Most Popular
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Tensions heighten ahead of first president-opposition chief meeting
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Seoul to provide housing subsidy to married couples with newborns
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[KH Explains] No more 'Michael' at Kakao Games
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Rapper jailed after public street fight with another rapper
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Woman gets suspended term for injuring boyfriend with knife
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[Grace Kao] Hybe vs. Ador: Inspiration, imitation and plagiarism
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Samsung chief bolsters ties with Germany’s Zeiss
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NewJeans pops out ‘Bubble Gum’ video amid troubles at agency
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Med schools expect 1,500+ new admission slots next year
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Nominee for chief of anti-corruption body pledges 'independence, effectiveness'
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Syrian refugee plan poses security risks
PARIS ― What’s the point of intervening in a foreign country under the guise of humanitarianism, or sending aid, if you’re just going to end up importing its citizens en masse anyway? Isn’t the whole idea to shape up the place so that its people can safely remain there?The Obama administration is in such an apparent rush to import thousands of refugees from the Syrian crisis ― which will probably go down in history as the conflict featuring the highest number of different Islamist groups fightin
Jan. 24, 2014
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[David Ignatius] An economic turnaround?
WASHINGTON ― A funny thing happened on the way to the decline of the United States and the rise of China, Brazil and other emerging markets: Many prominent analysts began wondering if the pessimistic predictions about America were wrong ― and whether it was the emerging markets that were heading for trouble. These international economic fads are always suspect, up or down. They seem to follow what I was told years ago (facetiously) was the guiding rule for columnists: Simplify, then exaggerate.
Jan. 23, 2014
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[Salim Osman] In search of the ideal president for Indonesia
As the debate on the ideal presidential candidate for Indonesia rages on, a trio of religious men are looking for good candidates for the July polls on their own.Well-known Islamic cleric Solahuddin Wahid of the Nahdlatul Ulama and his close friends, prominent Christian pastor Nathan Setiabudi and Catholic priest Franz Magnis Suseno, launched a selection process two weeks ago. Called “konvensi rakyat,” or people’s convention, they rolled out the scheme at a hotel in Surabaya, East Java, with sup
Jan. 23, 2014
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Battle for Tokyo governor goes nuclear
The smallest elections often have the biggest repercussions. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe might want to ponder that as he considers what went wrong in Nago, Okinawa (population 62,000).Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party failed to dislodge incumbent Mayor Susumu Inamine in Sunday’s contest, putting Japan-U.S. relations at risk. Inamine has pledged to block the relocation of a U.S. air base to his district, something that Abe had assured Washington was a done deal. Apparently not.The question no
Jan. 23, 2014
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Democracy: It’s not as simple as ‘vote or tax’
Dear Thai people. It’s me, Democracy, again. It’s been a long time since I last wrote you but let’s cut to the chase. Your demand ― for me to either respect your vote or respect your tax ― is a bit too much. Can I just stand to the side for a while? I’m not playing hard to get, just being realistic.You guys definitely have divided opinions about me. Don’t think of me as rude, but can you please sort out your in-house trouble first? Contrary to what many think, I’m no magic pill. In other words,
Jan. 23, 2014
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How to achieve food security in China
China’s food security is being challenged by a mix of factors, including rising demand, rapid urbanization, scarce natural resources and agricultural labor, and greater risk of food safety and environmental problems. To address food security concerns, China had resolved to meet the bulk of its grain demand domestically. But this policy is now being revisited, suggesting a considerable increase in the already rising food imports. The No. 1 Central Document released on Sunday reiterated the import
Jan. 23, 2014
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[Zaki Ladi] Enigma of European defense
PARIS ― While Europe’s citizens largely support the establishment of a common security and defense policy, most European leaders have demonstrated a clear lack of interest in creating one ― including at last month’s European Council meeting. What accounts for this paradox?One possible explanation is that financially strained European governments lack the means to fulfill their citizens’ expectations. But that is unconvincing, given that the issue was framed in almost identical terms three decade
Jan. 22, 2014
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Obama steps back from unfettered surveillance
Individually, the concrete steps President Obama announced Friday toward reforming the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs were modest. Taken together, though, they signal the end of an era of unfettered escalation in U.S. intelligence-gathering.Since its establishment in 1952, the NSA’s history has been one of almost nonstop expansion. But for most of that time, the agency still faced limits on what kind of information it could gather and in the legal strictures that governed its p
Jan. 22, 2014
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[Kim Myong-sik] Pathetic self-portrait of Korean mass media
“Professional ethics (in journalism) have fallen to the bottom … To be called a professional, one needs to be equipped with a license, armed with professional knowledge and bound by professional ethics. Today’s reportorial jobs seem to be free of these requirements. Opinion surveys find few respondents believing that reporters are ethically respectable. The thing is that journalism and journalists remain low both in public esteem and trust.”This quotation must sound like the usual complaint from
Jan. 22, 2014
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The Volkswagen way to better labor-management relations
Works councils ― elected bodies representing all workers in a plant, both blue and white collar ― are acclaimed as one of the best, most innovative features of Germany’s labor relations system. They have been shown to enhance efficiency, adaptability and cooperation. By supporting the use of work sharing (agreeing to reduce everyone’s hours rather than laying some people off), for example, these councils helped Germany experience less unemployment during the Great Recession and a faster, more ro
Jan. 22, 2014
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‘Lone Survivor’ confronts us with true cost of war
I wasn’t eager about seeing “Lone Survivor,” the new film about four U.S. Navy SEALs forced to fight a terrible and heroic battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan.What worried me was that it would turn out to be a typical Hollywood war movie, with archetypal characters (the city kid, the cynic, the country boy, etc.) and some kind of big speech at the climax.But it wasn’t a typical Hollywood war movie. It is about morality and the cost and a mission gone wrong. And I’m glad I saw it.One of the
Jan. 22, 2014
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[Lee Jae-min] ‘Host-and-run’ phenomenon
The F1 Grand Prix race is not coming back to Yeongam, South Jeolla Province, this year because of a dispute involving adjustment of contract terms. Few remember the 2011 Daegu World Track & Field Championships. All these huge sports-investments are staged to host local events while the deficit is ballooning. Incheon’s hosting of the 2009 World City Expo drew complaints from the Bureau International des Expositions in Paris due to unauthorized usage of the title “Expo.” Submission of unauthorized
Jan. 21, 2014
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Gandhi heir could lose more than his throne
Rahul Gandhi’s friends seem to have no more confidence in him than his enemies do. Although he is the unquestioned heir apparent of India’s storied Congress Party, and will lead its election campaign this spring, the party last week refrained from anointing him or anyone else as its official candidate for prime minister.Most observers believe Congress grandees are trying to spare the 43-year-old Gandhi the embarrassment of a head-to-head contest ― and almost certain loss ― against popular Hindu
Jan. 21, 2014
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[Kim Seong-kon] Ideologically divided? You will be conquered soon
Looking back upon American society in the 1950s and 1960s in his seminal novels “V.” and “The Crying of Lot 49” Thomas Pynchon laments the division of America into Left and Right, or radicalism and conservatism, which he describes metaphorically as “the street and the hothouse.” In his famous short story “Entropy,” Pynchon once again deplores the fact that conservatives choose to stay in the hothouse, not caring about what happens in the street, while radicals constantly instigate chaos and viol
Jan. 21, 2014
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Obama’s still spying no matter what he said
Bothered that the government has the metadata from all your calls, so that it can map out the details of your life at the click of a button? If you really are, little in President Barack Obama’s much-hyped speech on intelligence gathering should allay your concerns.True, Obama announced that he would “end” the metadata-collection program “as it currently exists.” But he never explained how, ignoring the recommendations of his own handpicked review group and instead asking his administration for
Jan. 21, 2014
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How to prevent the financial fire next time?
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut ― If we have learned anything since the global financial crisis peaked in 2008, it is that preventing another one is a tougher job than most people anticipated. Not only does effective crisis prevention require overhauling our financial institutions through creative application of the principles of good finance; it also requires that politicians and their constituents have a shared understanding of these principles.Today, unfortunately, such an understanding is missing. Th
Jan. 21, 2014
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[David Ignatius] Derailing the GOP jihad
WASHINGTON ― The Senate Intelligence Committee made headlines last week by reporting that the 2012 attack in Benghazi was preventable. But frankly, we knew that. The deeper message of the bipartisan report was that Republicans in Congress wasted a year arguing about what turned out to be mostly phony issues.The GOP’s Benghazi obsession was the weird backdrop for foreign-policy debate through much of last year. Sen. Lindsey Graham used it as a pretext for blocking administration nominations. Rep.
Jan. 20, 2014
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Seven crucial points in Obama’s NSA speech
President Barack Obama’s speech on Friday marks a historic step in the continuing discussion of national security, privacy and government surveillance.The speech was delivered against a background set by numerous proposals, including various bills in Congress and the recommendations of the president’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, on which I served (and most of whose recommendations were endorsed in today’s speech). Seven points in the speech deserve particular at
Jan. 20, 2014
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[Robert B. Reich] GOP’s divide-and-conquer strategy no longer valid
Fifty years ago, when Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, the poor were different ― “other,” as in Michael Harrington’s seminal book of 1962, “The Other America.”That’s no longer the case.After the War on Poverty ended, Republicans told working-class whites that their hard-earned tax dollars were being siphoned off to pay for “welfare queens” (as Ronald Reagan decorously dubbed a black single woman on welfare) and other nefarious loafers. The poor were “them” ― lazy, dependent on government
Jan. 20, 2014
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How Bernanke the scholar became Fed iconoclast
When President George W. Bush was considering candidates to be chairman of the Federal Reserve in the autumn of 2005, the rap on Ben Bernanke, a brilliant economist, was that he had never faced a crisis, might be too soft for a challenge and wasn’t politically astute.As he prepares to conclude his eight-year tenure as central bank chief at the end of the month, Bernanke is one of the most significant figures in contemporary U.S. government. Few have risen more boldly to confront a crisis, his po
Jan. 20, 2014