Most Popular
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[Weekender] Geeks have never been so chic in Korea
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N. Korea says it test-fired tactical ballistic missile with new guidance technology
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NewJeans members submit petitions over court injunction in Hybe-Ador conflict
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[News Focus] Mystery deepens after hundreds of cat deaths in S. Korea
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S. Korea's exports of instant noodles surpass $100m for 1st time in April: data
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[Herald Interview] Byun Yo-han's 'unlikable' character is result of calculated acting
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US military commander in S. Korea during Gwangju uprising dies
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[Photo News] Seoul seeks 'best sleeper'
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US expert says N. Korea might ignore Trump if he returns to White House
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[KH Explains] Why Korea's so tough on short selling
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Are hospitals already saving money for Medicare?
Medicare continues to exhibit remarkably slow growth: a modest 3 percent over the past year. That’s great news, but a debate is raging about whether this is caused by a weak economy (and therefore will reverse as the economy recovers) or other factors (and therefore may persist, drastically improving the budget outlook). Two new studies tilt toward the optimistic possibility. The first, a technical paper from the Congressional Budget Office, parsed the decline in cost growth per beneficiary from
Aug. 28, 2013
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[David Ignatius] American credibility is at stake
WASHINGTON ― What does the world look like when people begin to doubt the credibility of American power? Unfortunately, we’re finding that out in Syria and other nations where leaders have concluded they can defy a war-weary America without paying a price. Using military power to maintain a nation’s credibility may sound like an antiquated idea, but it’s all too relevant in the real world we inhabit. It has become obvious in recent weeks that President Obama, whose restrained and realistic forei
Aug. 28, 2013
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U.S., China must avert military miscalculation
The specter of economic doomsday makes war between China and the United States as unthinkable as fear of nuclear doomsday made Soviet-U.S. war. Or does it? In fact, Chinese and American military planners are thinking in exquisite detail, as they are expected to do, about how to win such a conflict. The problem is that the specific plans being concocted could make hostilities less unthinkable, and two great powers with every reason to avoid war could find themselves in one.Having been impotent ag
Aug. 28, 2013
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How to watch Al Jazeera America
For those of us who believe the American public deserves and needs to know much more about what goes on in the rest of the world, the arrival of a television network determined to focus on hard news, to “make news the star,” to quote my old boss Ted Turner, should be cause for celebration. But when that network is Al Jazeera, we all need to take a few steps back and prepare before we start watching.The first fact to keep in mind when watching the just launched Al Jazeera America is that the new
Aug. 28, 2013
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[Tony Blair] It is time to take action in the Middle East
LONDON ― The announcement, following the use of chemical weapons in Syria, of an emergency summit in Jordan this week of military leaders from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar is a welcome development. Western policy is at a crossroads: commentary or action; shaping events or reacting to them.After the long and painful campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, I understand every impulse to stay clear of the turmoil, to watch but not
Aug. 28, 2013
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Zuckerberg’s Internet vision sure likes Facebook
Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg is thinking big about how to increase Internet access in the developing world. That’s an ambitious and laudable goal. Incidentally, it could also be very profitable for Zuckerberg’s company. This week, Facebook and a few other companies announced a partnership, Internet.org, with plans to expand access “to the two-thirds of the world who are not yet connected.” They want to make it cheaper to get online, improve the efficiency of data usage and encourage bus
Aug. 27, 2013
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[Minxin Pei] Why Bo Xilai stole the show
CLAREMONT, California ― As show trials go, the drama featuring Bo Xilai, the once-swaggering, media-savvy former Chinese Communist Party chief of Chongqing, veered anomalously into improvisation. Before the proceedings began, the conventional wisdom was that Bo’s trial had been carefully scripted and rehearsed to portray a forlorn and penitent sinner confessing his crimes and apologizing to the party.But the historic five-day trial dispelled any notion that Bo would go quietly to his cell in Bei
Aug. 27, 2013
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Americans work more, relax less than their peers
EASTHAM, Massachusetts ― Americans are a bunch of lazy layabouts who don’t want to work and would rather live off the taxes generated by the toil of their countrymen. I hear some version of this rant repeatedly from people who believe that the American work ethic disappeared at some point in the past generation.Here on gorgeous Cape Cod, where I vacation, I’ve been thinking about the state of the American work and workers. So let’s clear up a few matters.First, American worker productivity is hi
Aug. 27, 2013
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No tolerance for Russia’s nonsensical anti-gay law
The International Olympic Committee is letting Russia off far too easy. Russia has argued nonsensically that its new anti-gay law is in keeping with the Olympic Charter’s protections against discrimination, and the IOC simply has accepted it. The law, approved by the Russian parliament in June, prohibits “propaganda” in support of “nontraditional” sexual relationships. This means virtually any expression of homosexual love, or approval of or information about homosexuality. Russians face fines;
Aug. 27, 2013
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Don’t blame the Fed for Asia’s problems
It’s time to set our clocks back in Asia. Not to 1997, as many are recommending, but to 1994. Memories of the former year remain raw. Currencies had gone into free fall and current-account deficits exploded. Central bankers and International Monetary Fund officials scurried to contain the chaos. It’s true that another 1997-like crisis is highly unlikely. Today, exchange rates are more flexible, foreign-currency debt is lower, banks are healthier, countries are sitting on trillions of dollars of
Aug. 27, 2013
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[Kim Seong-kon] Smart way to bridge generations
Recently, I came across an interesting article in Time magazine titled “The Me Me Me Generation.” The article points out that millennials, those born between 1980 and 2000, often have symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. For example, young people frequently upload pictures of themselves onto social media sites for their “followers” to praise. In addition, these young people are so confident in themselves that they believe they are entitled to virtually everything. The Time article high
Aug. 27, 2013
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Abe’s nuclear imperative starts at Fukushima
Like the hundreds of tons of radioactive water now streaming daily into the Pacific Ocean off the Japanese coast, the bad news from Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi plant just keeps coming. Stanching the flow and getting the Fukushima cleanup on track are critical not only to health and safety, but also to the future of nuclear energy in Japan and elsewhere, and to the credibility of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government. The latest scare came last week, with the announcem
Aug. 26, 2013
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[Andrew Sheng] Why do nations fail or succeed?
August is the holiday month ― the time when we pause to take stock of a hectic first half year, and wonder what lies ahead. Nestled in the hills of northern Laos, the ancient city of Luang Prabang sits around a bend in the river Mekong, isolated for centuries and renowned today as a city of 15th century Buddhist temples, protected as a UNESCO Heritage site. It was a good place to catching up on one’s history to try to comprehend the uncertain future. The recent best-seller by MIT economics profe
Aug. 26, 2013
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Why science and politics do not mix
Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of such popular science books as “The Blank Slate,” recently wrote an essay for the New Republic in defense of science. From left and right, he notes, from intellectuals as well as from anti-intellectuals, science is under attack for its arrogance, vulgarity and narrowness of vision. Why is this happening? Pinker asks. Because, he says, science is intruding on the humanities, disciplines lacking in vitality or any real purpo
Aug. 26, 2013
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Down with patent trolls
Patent trolls are a widely reported problem for big business and technology makers. They are companies that exist primarily to buy up patents and then collect money, in the form of licenses or lawsuit settlements, from alleged infringers of those patents. Trolls take advantage of a patent system with serious flaws, and their abuse of the system is creating, as a White House fact sheet recently put it, a “drain on the American economy.”And, as it turns out, a drain on you, the ordinary consumer.L
Aug. 26, 2013
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[Noah Feldman] A fool’s errand in China to reinvent government
Forget Client No. 9. If you want to understand the future of world politics, it’s Document No. 9 you need to know. This semisecret directive from the senior members of the Chinese Communist Party tells you how President Xi Jinping plans to manage pro-democracy voices in China: by shutting them down. The sharp repudiation of constitutional government, human rights, civic participation and free speech ― not to mention truly free markets ― guarantees that the ideological struggle between China and
Aug. 26, 2013
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Practice makes perfect, if your genes play along
Like many others who read Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” when it came out five years ago, I was impressed by the 10,000-hour rule of expertise. I wrote a column (for a different publication) espousing the rule, which holds that to become a world-class competitor at anything from chess to tennis to baseball, all that’s required is 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. David Epstein has convinced me I was wrong. His thoroughly researched new book, “The Sports Gene,” pretty much demolishes the 1
Aug. 25, 2013
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[Dominique Moisi] Arab Spring’s unlikely winner
PARIS ― The war in Iraq ― which led in 2003 to the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime ― had one clear winner: Iran. The United States-led military intervention resulted in the weakening of the Middle East’s Sunni regimes, America’s traditional allies, and the strengthening of America’s principal foe in the region, the Islamic Republic.Ten years later, we may be witnessing yet another ironic outcome in the region: At least for the time being, Israel seems to be the only clear winner of the “Arab Spr
Aug. 25, 2013
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Obama is lazy like a fox
President Obama has demonstrated leadership qualities ranging from poor to nonexistent. But is a president who lacks visible leadership qualities really such a bad thing? Or is he lazy like a fox? A lack of leadership ― whether deliberate or accidental ― can have a surprising upside, as none other than the French have historically exemplified. (And no, I’m not being facetious.)As a conservative whose heart leans firmly right, I would have thought the idea crazy until I moved to France four years
Aug. 25, 2013
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Why science and politics don’t mix
Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of such popular science books as “The Blank Slate,” recently wrote an essay for the New Republic in defense of science. From left and right, he notes, from intellectuals as well as from anti-intellectuals, science is under attack for its arrogance, vulgarity and narrowness of vision. Why is this happening? Pinker asks. Because, he says, science is intruding on the humanities, disciplines lacking in vitality or any real purpo
Aug. 25, 2013