[Robert J. Fouser] After the National Assembly election

By any measure, the results of the April 10 National Assembly elections were a disaster for President Yoon Suk Yeol and his People Power Party. No incumbent president since democratization in 1987 has suffered a more resounding rebuke. The question now is what it means for the future of South Korean politics and, more broadly, the country itself. After the votes were counted, the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea and affiliate party Democratic United ended up with 175 seats, up 19 from

April 19, 2024

[Kim Seong-kon] Democracy and the future of South Korea

There are a number of popular misconceptions about the meaning of democracy in Korea. Sometimes, we misunderstand democracy as merely “rule by the majority.” However, true democracy should also respect the opinions of the minority. Other times, we mistake democracy for the maxim that “we can do whatever we want to do.” In a democratic system, people authorize their elected representatives to work on their behalf. Thus, we should not expect these representatives to ask for

April 17, 2024

[Dennis Ross] Israel must end the Gaza War

The Iranian-Israeli war has now emerged from the shadows with the barrage of over 300 drones, rockets, and cruise missiles Iran launched at Israel. Along with the US military and other partners, the Israel Defense Forces were able to intercept 99 percent of them. Once again, the Israeli military demonstrated its superb capabilities, but US support was essential. Although Israel takes pride in being able to defend itself, circumstances have changed. When facing threats on seven fronts, as the

April 17, 2024

[Sławomir Sierakowski] Beating back populists at the grassroots

Although local elections often don’t make international news headlines or involve widely recognizable household names, anyone who cares about the state of liberal democracy would do well to pay attention to them. In Turkey, for example, recent elections not only revealed widespread dissatisfaction with the country’s autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, they also offered broader lessons for long-struggling opposition parties about how to select effective candidates and run effe

April 16, 2024

[Peter Singer] Will Cambridge support free speech?

Nathan Cofnas is a research fellow in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. His research is supported by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust. He is also a college research associate at Emmanuel College. Working at the intersection of science and philosophy, he has published several papers in leading peer-reviewed journals. He also writes popular articles and posts on Substack. In January, Cofnas published a post called “Why We Need to Talk about the Right’s Stupidit

April 16, 2024

[Room Tone] 'Words into an AI prompt, does not a film make'

Text-to-video entry: “Please generate a high-octane, action film with the following storyline: "A father receives a phone call from an unknown number informing him that his estranged daughter has been kidnapped. If the father wishes to see his daughter alive, he must break into the safety deposit box of the five-star Seoul hotel where he works as a midnight janitor. He has two hours to get the contents of the security box to the designated drop point. In addition to the ticking cl

April 15, 2024

[Yoo Choon-sik] Korea’s growing trade surplus with US

The crushing defeat of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s party in last week’s nationwide parliamentary election casts a dark cloud over the fate of his administration’s various reform plans as well as its ability to manage national affairs efficiently. His administration will face difficulty implementing many of its announced policies and creating new ones. It is the first time under the current Constitution that a sitting president’s party has failed to win the majority in parli

April 15, 2024

[Eric Posner] The future of work in the AI era

Recent discussions about the implications of artificial intelligence for employment have veered between the poles of apocalypse and utopia. Under the apocalyptic scenario, AI will displace a large share of all jobs, vastly exacerbating inequality as a small capital-owning class acquires productive surpluses previously shared with human laborers. The utopian scenario, curiously, is the same, except that the very rich will be forced to share their winnings with everyone else through a universal ba

April 15, 2024

[Antoinette Burton] The surge in seminar learning spaces

The academic seminar is busy reinventing itself in 21st century style. A space of learning that the humanities have relied on for centuries, it’s more powerful than ever. The seminars getting the high-profile attention are the ones that push the boundaries when it comes to “academic” subject matter. Taylor Swift is the celebrity seminar topic of the moment. But seminars for credit on everything from the music of The Beatles to hip-hop studies are the new normal in higher educat

April 12, 2024

[Antara Haldar] Can AI learn to obey the law?

If the British computer scientist Alan Turing’s work on “thinking machines” was the prequel to what we now call artificial intelligence, the late psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s bestselling “Thinking, Fast and Slow” might be the sequel, given its insights into how we ourselves think. Understanding “us” will be crucial for regulating “them.” That effort has rapidly moved to the top of policymakers’ agenda. On March 21, the UN unanim

April 11, 2024

[Richard K. Sherwin] Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s twisted fantasy

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., scion of one of America’s most storied political families, is running for president of the United States. But unlike his late uncles -- President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy (who unsuccessfully ran for president in 1980) -- or his late father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (who was assassinated during his own presidential run), RFK Jr. is not campaigning as a Democrat. Instead, he is running as the head of a newly formed third party, We the People. Thus unfolds th

April 10, 2024

[Kim Seong-kon] Choosing reliable leaders for our voyage

As the well-known saying goes, “Life is a journey.” Indeed, we are all lifelong travelers in one way or another. When we travel, we may have a pleasant trip, where we meet new people and enjoy exciting adventures. We might also have a perilous journey of obstacles and ordeals. During our voyage, we might encounter a perfect storm or a dangerous reef that threatens to capsize us. Other times, we become lost and wander, or we may stumble down the wrong path. The 2021 American science f

April 10, 2024

[Grace Kao] Manners and morals for everyday idols

K-pop group BTS debuted in June 2013, and the rest is history. But did you ever wonder about the other boy groups that debuted that year? Maybe it’s because I’m a sociologist, but I believe we can learn more about social phenomena when we talk to the average rather than exceptional person, or idol in this case. There are thousands of former idols or trainees that didn’t “make it big.” Some have even managed to stay in the K-pop music industry. For people who becam

April 9, 2024

[Andrew Sheng] Tech giants and social inequality

The Kennedy era guru on capitalism, John Kenneth Galbraith, presciently proclaimed in the “New Industrial State” (1967) that “the imperatives of technology and organization, not the images of ideology, are what determine the shape of economic society." The cacophony of ideology, including religious fervor, is what is killing people in Ukraine, Gaza and other warring states. In the meantime, investors worldwide are chasing tech stocks like Nvidia while the rest of the wor

April 9, 2024

[Yoo Choon-sik] Shaky export prospects and weak domestic demand

South Korea posted a sixth consecutive month of growth in exports during March over a year earlier, official data showed last week, led by a surge in sales abroad of big-ticket items such as semiconductors and ships. This fueled the projection that the country’s economic growth would pick up this year after suffering a below-trend reading last year. Exports in March rose 3.1 percent from a year earlier to $56.5 billion, according to the data compiled by the Ministry of Trade, Industry an

April 8, 2024

[Gernot Wagner, Shang-Jin Wei] Responding to China's EV subsidies

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s nearly weeklong visit to China, now underway, will most likely focus on US concerns about Chinese subsidies to producers of electric vehicles and other clean-tech goods. While the availability of cheap EVs is good news for the planet and for consumers everywhere, it is bad news for shareholders and employees of Western car companies, and both the United States and the European Union are considering imposing import tariffs on Chinese EVs. But tariffs are

April 8, 2024

[Robert J. Fouser] South Korea’s generational happiness gap

Happiness popped back in the news recently with the release of the “2024 World Happiness Report.” The report made waves in the US because of a sharp drop in happiness, particularly among people under the age of 30, which fell to 62nd. The country ranked 23rd, marking the first time that the US dropped out of the top 20, out of 143 countries surveyed. The report made fewer waves in South Korea because it confirmed the established media narrative, both domestic and international, that

April 5, 2024

[Wang Son-taek] A tale of two ambassadors

Korean Ambassador to Australia Lee Jong-sup resigned only 25 days after his appointment. Chung Jae-ho, the ambassador to China, is under investigation after an embassy staffer reported the abuse of power. It might be better to avoid such shameful stories, but the stories of the two ambassadors dramatically show the critical vulnerabilities of Korean diplomacy. It might be worth a detailed review in that they undermine -- not maximize -- the national interests of Korea. Ex-Ambassador Lee Jong-sup

April 4, 2024

[Ana Palacio] Germany’s weakness is bad for Europe

Once the “sick man of Europe,” Germany seems to be under the weather once again. That might be putting it mildly: much as it did in the late 1990s, Germany is staring down the barrel of “stagflation” -- high inflation and unemployment combined with stagnant demand and low growth. A lack of effective political leadership further darkens the outlook for Germany -- and for the European Union that depends on it. France might be the EU’s second-largest economy, a nuclear

April 4, 2024

[Kim Seong-kon] Waiting for Aquaman who bridges land and sea

While I was watching the 2018 American superhero films, “Aquaman” and its 2023 sequel, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” I realized that South Korea desperately needed political leaders like Aquaman. In the movie, Aquaman bridges two radically different worlds: the land and the sea. Aquaman can thus be seen as a symbol of the ideal political leader: one who can quench our thirst for peace and harmony by mediating other binary oppositions, such as progressivism and conservat

April 3, 2024