’s policies haven’t worked, or Barack Obama’s claim that it’s slowly mending and his approach is working.If that were all there was to it, last Friday’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the economy added only 96,000 jobs in August ― below what’s needed merely to keep up with the growt
Sept. 14, 2012
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[David Ignatius] Puzzled by a ‘red line’ demand
WASHINGTON ― As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues his almost daily demands that the U.S. announce its “red line” for going to war with Iran, the question puzzling the White House is what the Israeli leader wants beyond what President Obama has already stated. Obama believes he has drawn the U.S. red line as clearly as a superpower ever should, given that some ambiguity is useful in deterring an adversary. For the record, Obama said in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic
Sept. 13, 2012
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Infrastructure boost in the Philippines
The Benigno Aquino administration’s flagship Public-Private Partnership (PPP) programme took a big leap forward last week with the approval of 407 billion pesos ($9.7 billion) worth of infrastructure projects that will address flooding in Metro Manila, improve access to the provinces and deal with the transportation problem in the metropolis.Topping the list of projects approved by the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) Board chaired by President Aquino is the 35-billion peso flo
Sept. 13, 2012