Most Popular
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Controversy rekindled over when to name criminals, suspects
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Seoul transit pass for travelers to be available starting July
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Hybe-Ador CEO conflict gets messier
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Battery makers ramp up efforts to diversify graphite supply chain
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Prosecutors to summon pastor who allegedly gave Dior bag to first lady
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[KH Explains] Hyundai Motor’s plan for new landmark keeps hitting bumps
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Seoul vows action over Naver's Line, Yahoo dispute
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‘Monk’ DJ spreading Buddhism goes global
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[LLG] Unseen inheritance: Trauma of transnational adoption 'trickles down' to adoptees' children
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Court's ruling set to shape path of medical school expansion
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Corrupted system
In the end, the initially shocking jacuzzi, wide-screen TV sets, split-type air-conditioning units, music studio with sophisticated equipment, luxury watches and footwear, even the life-size sex doll, found in the quarters of drug convicts in the national penitentiary boil down to this: They are of a piece with the corrupted system that has also made possible the plunder of public funds by government officials including lawmakers, their enablers in various agencies, and private persons who have
Dec. 18, 2014
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[Frank Ching] In race for top, odds favor Tsai
The rout of the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, in Taiwan by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party in local elections on Nov. 29 changed Taiwan’s political landscape overnight, making the DPP candidate for president in 2016 the odds-on favorite and possibly marking a change in cross-strait relations.While each of the 9-in-1 elections was a local race, cumulatively, they constituted a referendum on the performance of the Ma Ying-jeou presidency. And Ma was keenly aware of this, immediatel
Dec. 18, 2014
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What makes Bangladesh proud in December?
On Nov. 11, 1970, the coastal region of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) was devastated by one of the deadliest tropical cyclones in recorded history with the loss of over 500,000 human lives.A BBC reporter visited a remote island in the affected region seven days after the devastation. He found no houses, no food and no drinking water in the entire island. No relief team visited the area. He saw a barren island with a few people roaming around aimlessly. “How could these people survive for seven
Dec. 18, 2014
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[David Ignatius] A ‘reset’ of U.S.-China ties?
BEIJING ― This year began with some Chinese and American foreign-policy analysts looking back a century to World War I and wondering if confrontation was inevitable between a rising power and a dominant one. But now there has been progress on climate, trade and security issues and what seems a modest “reset” of the Sino-American relationship. Future disagreements between the U.S. and China are inevitable. But the surprise of a high-level dialogue here last weekend was the interest by both sides
Dec. 17, 2014
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Asia isn’t ready for a China crash
As China’s first full year of rebalancing draws to close, how has President Xi Jinping done? Reasonably well, it seems. Growth appears to be moderating gently, stocks continue to soar and most economists still foresee a soft landing rather than market-shaking meltdown for the world’s second-largest economy.Next year, however, Xi’s team will have to get to the hard stuff: taming an opaque, unwieldy financial system. My question isn’t so much whether China will or won’t crash. It’s whether the res
Dec. 17, 2014
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[Jeffrey Frankel] Why commodity prices fall
Oil prices have plummeted 40 percent since June ― good news for oil-importing countries, but bad news for Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria, and other oil exporters. Some attribute the price drop to the U.S. shale-energy boom. Others cite OPEC’s failure to agree on supply restrictions.But that is not the whole story. The price of iron ore is down, too. So are gold, silver, and platinum prices. And the same is true of sugar, cotton, and soybean prices. In fact, most dollar commodity prices have fallen s
Dec. 17, 2014
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Time for Afghanistan to stand on its own
Last week, the last American general to lead combat operations in Afghanistan officially lowered the flag to signal the end of the U.S. coalition’s war-fighting mission after 13 years, a milestone that went strangely unheralded in the United States and much of the world.The absence of fanfare regarding this significant moment in post-9/11 history reflects the uncertain outcome of U.S. military involvement in a faraway, indomitable land where the headlines often delivered more bad news than good
Dec. 17, 2014
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Russia’s problems are everyone’s problems
“Cyprus with nukes.” That’s how someone, maybe me, referred to Russia in an IM conversation this morning. It’s not really a fair comparison; Russia is a vast country loaded with natural resources, not a tiny island banking haven. But it does express a very real fear: that the world is about to experience a major financial crisis in a country that seems to deal with its internal troubles by slicing off bits of neighboring countries.The ruble is plunging, for reasons that have roots in the falling
Dec. 17, 2014
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Another Malala moment for Pakistan
Two years ago, a Taliban gunman boarded a school bus in Pakistan and fired a shot that outraged the world. He seriously wounded 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai. She recovered, became a powerful voice in the fight against Taliban extremism, and won the Nobel Peace Prize this year.On Tuesday, another Malala moment staggered Pakistan ... and the world.Taliban gunmen stormed a military school in Peshawar and slaughtered more than 140 people, mostly children. This was no random school. These students we
Dec. 17, 2014
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[Lee Jae-min] Who is paying the price?
When other people do not believe what you say, it really puts you on edge. When you believe (and know) that something does not exist but circumstantial pieces of information indicate that it may exist, nothing can be more frustrating. The same things also happen between states: country A argues the absence of something while country B argues otherwise, and the listening third person raises the hand of country B. Then the same feeling of frustration sinks in.Korea knows about this awkward feeling
Dec. 16, 2014
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Time to take away the punchbowl in Japan
As the world watches to see what Prime Minister Shinzo Abe does with his renewed mandate in Japan, my eyes are on Haruhiko Kuroda instead. After all, the Bank of Japan governor probably deserves about 90 percent of the credit for whatever success Abe’s reflation efforts have had thus far ― in particular, a more than 70 percent rise in the benchmark Topix index. Whether the prime minister now goes further and implements the real structural reforms Japan needs depends as much on Kuroda as anyone e
Dec. 16, 2014
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[Kim Seong-kon] What the nutty case of ‘nut rage’ tells us
Recently, the whole nation was shaken by the Korean Air “nut rage” case. The Korean people’s anger boiled over when they heard about the embarrassing incident that happened recently on a Korean Air flight from New York to Incheon. A vice president of Korean Air, on board the flight in the cosseted seclusion of the first-class cabin, became enraged when served nuts in a bag and not on a plate. She forced the plane that was already taxiing in preparation for takeoff to return to its gate so she co
Dec. 16, 2014
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What economists can learn from humans
Every year now for more than three decades, the World Bank has published the World Development Report, a survey and synthesis of current thinking on a major theme or debate in development economics.These reports, which are produced by the bank’s research wing, are collaborative ventures integrating the work of many hands; they are rarely very striking in their style or bold in their judgments. Although their aim is to set the agenda for development economics, they generally are not very efficaci
Dec. 16, 2014
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Regulatory ‘red tape’ often saves lives
Last month, the Obama administration announced tougher Clean Air Act rules intended to reduce ground-level ozone, the chief component of the smog that plagues the Baltimore-Washington area and much of the nation. With at least half the pollution blowing into Maryland from the burning of fossil fuels outside the state (and much of the densely-populated Northeast faced with the same downwind problem), a nationwide approach is essential to cleaner, healthier air.Yet Republicans in Congress, prodded
Dec. 16, 2014
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[Joseph E. Stiglitz] Inequality and the U.S. child
NEW YORK ― Children, it has long been recognized, are a special group. They do not choose their parents, let alone the broader conditions into which they are born. They do not have the same abilities as adults to protect or care for themselves. That is why the League of Nations approved the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child in 1924, and why the international community adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.Sadly, the United States is not living up to its obligation
Dec. 15, 2014
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Election win gives Abe second chance
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe asked Japanese voters for a renewed mandate to pursue his economic-revival program, and on Sunday they gave it to him. To breathe new life into his reforms at home, he should now look abroad.As the election made clear, there’s little debate about the thrust of Abe’s current reform plan. Even Japan’s weak opposition parties more or less acknowledge the good that the first two “arrows” in Abe’s program ― massive monetary easing and fiscal stimulus ― have done. The Bank of
Dec. 15, 2014
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Call it what you will, ‘culture of rape’ must end
There are so many disturbing elements to the recent Rolling Stone story about a fraternity gang rape at the University of Virginia and the subsequent admission by the publication’s managing editor that huge pieces of the article ― including details of the alleged assault itself ― were inaccurate or could not be verified. It’s hard to know where to begin.If there is any positive outcome to be garnered from this fiasco, it is this: The article and related fallout are forcing Americans to more obje
Dec. 15, 2014
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[Ram Garikipati] Rethink trickle-down policies
It is no secret that the Park Geun-hye administration and the ruling Saenuri Party are vehemently against raising corporate taxes, arguing that higher taxes could affect economic growth. They instead want to go easy on the corporate sector and the wealthy, all in the name of trickle-down economics ― a theory closely identified with Reaganomics, which states that decreasing tax rates especially for corporations, investors and entrepreneurs can stimulate production in the overall economy. So it ma
Dec. 15, 2014
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Torture report message: Let Pakistan handle it
Senate Democrats this week issued a declassified report stating that the harsh interrogations the Central Intelligence Agency once claimed saved American lives failed to produce unique and valuable intelligence. But Senate Democrats also assert that third-world interrogations of al-Qaida operatives often did produce such vital intelligence.The report, written by the majority staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, cites six instances in which Pakistani authorities, in particular, obtained le
Dec. 15, 2014
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[Robert Zaretsky] IS reminds France of WWII
The Islamic State video showing the executions of 18 captured Syrian soldiers along with American aid worker Peter Kassig shocked the world for the usual reasons and one more as well. The militants did not wear masks. Two who appeared in the video, Michael Dos Santos and Maxime Hauchard, are French citizens. Their unmasking allowed the French to put faces to two of the more than 1,000 of their countrymen estimated to have given themselves to Islamic State and its terrifying worldview.These parti
Dec. 14, 2014