The Korea Herald

[Leonid Bershidsky] Making babies to grow economies won’t work

ViewpointsJan 22, 2020

In his recent state of the nation address, Russian President Vladimir Putin spent about 20 minutes on a sweeping constitutional reform proposal designed to keep him in power indefinitely -- and about...
[Anjani Trivedi] China spins a trade-deal trap in bad debt market

ViewpointsJan 20, 2020

China is opening the deepest, darkest corner of its strained financial system to American financial institutions. It’s not clear why investors would want to go there, even with their eyes wide open. ...
[Leonid Bershidsky] Libya’s endless war is what happens if US won’t lead

ViewpointsJan 16, 2020

A solution to the civil conflict in Libya is the ultimate hot potato. A series of global and regional powers have tried to bring the warring sides together; Turkey and Russia were the latest to try a...
[David Fickling] HK could be a loser from trade deal

ViewpointsJan 16, 2020

As the gateway for China’s trade with the world for more than 70 years, Hong Kong might be expected to benefit from the phase one deal that Beijing will sign with Washington on Wednesday. Chances are...
[David Fickling] What ‘Parasite’ misses about inequality in Korea

ViewpointsJan 13, 2020

To judge by “Parasite” -- Bong Joon-ho’s Golden Globe-winning portrait of three Seoul families thrown into queasy proximity by the country’s wealth divide — South Korea is an Asian version of Brazil ...
[David Fickling] Iran’s freaking out the oil market. It shouldn’t

ViewpointsJan 9, 2020

It’s often said that the best time to buy is when there’s blood on the streets. The best time to sell oil, by contrast, is when the world’s gas tanks look empty. That’s reason to temper the fear and...
[Leonid Bershidsky] Putin now needs to rethink Mideast plan

ViewpointsJan 9, 2020

Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, killed last week by a US drone in Baghdad, has been credited with persuading Russian President Vladimir Putin to intervene militarily in Syria in 2015, a claim the Krem...
[Hussein Ibish] War with Iran not inevitable

ViewpointsJan 6, 2020

Now that the US has taken out Qassem Soleimani, arguably the most important military figure in the 40-year history of the Islamic Republic, conventional wisdom holds that Tehran must respond with ext...
[A. Gary Shilling] Simple economics to contain health care costs

ViewpointsJan 5, 2020

Spending on US health care is out of control, expanding steadily from 5 percent of gross domestic product in 1960 to 18 percent in 2018. There are, however, ways to curb the explosion in costs from b...
[Hal Brands] Trump’s Iran policy spirals toward control

ViewpointsJan 5, 2020

The US airstrike that killed Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a leader of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, was not simply a sharp departure ...
[Michael R. Strain] Wages are based more on productivity, less on exploitation

ViewpointsJan 2, 2020

“Workers are delivering more, and they’re getting a lot less,” argued former Vice President Joe Biden in a speech at the Brookings Institution this summer. “There’s no correlation now between product...
[Tyler Cowen] What Trump and Thunberg have in common

ViewpointsJan 2, 2020

In all the “Best of the Decade” lists I’ve been seeing, one topic has been neglected: orators. I’d like to remedy that, noting that I am not necessarily endorsing anything anyone says. “Best” in this...
[Noah Smith] The middle class risks consuming itself

ViewpointsJan 1, 2020

Americans are increasingly anxious about the costs of services such as health care and education. But these are the very same industries that increasingly sustain the middle class. Resolving this par...
South Korean President criticizes indictment of former minister

PoliticsDec 31, 2019

South Korea’s presidential office criticized prosecutors’ decision to indict the country’s former justice minister, pushing back against a scandal that has damaged the ruling party ahead of parliamen...
[Tyler Cowen] Women dominated the decade

ViewpointsDec 30, 2019

People react so emotionally to politics, I have decided to assess the decade just past by considering something less partisan but no less illuminating: culture. Start with the music I have been list...