Most Popular
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Korea enters full election mode
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Seoul bus drivers go on general strike, cause morning rush hour delays
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Immigrant woman stabbed to death by Korean husband
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Official campaigning kicks off for April 10 elections
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Lee Jong-sup resigns as envoy to Australia
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Yellow dust engulfs S. Korea, advisory alert issued
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S. Korea to boost support for single-parent families
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Court upholds jail term for man who attempted to murder ex-girlfriend
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Kia EV9 wins world car of year
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Korea misses out on global bond index boost
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[Joel Brinkley] U.S. has trust issues with China
A little-noticed disclosure resulting from the American military assault on Osama bin Laden’s home in Pakistan ought to be throwing a bright spotlight on a serious dilemma for the United States.Before they left, Navy Seals blew up the stealth helicopter that crashed just outside bin Laden’s house. But the tail section remained intact, studded with design elements of its stealth technology, somethi
June 9, 2011
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[William Pesek] It’s bubble time as Asia braces for Fed’s QE3
Pretend you’re Darmin Nasution, Indonesia’s central bank governor, and inflation is running at about 6 percent. Do you raise interest rates or cut them? This isn’t a trick question, but one facing Asia’s monetary authorities as they brace for a possible third round of U.S. quantitative easing, an effort by the central bank to get more money into the economy. No matter what Federal Reserve official
June 8, 2011
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[Graham E. Fuller] Saudi’s false reading of reality
A panicky Saudi Arabia has now openly seized the banner of outspoken opposition to Iran across the Muslim world, surpassing even Washington’s long and obsessive Iran-centered interpretation of Middle East events. Riyadh is perpetuating a false ― and hence dangerously misleading ― reading of key regional issues.The Saudi Kingdom grows understandably fearful as “stable” autocratic rule in the region
June 8, 2011
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[Liu Shijin] China’s true status
Despite the remarkable economic and social development it has achieved since reform and opening-up in 1978, China is still a developing nation, as indicated by both its per capita economic indices and its economic and social structure.It is necessary to take into account a country’s economic aggregate and its per capita output to accurately measure its real economic and social development levels.
June 8, 2011
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[Meghan Daum] David Mamet’s new herd
David Mamet, the acclaimed playwright known for characters that drop the F-bomb at every opportunity, has dropped the ultimate bomb on his fans and the creative community: He is no longer a “brain-dead liberal” but rather a “newly minted conservative.”This revelation is spelled out in his new book, “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture,” which hit stores last week. Accordin
June 8, 2011
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[Jonathan Alter] Don’t believe critics, education reform works
America’s education-reform movement ― the most significant social movement of our time ― is just completing another productive school year, with hundreds of districts beefing up accountability and standards. Amid grim news about budget cuts, the year brought new awareness that relying on seniority alone in determining teacher layoffs is mindless. It’s like saying that if the Chicago Bulls wanted t
June 8, 2011
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[Robert Reich] Unbridled public contractors in U.S.
President Obama is mulling an executive order to force big government contractors to disclose their political spending. He should issue it immediately. But he should go further ― banning all political activity by companies receiving more than half their revenues from the U.S. government.Consider Lockheed Martin, the nation’s largest contractor. It’s received more than $19 billion in federal contra
June 8, 2011
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Rumblings in Inner Mongolia have ethnic edge
The protests in Inner Mongolia were the result of an unfortunate mixture of economic and ethnic grievances, which spilled into public protests after a Mongol herder was run over while trying to block a convoy of coal trucks coming in from the grasslands.The fatality galvanized latent discontent over the mining industry’s penetration of the region. Critics see this as resource exploitation that deg
June 7, 2011
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[Joseph E. Stiglitz] Choosing the next IMF leader
NEW YORK ― Sooner than expected, the International Monetary Fund will have a new managing director. For more than a decade, I have criticized the fund’s governance, symbolized by the way its leader is chosen. By gentlemen’s agreement among the majority shareholders ― the G8 ― the managing director is to be a European, with Americans in the number two post and at the head of the World Bank.The Euro
June 7, 2011
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Human behavior: What’s bugging you?
What annoys you? Traffic jams, car alarms, flight delays, phone trees, junk mail? People who cut in line? People who talk loudly on cellphones? People who eat noisily and clip their nails in public? You’re not alone. These are just some of the irksome things we confront daily.Since annoyances are ubiquitous, and so many people are annoyed so much of the time, you might think that science could off
June 7, 2011
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[Edward Humes] Wal-Mart gets that a smaller carbon footprint is good for business
If you care about green, it’s hard not to view these as the worst of times, marked by looming climate, water and energy crises, vanishing fisheries, mile-a-minute deforestation ― the list is numbingly endless. In response, we have a largely apathetic public, an environmental lobby rendered toothless by said apathy, a political left and center paralyzed by fear that protecting the planet might hurt
June 7, 2011
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[Kim Seong-kon] Literature: An end to chronic ideological warfare
The third Seoul International Forum for Literature, which took place at Kyobo Conference Hall two weeks ago, was a literary festival for writers from all over the world. Under the theme, “The Globalizing World and the Human Community,” 14 celebrated international writers including two Nobel laureates, Le Clezio and Gao Xingjian, joined 31 representative Korean writers to discuss what to write and
June 7, 2011
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[Uri Dromi] Jerusalem: A tale of three cities
Last week, tens of thousands of Israelis flocked to Jerusalem to celebrate the anniversary of the unification of the city in the Six-Day War. They gave us locals the usual traffic jams, they sang the praises of Jerusalem at the top of their lungs and then they went away, leaving us struggling with the realities of our city, which are becoming more complex every year.Jerusalem has always invoked de
June 6, 2011
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[Ana Palacio] Arab Spring and Europe’s turn
NEW HAVEN ― Until now, and with few exceptions, the West has nurtured two distinct communities of foreign-policy specialists: the development community and the democratic community. More often than not, they have had little or no connection with one another: development specialists dealt comfortably with dictatorships and democracies alike, believing that prosperity can best be created by concentr
June 6, 2011
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[Moshe Bar] Human memory: What did you do last Sunday?
I recently enlisted a friend to sit down with me while waiting for our boys to finish a class one Saturday, and we each tried to remember what we had done on the previous Sunday. It was an agonizing exercise that resulted in a blank. I could almost feel the cognitive path my mind was taking, and it always ended with a wall.Conversations with our respective wives revealed that my friend had spent m
June 6, 2011
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[Sung Jae-sang] Food aid to North Korea
On June 2, Robert King, the U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights, reportedly told a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that the South Korean government doesn’t want the U.S. providing food aid to North Korea. He also announced that the U.S. would resume humanitarian food assistance to Pyongyang without political considerations. We heartily welcome this policy shift of the U.S. gov
June 6, 2011
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[Michael Smerconish] Over-scrutinizing lives costs us potential leaders
Mitch Daniels would have added some much-needed substance to the national dialogue. His reason for not running for president is a sad commentary on the sideshow our elections have become.I spoke with Indiana’s popular chief executive last week. We discussed how he had turned a $200 million deficit into a $1.3 billion surplus without raising taxes. And how his insistence on drastic spending cuts ha
June 6, 2011
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[Naomi Wolf] Sex scandals and surveillance
NEW YORK ― It is impossible to hear about sexual or sex-crime scandals nowadays ― whether that involving Dominique Strauss-Kahn or those of former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, or the half-dozen United States congressmen whose careers have ended in the past couple of years ― without considering how they were exposed. What does it mean to live in a socie
June 6, 2011
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[Gregory Rodriguez] Unhappy white majority
“White Americans See Anti-White Bias on the Rise.” That was a headline in the Wall Street Journal in May, and more than any other domestic index or statistic, it’s that sentiment that should worry you about America’s future.While many commentators saw Barack Obama’s election as signaling the emergence of a post-racial America, it might one day be seen instead as the symbolic moment all Americans b
June 5, 2011
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[Bogdan Kipling] Legendary bartender poured on as his best customers dwindled
WASHINGTON ― As head bartender of the National Press Club, “Big Jack” Kujawski had a prime vantage point to witness the sad demise of print journalism over the past 25 years. To say he didn’t like what he saw is an understatement of star magnitude.When Kujawski arrived at the NPC in the mid-1980s, its 14th floor bar overlooking the historic Willard Hotel was crowded with hard-drinking and heavy-sm
June 5, 2011