[J. Bradford DeLong] US must pursue industrial policy

By the end of the 1970s, the US economy appeared to be in serious trouble. Years of inflation had caused deep discontent; measured productivity growth had fallen from its post-World War II pace of 2 percent per year to almost zero; and America’s resilience in the face of geopolitical and geoeconomic shocks seemed to be waning. The proposed solutions to these problems fell into two categories: neoliberalism and activist industrial policy. The neoliberals won. Neoliberalism called for shrink

Sept. 9, 2024

[Robert Fouser] Learning Korean and Chinese characters

Learning Korean continues to grow in popularity around the world, but the speed of growth may be slowing as the popularity of K-pop has plateaued. Universities in many countries have seen a decline in second language learning as part of a broader shift away from the humanities. Over time, this could result in a weakening of important institutional support for Korean classes. According to the “2023 Duolingo Language Report,” an annual report produced by the popular language learning p

Sept. 6, 2024

[Peter Singer, Martin Skladany] Protesting ethically

Climate protesters have disrupted the tennis at Wimbledon, thrown tomato soup at the glass protecting famous paintings, sprayed orange powder on Stonehenge and blocked traffic. In response, European governments have been cracking down on environmental protesters with detentions and fines, and, in one case, with a five-year prison sentence for advocating civil disobedience in a Zoom call. Whether a protest is ethical is distinct from whether it is legal. As Martin Luther King, Jr., argued in his

Sept. 5, 2024

[Wang Son-taek] Roots of the dispute over martial law

The scorching summer of 2024 has finally passed, and South Korea is now entering the autumn season. While the weather has cooled down, the heated political fight continues unabated. A fierce debate revolves around allegations that the Yoon Suk Yeol administration is preparing for martial law. The opposition has raised suspicions, claiming that the government's recent actions suggest preparations for martial law. In contrast, the government and ruling party vehemently deny these allegations,

Sept. 5, 2024

[Kim Seong-kon] No more specter of Marx hovering over Korea

Recently, newspaper reports said that Seoul National University canceled an undergraduate course on Marxist economics due to the lack of registered students. It is only natural in this era of the global economy. In fact, Marxist economic theory became extinct as a failed experiment in the early 1990s when communist countries in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and China gave up on it and adopted free market principles. In that sense, canceling a course on Marxist economics was a much-belated me

Sept. 4, 2024

[Lionel Laurent] Working six days a week is no myth in Greece

Anyone who’s seen swathes of sunburnt German tourists harrying Greek workers for a beach towel this summer will know how wrong economic cliches can be. Greeks, depicted as “lazy” during the euro crisis, actually work more hours than anyone else in Europe, and supposedly workaholic Germans work among the least. Now the gap is getting starker with a divisive new law allowing some Greek firms to enforce a six-day workweek -- a first in Europe and one that runs counter to the trend

Sept. 4, 2024

[Eric Posner] Is a pro-labor Republican Party possible?

Following a speech by Sean O’Brien, the president of the Teamsters union, at the Republican National Convention last month, a New York Times analysis considered whether the party could really carry out a populist agenda in support of workers. While Donald Trump has never shown much interest in workers’ rights, many of his acolytes have. Republican Sens. Josh Hawley, Roger Marshall, Marco Rubio and JD Vance (the party’s vice-presidential candidate) have all sided with workers in

Sept. 3, 2024

[Grace Kao] My K-pop class at Yale University

For the past four years, I’ve taught a first-year seminar titled “Race and Place in British New Wave, K-pop and Beyond” at Yale University. Since it’s the beginning of the Fall semester here, it seems like an appropriate time to share what my course is like. At Yale, we have special seminars that are only open to our first-year students. These courses are introductory and offer unique content. First-year seminars give our newest students a chance to interact with other st

Sept. 3, 2024

[Jean Pisani-Ferry] What is needed to awaken Europe?

The European Union is facing three major crises. The first is a competitiveness crisis that was already apparent in the late 2010s but has worsened, leading to lackluster productivity and growth performance. More recently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine created a security crisis that is compounded by the bloc’s deteriorating relationship with China. The war also triggered an energy crisis that puts Europe at a disadvantage relative to its major competitors, the United States and China.

Sept. 2, 2024

[Yoo Choon-sik] Rising housing prices in Seoul and trust in policy

An efficient economic policy is not necessarily one that simply achieves its intended goal regardless of side effects, but rather one that economic players trust, believing it was based on a correct assessment of the situation and expected effects from the policy. Measured against this criterion, South Korea’s recent policies and top officials' comments on rising house prices in the capital area fall short of being efficient -- not because they will fail to curb housing prices, but be

Sept. 2, 2024

[Lee Byung-jong] Gen Z’s growing gender gap

The upcoming US presidential election in November has a surprising degree of similarities with the South Korean presidential election in 2022. For starters, both elections feature candidates who are being tried for various criminal charges, facing prosecutors-turned-candidates on the other side. But more importantly, both elections highlight a remarkably sharp gender divide among young people, particularly Generation Z. In both countries, young men predominantly support conservative candidates,

Aug. 30, 2024

[Contribution] Towards responsible AI in military domain

On Sept. 9-10, South Korea will host the second summit on the Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain (REAIM). The first-ever summit on this topic was held last year in the Netherlands. REAIM 2024 in Seoul will continue to deepen understanding and awareness of the issues surrounding the application of AI in the military domain, and will explore ways to ensure that AI is used responsibly by militaries around the globe. AI is transforming all facets of human existence at an asto

Aug. 29, 2024

[Wang Son-taek] Were they not Koreans?

A nasty specter of historical revisionism has again shaken the Republic of Korea. This time, a comment in question came from Kim Moon-soo, the labor minister nominee. During his confirmation hearing in parliament, he denied the nationality of Koreans in the Japanese occupation period from 1910 to 1945. He asserted, “Our country was completely taken over and forcibly incorporated in Japan. How could there be such a thing as (Korean) nationality?” Shockingly, there exists a faction in

Aug. 29, 2024

[Takatoshi Ito] Japan after Kishida

On Aug. 14, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that he would step down as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in September. Soon after, the LDP will select Kishida’s replacement -- who will serve as prime minister, given the LDP-led coalition’s control of the Diet (the lower house of parliament). The new government is then likely to call a snap election, in the hopes that the “honeymoon effect” will help it increase its majority. What the LDP must f

Aug. 29, 2024

[Tony McAleer] How language enables the extremes

When I was a white supremacist who had infiltrated the Canadian military reserves, an officer who had spent two tours of Northern Ireland embedded in a British unit told me that the Irish Republican Army had only 75 active personnel who pulled triggers and planted bombs. Behind those combatants were 3,500 people who offered them safe houses and storage for their ammunition. Bolstering them was a much broader community of people who endorsed their efforts. Ultimately, decades of sectarian violenc

Aug. 28, 2024

[Kim Seong-kon] How to replenish our exhausted political parties

We Koreans are very proud of the outstanding young athletes and charming K-pop singers who made South Korea internationally famous. On the other hand, we are not so proud of our politicians, who have seriously damaged the reputation of our country in the international community lately. Some political analysts have observed that the two representative political parties of South Korea seem to have exhausted their possibilities. Others have diagnosed that the Korean political parties are now suffer

Aug. 28, 2024

[Zaki Laidi] The geopolitics of Olympic medals

Why do certain countries dominate the Olympics? The answer may lie in the correlation between athletic performance and gross domestic product. The 2024 Paris Olympic Games were a case in point: the top seven medal winners -- the United States, China, Japan, Australia, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom -- are all among the world’s 20 largest economies. This can be partly attributed to demographics: a larger population provides a deeper pool of athletic talent from which to draw

Aug. 27, 2024

[Jeffrey Frankel] Finance goes to Hollywood

Over the years, Hollywood films have had much to say about financial markets and institutions -- often reflecting a distinctly populist perspective. At a time when both populism and financial volatility are much in evidence, what lessons might these films hold about regulation? Start with the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz,” in which Dorothy and her cohort -- the Cowardly Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man -- travel along the “yellow brick road,” in order to reach the ma

Aug. 27, 2024

[Contribution] Misconceptions and truths about earthquakes

By Chang Dong-eon Administrator of the Korea Meteorological Administration Bullfighting, a Spanish cultural tradition, has three main elements: the bullfighter, or matador, the bull and a red cloth called the muleta. When we think of bullfighting, a classic image that comes to mind is a bull charging at the muleta. Many people believe that the red color of the muleta excites the bull. However, this belief is a misconception. Bulls are actually colorblind, so they can’t distinguish betwee

Aug. 26, 2024

[Lee Kyong-hee] Yoon’s dangerous spin on history

Saburo Ienaga, arguably the most famous historian in 20th-century Japan, waged a more than 30-year fight against his government’s efforts to omit wartime atrocities from school textbooks. “Even if you hide from the Japanese,” he declared, “the people in other countries know about them. The side that inflicted sufferings forgets, but the side that suffered doesn’t forget.” Not necessarily so, one may say, when it comes to the current Korean administration. Ad

Aug. 26, 2024