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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Medical feud leaves hospitals in financial crisis
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Top prosecutor pledges 'speedy, strict' probe into first lady's luxury bag allegations
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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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'Queen of Tears' riding high on Netflix chart
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Speaker floats dual citizenship as solution to falling births
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Is ‘flexicurity’ EU’s post-crisis social model?
Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis has forced some countries to pare back welfare programs harshly to meet austerity targets, raising a provocative question: Is the Continent’s famed social model doomed? That’s what European Central Bank President Mario Draghi seemed to imply during a Wall Street Journal interview earlier this year, when he said that ”the European social model has already gone,” because it could no longer assure jobs for youths. Draghi’s comments have been overinterpreted, but he wo
April 18, 2012
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Gender boundaries: How much should sex matter?
WARSAW/MELBOURNE ― Jenna Talackova reached the finals of Miss Universe Canada last month, before being disqualified because she was not a “natural born” female. The tall, beautiful blonde told the media that she had considered herself a female since she was four years old, had begun hormone treatment at 14, and had sex reassignment surgery at 19. Her disqualification raises the question of what it really means to be a “Miss.”A question of broader significance was raised by the case of an 8-year-
April 18, 2012
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[Lee Jae-min] A whaling war in The Hague
As the prime ministers of the two countries publicly acknowledge, fish conservation is the only area where Japan and Australia have differing views. Japan is one of the major fishing countries in the world and Australia has long been the spiritual leader of the global fish conservation group. The diplomatic wrangling between the two countries has been particularly tumultuous over Japan’s southern ocean whaling program.The “whaling” tension has continued to intensify in recent years as the Japane
April 17, 2012
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U.S. can help Iraq stay on democratic path
Iraq is on a path leading away from the reasonably democratic model the U.S. hoped to leave behind. President Nouri al-Maliki is on a power trip. More broadly, his government is pushing laws that would constrain freedoms fundamental to a democracy. Maliki, a Shiite, has gone after leading Sunni politicians, most notably issuing an arrest warrant, on what seem to be trumped-up murder charges, for Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, now a fugitive. In response, Hashimi’s Sunni-dominated party, a part
April 17, 2012
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Voters drawn to political extremes in France
With Rick Santorum’s decision to end his campaign, the outcome of the Republican primaries is decided. But a different republican primary is just now heating up. The French Fifth Republic is several days away from the first round of its presidential elections.The latest polls show the two front-runners, the Gaullist (and current president) Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Francois Hollande, have each captured slightly less than 30 percent of the electorate. But the real news is in the pack that fol
April 17, 2012
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How good business can lift Apple’s share price
Early this month, Adrian Kingsley- Hughes made this prediction on Forbes.com: “It seems quite possible for Apple stock to hit four digits in the next couple of years, barring any missteps.” The author probably imagines future missteps such as overheating iPads, a possible unsuccessful foray into the television-set market, or the failure of the company’s new chief executive officer, Tim Cook, to live up to the legacy of Steve Jobs. Yet it is easy to imagine a whole different set of problems, such
April 17, 2012
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[Kim Seong-kon] The value of minority voices in a homogeneous society
It may be a bit exaggerated to say we now live in the age of minorities and minority cultures. Nevertheless, it is undeniably true that ethnic minorities and their cultures are being recognized and appreciated in many countries these days. In the United States, for example, Americans elected Barack Obama as their president, giving tremendous hope to African Americans. President Obama also appointed ethnic minorities, including Korean Americans, to key posts in his Cabinet. A few weeks ago, Presi
April 17, 2012
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How the Titanic made the modern radio industry
We remember the Titanic for its epic technological hubris. But the ship’s sinking also marks the moment when a more modest technology, the wireless radio, began to transform the shipping industry.As an example of the Progressive-era faith in technology, the Titanic is hard to equal. In addition to its sumptuous interior, the ship was able to churn across the ocean at a staggering 22.5 knots. It was also outfitted with the most sophisticated wireless-telegraph technology available, with a range o
April 16, 2012
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[David Ignatius] Kissinger’s model for a stable Iran
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. ― Nobody can predict where the process of negotiation with Iran is headed, but here’s what I’d like to see: A broad dialogue that brings the rising power of Iran into a new security system in the Middle East in exchange for Iran’s commitment not to build nuclear weapons. If you’re looking for a lucid explanation of how such a framework could be built, I recommend an unlikely source: It is Henry Kissinger’s doctoral dissertation, “A World Restored,” published in 1957. The book an
April 16, 2012
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Hordes of young people leave Greece
ATHENS ― I traveled to Greece to see the land of my fathers, to see its beauty and its economic crisis firsthand.But as I arrived, others were leaving.Especially Greece’s young people, suffering from unemployment that hovers around 50 percent.“They go to Australia or Turkey or wherever they can find work,” says my first cousin Sophia, a mother of two daughters who is fearful of the future.Every day here, as a handful on the hard left throw rocks in the streets, the stories get worse and worse. M
April 16, 2012
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[Jeffrey Frankel] Budgetary wishful thinking and fiscal targets
CAMBRIDGE ― Why do many countries find it hard to control their budgets? Concern about budget deficits has become a burning political issue in the United States; helped to persuade the United Kingdom to enact stringent cuts, despite a weak economy; and is the proximate cause of the Greek sovereign-debt crisis, which has grown to engulf the entire eurozone. Indeed, among industrialized countries, hardly anyone is immune from fiscal woes.Clearly, part of the blame lies with voters who don’t want t
April 16, 2012
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[Meghan Daum] The radical message of HBO series ‘Girls’
When I was 24 and living in a funky New York City apartment with roommates, roaches and ambitions that were both utterly consuming and utterly unfocused, I was convinced my generation was cursed. It was the early 1990s, and between a recession, the AIDS crisis and the last vestiges of the crack-and-crime epidemic, daily life had a certain apocalyptic quality.Thanks to baby boomers bottlenecking the middle rungs of the corporate ladder, we’d never move up from our entry-level jobs. Thanks to real
April 16, 2012
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[Robert Reich] We’re turning U.S. into a giant casino
Anyone who says you can get rich through gambling is a fool or a knave. Multiply the size of the prize by your chance of winning it and you’ll always get a number far lower than what you put into the pot. The only sure winners are the organizers ― casino owners, state lotteries and con artists of all kinds.Yet America is now opening the floodgates to organized gambling.In December, the Department of Justice announced it was reversing its position that all Internet gambling was illegal.That decis
April 15, 2012
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[Rachel Marsden] GSA scandal and throwback civil service culture
By now you’ve likely heard about the infamous Las Vegas convention bash during which federal civil servants at the General Services Administration indulged in various frivolities to the tune of $823,000 of your money. That conference featured, among other things, a hired professional clown ― which is like Picasso hiring some guy from out of the Yellow Pages to paint a mural.As with political sex scandals, nothing vaults a fiscal scandal into the headlines faster than photographic or video eviden
April 15, 2012
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Israel-Iran history, Holocaust perverted in Grass’ poem
Guenter Grass, the German writer and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, brought forth last week an odious little poem that focuses on the threat to world peace posed by the Jewish state, and congratulates its author for the courage to point out this truth. The poem, published in the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung and elsewhere, was titled “What Must Be Said,” which is quite a vainglorious title. There is very little in the world that is safer (or less novel) than criticizing Isra
April 15, 2012
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[Kenichi Ohmae] Fukushima’s lesson: Probability theory is unsafe
TOKYO ― A year has now passed since the complete core melt down of three boiling water reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima No.1 plant. Because of the limited information issued by the Japanese government ― and its insistence that the disaster was only a result of the unanticipated magnitude of the earthquake and tsunami ― the world does not know what really happened and will thus draw the wrong lessons.The most critical lesson for the global nuclear industry to learn, since most
April 15, 2012
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[Jonathan Schell] New wars to disarm rogue states
NEW YORK ― On April 13, Iran is scheduled to meet with representatives of China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States ― the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council ― plus Germany (the so-called “P5+1”) in an effort to decide the fate of Iran’s nuclear program. Meanwhile, North Korea is reportedly preparing its third nuclear test, as if to provide a discordant sound track for the talks.If the talks fail, and military action against Iran becomes more likely, n
April 13, 2012
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Arab Spring may not bring democracy after all
Ever since Islamists took office in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, they have been trying to convince us that they are advocates of moderation, democracy, women’s rights and individual freedoms. And most people in the West, after jubilantly watching the Arab Spring’s amazing revolutions last year, wanted to believe them.But now we can see that these Islamic groups are taking us for fools.In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood promised that it would not field a candidate for president. But then this month it
April 13, 2012
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High-tech apps could help prevent crime
Many tend to imagine cities to be a place where people keep to themselves and strangers don’t talk to strangers. The fact is that in any given day strangers spend time with strangers, sometimes alone, in a closed room on thousands of occasions. It is called a taxi ride. Some taxi drivers like to share their views on current political issues. Some passengers like to chat with their cabbies about their daily routines. Some rides are almost silent except at the beginning when the passengers announc
April 13, 2012
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Thai government plays down consumer price rise
Amid growing complaints in Thailand from consumers over the rising cost of goods, the Thai Commerce Ministry has insisted that prices are under control, but only part of the truth has been reported to the Cabinet and the public.In fact, the government has picked only some products whose prices have come down to showcase to society.Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and Commerce Minister Boonsong Teriyaphirom keep on saying that prices are under control and the cost of living has not risen d
April 13, 2012