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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Samsung mocks Apple over iPhone alarm glitch
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'Queen of Tears' riding high on Netflix chart
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Chip up cycle won’t stay long: SK chief
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Speaker floats dual citizenship as solution to falling births
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[Shashi Tharoor] Anti-corruption contest in India
NEW DELHI ― India ended 2011 amid political chaos, as the much-awaited “Lokpal Bill,” aimed at creating a strong, independent anti-corruption agency, collapsed amid a welter of recrimination in the parliament’s upper house, after having passed the lower house two days earlier. The episode, which leaves the bill in suspended animation until its possible revival at the next session, raises fundamental issues for Indian politics which will need to be addressed in the New Year.The need for the bill
Jan. 6, 2012
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Did psychopaths take over Wall Street asylum?
It took a relatively obscure former British academic to propagate a theory of the financial crisis that would confirm what many people suspected all along: The “corporate psychopaths” at the helm of our financial institutions are to blame. Clive R. Boddy, most recently a professor at the Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University, says psychopaths are the 1 percent of “people who, perhaps due to physical factors to do with abnormal brain connectivity and chemistry” lack a “conscie
Jan. 5, 2012
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Foreign Koreanness captured in the movies
With the recent release of the first two trailers for “Papa,” it looks like mainstream Korean cinema will continue to wrestle with the issue of immigration and multiculturalism into the new year. As new as this theme may seem for Korean film, “Papa” actually follows in the footsteps of last year’s very successful “Wandeuki” (English title: “Punch”) and 2010’s almost equally successful “Banga Banga” (English title: “He’s on Duty”), as well as a string of independent films that addressed the same
Jan. 5, 2012
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Malcolm Gladwell test has Japan turning Chinese
If you want to silence a room filled with Japanese politicians, suggest they should learn from China. The conventional wisdom favors the flip side of this dynamic: China should be studying Japan’s playbook. Japan, after all, is an example of both what China needs to do (create a vibrant domestic economy and high living standards) and what it mustn’t (slide into bad-loan crises and deflation). Yet I have one word for Japanese policy makers who dismiss the idea they should heed China’s example: Sh
Jan. 5, 2012
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[Naomi Wolf] The prospects for global protest movements in 2012
NEW YORK ― What does the New Year hold for the global wave of protest that erupted in 2011? Did the surge of anger that began in Tunisia crest in lower Manhattan, or is 2012 likely to see an escalation of the politics of dissent?The answers are alarming but quite predictable: we are likely to see much greater centralization of top-down suppression ― and a rash of laws around the developed and developing world that restrict human rights. But we are also likely to see significant grassroots reacti
Jan. 5, 2012
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Child labor worldwide and 1930 Tariff Act
The scourge of child labor has proven difficult to eradicate. The International Labor Organization estimates that 215 million children are still being exploited for work, much of it hazardous. In recent years, the fair-trade movement has presented itself as an answer, offering, at a premium, goods and commodities certified to have been produced without exploitation. It is thus all the more appalling that a fair-trade program in Burkina Faso has been shown, in an investigation published in Bloomb
Jan. 4, 2012
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After tumult of 2011, here are some global hotspots to watch in 2012
Could the world in 2012 surprise us more than it did in 2011? Certainly, after Japan’s earthquake, the Middle East’s upheavals and Osama bin Laden’s death, the bar on shockers will be high. The known unknowns for 2012 already form a daunting list: the fate of the euro zone; the war in Afghanistan and the “peace” in Iraq; turmoil in Syria, Egypt and across the Middle East; Iran’s nuclear-weapons program; Pakistan’s chronic instability; Kim Jong-un’s succession and China’s soft landing, to name a
Jan. 4, 2012
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Ron Paul’s surge may cause headache for GOP
Mitt Romney, who as governor of Massachusetts turned to John Sasso for help in getting a health- care bill through the state legislature, may want to solicit the Democratic operative’s advice again, this time on how to handle Ron Paul. Even before the voting started in Iowa on Jan. 3, Romney was a prohibitive favorite to win the Republican nomination, a 77.2 percent probability as of Dec. 31, according to InTrade.com, an online betting service. Texas Congressman Paul, with a committed following,
Jan. 4, 2012
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Two Models for Europe
MUNICH -- Interest rates for public debt within the eurozone have spread once again, just as they did before the introduction of the euro. Balance-of-payment disparities are steadily increasing. The sovereign-debt crisis is eating its way from the periphery to the core, and the exodus of capital is accelerating. Since the summer, 300 billion euros, in net terms, may well have fled from Italy and France.The printing presses at the Banque de France and the Banca d’Italia are working overtime to ma
Jan. 4, 2012
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[J. Bradford DeLong] America’s financial leviathan
BERKELEY – In 1950, finance and insurance in the United States accounted for 2.8 percent of GDP, according to U.S. Department of Commerce estimates. By 1960, that share had grown to 3.8 percent of GDP, and reached 6 percent of GDP in 1990. Today, it is 8.4 percent of GDP, and it is not shrinking. The Wall Street Journal’s Justin Lahart reports that the 2010 share was higher than the previous peak share in 2006.Lahart goes on to say that growth in the finance-and-insurance share of the economy ha
Jan. 4, 2012
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America’s financial leviathan
BERKELEY ― In 1950, finance and insurance in the United States accounted for 2.8 percent of GDP, according to U.S. Department of Commerce estimates. By 1960, that share had grown to 3.8 percent of GDP, and reached 6 percent of GDP in 1990. Today, it is 8.4 percent of GDP, and it is not shrinking. The Wall Street Journal’s Justin Lahart reports that the 2010 share was higher than the previous peak share in 2006.Lahart goes on to say that growth in the finance-and-insurance share of the economy ha
Jan. 4, 2012
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[Hans-Werner Sinn] Two models for EU in the absence of capital control
MUNICH ― Interest rates for public debt within the eurozone have spread once again, just as they did before the introduction of the euro. Balance-of-payment disparities are steadily increasing. The sovereign-debt crisis is eating its way from the periphery to the core, and the exodus of capital is accelerating. Since the summer, 300 billion euros, in net terms, may well have fled from Italy and France.The printing presses at the Banque de France and the Banca d’Italia are working overtime to mak
Jan. 4, 2012
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U.S. can help end child labor worldwide by amending 1930 Tariff Act
EditorialBloombergThe scourge of child labor has proven difficult to eradicate. The International Labor Organization estimates that 215 million children are still being exploited for work, much of it hazardous. In recent years, the fair-trade movement has presented itself as an answer, offering, at a premium, goods and commodities certified to have been produced without exploitation. It is thus all the more appalling that a fair-trade program in Burkina Faso has been shown, in an investigation p
Jan. 4, 2012
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After tumult of 2011, here are some global hotspots to watch in 2012
Could the world in 2012 surprise us more than it did in 2011? Certainly, after Japan’s earthquake, the Middle East’s upheavals and Osama bin Laden’s death, the bar on shockers will be high. The known unknowns for 2012 already form a daunting list: the fate of the euro zone; the war in Afghanistan and the “peace” in Iraq; turmoil in Syria, Egypt and across the Middle East; Iran’s nuclear-weapons program; Pakistan’s chronic instability; Kim Jong-un’s succession and China’s soft landing, to name a
Jan. 4, 2012
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[Daniel Fiedler] Dishonor in the Korean courts
A license to practice law opens many doors in life. A lawyer can choose to open a private practice, to work in business, to teach as a law professor, to work as a prosecutor protecting society from criminals, to work at an NGO protecting the environment or the less fortunate, or, for the chosen few, to work as a judge. Many lawyers often aspire to a judgeship as the position is one of the more honorable ways to use their legal education and license. In America judges are referred to as “your hon
Jan. 3, 2012
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New Year’s resolution: No major overhauls
I’ve been making the same New Year’s resolutions since I was 11: be nicer, get organized and lose weight. And although I still have friends who speak to me, can easily locate 1,392 pencils in my office without searching and am not yet being hauled around by a winch, I haven’t exactly exceeded my expectations.In the spirit of new beginnings, and yet aware that, if certain fringe groups are correct, the world will end before I pay off my 2011 Visa bills, I’d like to propose a new vision for New Ye
Jan. 3, 2012
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[Meghan Daum] Mitt Romney’s dog days less seedy than others’
Surely you’ve heard the story about Mitt Romney’s dog. If you haven’t, just wait. The more desperate the GOP primary campaign gets, the more likely you are to hear it again.In 1983, a 36-year-old Romney and his wife and five young boys piled into the family station wagon for a 12-hour drive from Boston to Lake Huron in Canada. As was the custom, Seamus, their Irish setter, rode in a crate strapped to the top of the car.Somewhere along the way, the dog began to experience, shall we say, digestive
Jan. 3, 2012
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Job creation is price for new U.S. health law
I am not an expert on health-care policy, but I do know something about job creation. So when a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee asked me to testify about the effect on employers of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, sometimes known as Obamacare, I thought I could offer some insights. As I told the committee in a July 28 hearing, it is critical that Congress does a good job of balancing the benefits of new legislation against the costs of that legislation. That pro
Jan. 3, 2012
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[Kim Seong-kon] South Korea’s prospects in the Year of the Dragon
As the New Year dawns, people are concerned about what will happen on the Korean Peninsula in 2012. Rumors say that Mount Baekdu in North Korea may erupt soon, possibly in 2012. They say the clock is ticking and the eruption will bring about disaster affecting the whole peninsula. With Kim Jong-il’s abrupt death due to a heart attack this past December, North Korea’s situation, too, seems quite uncertain and nebulous in the New Year. In South Korea, parliamentary and presidential elections are s
Jan. 3, 2012
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Mexico’s strengths still shine through the gloom
The news from Mexico, in recent years, has most often been bad. For a while, it was largely reports of corruption, electoral fraud and economic crisis. These days, it’s all about crime and insecurity. The country hasn’t been given sufficient credit for the good news it has generated since the 2000 elections broke the 71-year hegemony of a single party: the Institutional Revolutionary Party, better known as the PRI. Neither the international press nor we Mexicans have fully acknowledged what has
Jan. 2, 2012