Most Popular
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Iran’s president found dead at helicopter crash site
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Seoul rolls out W250b package in bid to lure foreign talent
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N. Korea slams US subcritical nuclear test, vows measures to bolster nuclear deterrence
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Korea's increasing US investment mutually beneficial: report
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Yoon vetoes bill for special probe into young Marine's death
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SNU alums nabbed for digital sex crimes
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Minister warns against trusting NK stated intentions, says Moon misguided
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South Korea bans viral North Korea propaganda video praising Kim
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AI Seoul Summit to discuss ways to make AI equitable in Global South
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Hermes celebrates craftsmanship
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[Juan L. Mercado] Journalism offers antidote to national amnesia
“National amnesia causes us to forget who and what we are.” Is that the fix we’re in when the Philippines marks the 31st anniversary (Aug. 21) of Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr.’s airport tarmac murder?The most concise summary of that assassination is perhaps found in the tape recorder of then Time magazine’s Sandra Burton. She propped it against a window of China Airlines Flight 811 jet, when it parked at what is today’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport.Three soldiers escort Aquino out. The tape catc
Aug. 21, 2014
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Dry reality of droughts in China
From times immemorial, China has faced droughts, with some parts of the country facing the curse every two to three years. The damage droughts have inflicted on China’s socioeconomic fabric was relative to their intensity and duration. For instance, the drought in 1994-95 was so intense that it caused a loss of $13.8 billion.South and Southeast China suffered severe droughts in 2010-11. Now Henan province and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and Northeast China are in the grip of a severe dr
Aug. 21, 2014
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[Shin Yong-bae] Rebuilding opposition party
Korea’s largest opposition party ― the New Politics Alliance for Democracy ― is struggling to contain the fallout from the July 30 electoral debacle. The NPAD was quick to set up a crisis-management committee led by veteran politician and floor leader Park Young-sun, with a mission to overhaul the party until its new leadership is chosen at a national convention early next year.The caretaker committee will surely seek to revamp the giant party, which has 130 parliamentary seats in the 300-member
Aug. 20, 2014
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The Great War’s forgotten soldiers
NEW DELHI ― One hundred years after the start of World War I, the world has been commemorating that seminal event. Described as “a war to end all wars,” the Great War, as it was called at the time, failed to live up to its billing. Those who fought and died in it would not have expected its sequel just 25 years later.But while the war took the flower of Europe’s youth to premature graves, snuffing out the lives of a generation of talented poets, artists, cricketers, and others whose genius bled
Aug. 20, 2014
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[Kim Myong-sik] A Protestant look at the pope’s visit to Korea
Many scenes during the 100 hours of Pope Francis’ visit to Korea were pleasant to behold. His constant cherubic smile was something we hadn’t seen for a long time on public occasions. So heartwarming were his tireless kisses on the foreheads of numerous infants raised by their parents, the heart sign he made imitating a young boy at a shelter for the handicapped, his tight grip on the handle of the black leather bag he carried himself, the microscopic signature in a corner of a visitors’ book ..
Aug. 20, 2014
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Why people are angry over Ferguson shooting
Why did the Ferguson Police Department leave the body of Michael Brown uncovered in the hot street after a police officer killed him?If you want to know why African-American men and women in Ferguson, Mo., are so upset, put yourself in their place for a moment.All you need to do is look at the cellphone video of Brown lying in the middle of the street ― in broad daylight ― face down with a long trail of blood coming from his body.In video shown on CNN, a woman is heard screaming: “Who the ― did
Aug. 20, 2014
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Go to Ferguson, Mr. President
Once upon a time, there was a man who gave moving and important speeches about race. He was careful to respect history, to call out injustice, to acknowledge competing anxieties ― and, crucially, to elucidate a path forward. His speeches touched Americans of every color and background and gave them hope that it is possible to make progress in their great national project of creating a more just and equal society.That man was Barack Obama. As a little-known Senate candidate a decade ago, he offer
Aug. 20, 2014
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[Lee Jae-min] Pulling rug out at last minute
It was hailed as a turning point. It was a long-awaited morale booster. At long last after 13 years the 159 countries were able to deliver. Amid much fanfare and festivities in Bali last December came the Trade Facilitation Agreement. TFA was a carefully selected stimulant to kick-start the WTO’s languishing multilateral trade negotiations initiated in Doha in 2001. It was supposed to be the “lowest hanging fruit” for the WTO member states and thus the best candidate for kindling. Who would oppo
Aug. 19, 2014
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India is not ‘open for business’ yet
That loud hissing noise you hear coming from India is the air escaping from the Narendra Modi bubble.In retrospect, expectations that India’s prime minister would revolutionize a troubled economy overnight were wildly overblown. But three months on, even some Modi skeptics may be wondering if they have been too easy on the great modernizer from Gujarat. Since taking office, Modi has scuttled a global trade deal, sidestepped much-needed subsidy cuts, and refrained from letting foreigners hold maj
Aug. 19, 2014
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Too fast a journey to becoming empty-nesters
They don’t talk about the quiet in the house.Instead friends tell you all the fun you’ll have together, all the freedom you’ll finally achieve, once your kids are gone away to college.The problem is that they tell you in a chatty, excited voice, extolling the benefits of “reconnecting as a couple” and how we’ll be able to take classes together, trips, adventures, weekends, whatever.Betty smiles, pretending to like what she’s hearing, and I smile and pretend to like it too.We don’t want to be rud
Aug. 19, 2014
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[Kim Seong-kon] What we learned from Pope Francis’ visit here
South Korea is a paradise for religions. Indeed, Koreans are so religious that all kinds of religions thrive here. Most Koreans are either Christians or Buddhists, but you can also find Muslims in Korea. Churches, cathedrals and temples in Korea are always bustling with multitudes of Protestants, Catholics and Buddhists. Add to these the numerous unorthodox churches that Protestants or Catholics may call heretic. It seems nonbelievers are hard to find in today’s Korean society. Perhaps that is w
Aug. 19, 2014
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The trap of unaffordable subsidies
Few policies place good economics so directly at odds with good politics as subsidies for food and energy. The issue of unaffordable subsidies is now front and center for three of the world’s most important new leaders: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, Indonesian President-elect Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.Sissi is confronting the need to cut subsidies better than might have been expected. Modi, by contrast, is doing worse than expected ― even torpedoin
Aug. 19, 2014
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[David Ignatius] Islamic State’s staying power
WASHINGTON ― The Obama administration’s Iraq policy seems premised on the idea that the terrorist Islamic State is so toxic that it will be self-limiting and ultimately self-defeating. But that’s not the view of senior U.S. intelligence officials.In a background briefing Thursday afternoon for journalists, a panel of five U.S. intelligence officials summed up their assessment of an organization that has shown a remarkable durability because it is “patient,” “well-organized,” opportunistic” and “
Aug. 18, 2014
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Elected demagogues threaten democracy
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, brutally cracked down on protesters in Istanbul’s Gezi Park last year, banned Facebook and YouTube, faced serious allegations of corruption, and, more recently, was caught on camera slapping a demonstrator. None of this mattered last week as a majority of Turks made him the country’s first popularly elected president. A range of 19th-century thinkers from Alexis de Tocqueville to Jacob Burckhardt warned against putting rabble-rousers exalted by popu
Aug. 18, 2014
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[Mohamed A. El-Erian] Bretton Woods system faces need for reform
LAGUNA BEACH, California ― The world has changed considerably since political leaders from the 44 Allied countries met in 1944 in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to create the institutional framework for the post-World War II economic and monetary order. What has not changed in the last 70 years is the need for strong multilateral institutions. Yet national political support for the Bretton Woods institutions ― the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank ― seems to have reached an all-time
Aug. 18, 2014
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China, India, Indonesia: Asia’s reform trinity?
SINGAPORE ― Asia is poised to enter a historical sweet spot, with three of its most populous countries ― China, India, and Indonesia ― led by strong, dynamic, and reform-minded leaders. In fact, China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi, and Indonesia’s Joko “Jokowi” Widodo could end up ranked among their countries’ greatest modern leaders.In China, Mao Zedong united the country in 1949, while Deng Xiaoping was responsible for engineering its unprecedented economic rise. For Xi to join their ran
Aug. 18, 2014
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K-pop is no longer a cult phenomenon in the U.S.
Here I am a week after leaving Korea for the great American adventure, in a sports arena filled with 15,000 fans screaming “Gee Gee Gee Gee” at the top of their lungs. The rather large male Caucasian standing in front of the stage has been waving a sign saying Tiffany, one of the singers in the K-pop group Girl’s Generation, practically for the last two hours. Attending KCON 2014, a two-day Korean pop culture extravaganza put on by CJ Group in L.A. was a way to placate my two teenage daughters w
Aug. 18, 2014
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[Bennett Ramberg] New threat to nuclear security
LOS ANGELES ― Nobody would dispute the danger inherent in possessing nuclear assets. But that danger becomes far more acute in a combat zone, where nuclear materials and weapons are at risk of theft, and reactors can become bombing targets. These risks ― most apparent in today’s chaos-ridden Middle East ― raise troubling questions about the security of nuclear assets in volatile countries everywhere.Two recent events demonstrate what is at stake. On July 9, the militant group now known as the Is
Aug. 17, 2014
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[Park Sang-seek] Korea must work to repair national identity
The world is witnessing the conflict between the Jewish and Islamic civilizations in Israel, the Islamic sectarian conflicts in Syria and Iraq, the tribal and Islamic sectarian conflicts in Afghanistan, an ethnic-nationalist conflict in Ukraine and the unrelenting tension between the two political systems on the Korean peninsula, while observing peace in Western Europe. This shows that the root-cause of these conflicts is the lack of national identity. In other words, the peoples in these confli
Aug. 17, 2014
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Stagflation threatens Abenomics gamble
Maybe it’s time to stop dismissing the risk of stagflation in Japan.I’ve raised this risk a couple of times during the last 12 months as inflation rose without commensurate increases in wages or productivity. But yesterday’s ugly gross domestic product report suggests it’s a clear and present threat to Japan’s best chance at economic recovery in more than a decade.The collective reaction yesterday to the 6.8 percent plunge in second-quarter growth seemed to be: “Relax, it could’ve been worse.” A
Aug. 17, 2014