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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'Super Rich in Korea' will leave viewers appreciating Korea more: producers
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'Queen of Tears' riding high on Netflix chart
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Samsung mocks Apple over iPhone alarm glitch
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Chip up cycle won’t stay long: SK chief
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[NajmuddiN a. Shaikh] Pragmatism in China’s U.S. ties
Perhaps there has been little in recent years in Sino-U.S. relations that has caused as much of an international furor as the case of the blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng.This was not a case of a dissident seeking political asylum but of a blind man, a self-taught lawyer, who had won domestic and international renown for his promotion of human rights. He ran afoul of local authorities in Linyi prefecture because of his protests against forced abortions imposed arbitrarily by local aut
May 11, 2012
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commentary-Kamp
Reinventing NATO By Karl-Heinz Kamp ROME -- This month, NATO will hold its next summit in Chicago. Unlike European Union summits, which take place almost monthly, NATO’s are infrequent. This helps to explain the inflated rhetoric that surrounds them: the November 2010 summit in Lisbon, for example, was described as nothing less than “the most important in NATO’s history.” Will the Chicago summit prove to be an exception to this rule?For a while, that seemed likely, with the meeting initially bil
May 11, 2012
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[Joseph E. Stiglitz] Post-austerity growth strategies
NEW YORK ― This year’s annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund made clear that Europe and the international community remain rudderless when it comes to economic policy. Financial leaders, from finance ministers to leaders of private financial institutions, reiterated the current mantra: the crisis countries have to get their houses in order, reduce their deficits, bring down their national debts, undertake structural reforms, and promote growth. Confidence, it was repeatedly said, nee
May 10, 2012
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Squash ‘superbugs’ with fast antibiotics approval
In the battle between humans and infectious bacteria, humans have had the advantage, at least since antibiotics were introduced into our arsenal 70 or so years ago. Now, however, our weapons appear to be turning against us as germs have found ways to outfox antibiotics. Consider a germ-altering gene known as NDM-1. As reporters Jason Gale and Adi Narayan explain in an article in the June issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine, this bit of DNA is showing up in dozens of bacteria strains, from E. col
May 10, 2012
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[Rachel Marsden] Why France elected a Socialist president
France has elected only the second Socialist president in its history ― the first being Francois Mitterrand, who spent 14 years in the driver’s seat back when French presidential terms lasted seven years rather than five, and who made a hard-right turn away from economic socialism and toward spending cuts after his first two years in office. The best France can hope for now is that the newly elected Francois Hollande takes a similar plunge into a pothole of pragmatism and douses any budding soci
May 10, 2012
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When the two American political narratives collide
The most famous speech in American history begins this way: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Lincoln’s eloquence at Gettysburg was lyrical but not historically accurate. For no such thing as a “new nation” had been proposed in 1776; only a temporary union of sovereign states, declaring their independence from Britain, then presumably going their separat
May 10, 2012
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[Eli Park Sorensen] Thoughts on the relationship between life and work
In the satirical novel “Tristram Shandy” (published 1759-67), Laurence Sterne tells the story of Tristram Shandy, a gentleman who sets out to narrate “the history of myself.” Tristram wants to begin with the beginning of his life. This, however, turns out to be a complex task. Although the novel starts with a scene during which a woman is about to give birth to Tristram, our hero is actually not born until many pages later, about halfway through the novel. For Tristram realizes that before he ca
May 10, 2012
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Monsieur Normal should say ‘Non’ to Germany
It would be a mistake to interpret the election of France’s socialist presidential challenger, Francois Hollande, as portending a seismic shift for Europe’s second- largest economy. All indications are that Hollande doesn’t owe his victory to any passion among the electorate for a sweeping left-leaning platform. The defeated incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, is merely the latest leader felled by Europe’s economic crisis and the lassitude of its citizens. His flamboyant, hyperkinetic persona had grown
May 9, 2012
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[David Ignatius] America’s plentiful future
WASHINGTON ― With so much talk these days of America’s decline, it may sound strange to ponder the prospects for an American economic boom a decade or so from now. But that’s the thrust of two new studies, which have me thinking like Dr. Pangloss, Voltaire’s caricature of optimism. These analyses predict the repair of two of America’s greatest economic vulnerabilities in recent times ― dependence on foreign energy, with the threats of supply disruption, and the decline of the manufacturing secto
May 9, 2012
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Austerity is strangling economies of eurozone
BERLIN ― The emergence of a united Europe is a process that has been going on for decades, characterized by progress but also by setbacks. There have been crises again and again in the history of European unification. Crucially, Europe has always found an answer to these crises and come out of them strengthened in the end. It will be the same this time if the political actors face up to the great challenges and muster the political will to overcome them.Since the founding of the European Coal an
May 9, 2012
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To leave China or not, that is the question
Most dissidents in China have to face a simple but potentially life-changing question at some point in their lives: Should I stay or should I go?The answer, unfortunately, is not as straightforward.As the Chen Guangcheng incident has shown, deciding whether to leave China and go into exile is an extremely tough call.The blind legal activist was adamant that he did not want to leave his country during his stay in the United States embassy in Beijing, but changed his mind after leaving the secured
May 9, 2012
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[Peter Singer] Are humans getting better?
MELBOURNE ― With daily headlines focusing on war, terrorism, and the abuses of repressive governments, and religious leaders frequently bemoaning declining standards of public and private behavior, it is easy to get the impression that we are witnessing a moral collapse. But I think that we have grounds to be optimistic about the future.Thirty years ago, I wrote a book called “The Expanding Circle,” in which I asserted that, historically, the circle of beings to whom we extend moral consideratio
May 9, 2012
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Lame attempts to shut off Afghan heroin spigot
A Russian source recently brought an obscure but disturbing article to my attention. Published last month by a little-known online journal called the Oriental Review, the piece, “Active Endeavor And Drug Trafficking,” proposed that not a single gram of heroin has been confiscated on the Mediterranean Sea since the inception of NATO’s Operation Active Endeavor, a maritime operation launched a month after the Sept. 11 attacks with the mission of “monitoring shipping to help detect, deter and prote
May 8, 2012
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[Daniel Fiedler] Multiculturalism thrives in Korea
Just over 100 years ago Shin Chae-ho, a Korean independence activist and historian, published a Korean history book in which he set forth the concept of Korean pure blood. He created this concept as a counter to the Japanese attempts to assimilate the Korean people. At that time the Japanese were trying to convince the Korean people that they were of the same racial stock. Shin’s new mythology was therefore necessary to protect Korea and its culture. Fast forward to the present day and South Kor
May 8, 2012
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Peace with Palestine first
HAIFA ― Not long ago, a Dutch journalist interviewed me about the Iranian nuclear question. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has allegedly banned politicians from giving interviews on the subject, so the journalist had no choice but to seek other candidates, perhaps more “intellectual,” but with no authoritative information to offer. The journalist asked me, first, if I thought that Israel would launch an attack against Iran’s nuclear plants; second, if I thought that it would be worth
May 8, 2012
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Choosing to photograph, to publish, to look
Before they started snapping pictures, the amateur photographers of the 82nd Airborne Division whose work was recently made famous by the Los Angeles Times had official business to transact: bombings to investigate, corpses to identify, biometric information to collect. Their assignments were expressly visual: inspect, scan, document. It seems that they performed those duties. They got into trouble, however, when they started doing unauthorized visual work, posing for photos with the corpses to
May 8, 2012
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[Meghan Daum] Loss of basic human trait, beauty in the eye of app
If you’re one of those people who says, “There should be an app for that!” every time you’re confronted with one of life’s little quandaries (recent entrepreneurial brainstorms in my household include “What’s the Dog Thinking?” and some form of gaydar), you’ve probably already imagined this: an app that will tell you how ugly you are.Too late. The Ugly Meter has been around for more than a year, but thanks to a recent mention by Howard Stern on his satellite radio show, it’s suddenly become a se
May 8, 2012
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[Kim Seong-kon] Outsiders’ view on Korean tales
An outsider’s perspective is often illuminating and enlightening, as he or she perceives the world differently from us, and sees things that insiders tend to miss. While an outsider’s views are fresh and penetrating, an insider’s vision is often banal and myopic. In Korea, for example, the famous short story, “Kapitan Lee,” is widely known as an account of an opportunistic doctor who manages to survive Korea’s turbulent years of the Japanese occupation, and the liberation and division of the cou
May 8, 2012
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Shortcut culture mars China’s reputation
China is facing a product-quality scandal once again, another in a seemingly endless string ― though right now the blind dissident’s great escape last week and the Bo Xilai family cataclysm are smothering all news of it.Still, the new scandal and the Bo case derive from a single cultural cause.A few days ago, the state announced that it has detained 54 suspects, shut down 80 “illegal production lines” and seized 77 million gelatin capsules used for prescription drugs, all of them heavily contami
May 7, 2012
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[Mohamed A. El-Erian] Germany’s neighborhood watch
FRANKFURT ― On a recent trip to Germany, I was struck by two distinct narratives. One narrative features a robust German economy with low unemployment, strong finances, and the right competitive position to exploit the most dynamic segments of global demand. The other narrative describes an economy that is encumbered by never-ending European debt crises whose perpetrators seek to shift their responsibility ― and their financing needs ― onto Germany’s pristine balance sheet.Both narratives are un
May 7, 2012