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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[KH Explains] Why Korea's so tough on short selling
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US expert says N. Korea might ignore Trump if he returns to White House
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[Jeffrey Kingston] Abe must end Yasukuni dispute
Every year around this time, in the run-up to the Aug. 15 anniversary of Japan’s surrender in 1945, feverish speculation ensues about whether Japan’s top politicians will visit the Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo. Chinese and South Koreans ― not to mention many Japanese ― abhor such visits because the shrine honors the souls of 14 Class A war criminals. Visitors say they have every right to honor the 2.5 million other Japanese war dead celebrated at Yasukuni; they compare the shrine to the U.S.
Aug. 13, 2013
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[Tony Blair] Signs of hope amid turmoil in Middle East
LONDON ― Syria is a living nightmare. Egypt hovers on the brink. But, as the opening of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority shows, there are signs of hope. And, though it may seem counter-intuitive, the region’s turmoil is finally bringing to the surface its fundamental problems in a way that allows them to be confronted and overcome. Now is a time not for despair, but for active engagement.No one put the chances of reviving the Israel-Palestine peace process at more than mi
Aug. 13, 2013
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Abe’s Japan is blind to scary nuclear reality
Forget Abenomics. Ignore Shinzo Abe’s efforts to rejuvenate Japan’s diplomatic and military clout. Look past the quest to rewrite the constitution. History will judge this prime minister by one thing alone: what he did, or didn’t do, to end the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. It’s mind-boggling how disengaged Japan’s leaders have been since their “BP moment” ― the March 2011 near-meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant. Abe’s predecessors Naoto Kan and Yoshihiko Noda virtually ign
Aug. 13, 2013
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[Kim Seong-kon] Is today’s Korea really a Confucian society?
Moderation is a virtue not only in the East, but also in the West. It is well known that Confucius stressed the importance of being moderate, but so did Aristotle and Shakespeare. For example, Aristotle said, “The virtue of justice consists in moderation as regulated by wisdom.” Shakespeare also emphasized the importance of moderation even in passionate love: “Love moderately. Long love doth so. Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.” Benjamin Franklin, too, included “moderation” as one of his
Aug. 13, 2013
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Expect many more unsettling terror alerts
A full generation of Americans has come of age since the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union late in 1991. Those who lived that nearly half-century of tensions, with its threats of mutual nuclear destruction, tend to mistakenly recall a tidy geography: The West, chiefly the U.S. but also its NATO allies, poised decade after decade in readiness to combat the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies to the east.In truth the Cold War played out at random times, on multiple continents, among
Aug. 12, 2013
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[Robert Reich] Why no ruckus about economy?
Job growth is sputtering. So why aren’t the captains of American industry and finance ― the nation’s top CEOs, the titans of Wall Street, the corporate movers and shakers ― demanding that more be done to revive the economy? They have the political clout to make it happen.It can’t be they don’t know that job growth is sputtering. The data are indisputable. July’s job growth of 162,000 jobs was the weakest in four months. The average workweek was the shortest in six months. The Bureau of Labor Sta
Aug. 12, 2013
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Greece needs a 21st-century Marshall Plan
At their White House meeting last week, U.S. President Barack Obama assured Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of his support as Greece prepares for talks with creditors on additional debt relief amid record-high unemployment. The U.S. should also endorse a new blueprint for recovery based on one of the most successful economic assistance programs of the modern era: the Marshall Plan. It is clear by now that the European Union’s policies in Greece have failed. Projections that government spend
Aug. 12, 2013
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Spying made simple
So, the White House announces the emergence of a “significant” terrorist threat; the State Department issues a worldwide travel alert and shuts down 21 diplomatic missions; the Pentagon places U.S. forces throughout the Middle East on heightened alert, and the president of the United States ... books a gig on “Tonight.”The decision to chat up Jay Leno seemed a bit incongruous at first, but on second thought, it wasn’t a bad idea at all. The late-night talk show gave the president a chance to exp
Aug. 12, 2013
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[Joseph E. Stiglitz] Changing of the monetary guard in the offing
NEW YORK ― With leadership transitions at many central banks either under way or coming soon, many of those who were partly responsible for creating the global economic crisis that erupted in 2008 ― before taking strong action to prevent the worst ― are departing to mixed reviews. The main question now is the extent to which those reviews will influence their successors’ behavior.Many financial-market players are grateful for the regulatory laxity that allowed them to reap enormous profits befor
Aug. 12, 2013
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[Peter Singer] Need to dethrone king coal
MELBOURNE, Australia ― Earlier this year, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million (ppm). The last time there was that much CO2 in our atmosphere was three million years ago, when sea levels were 24 meters higher than they are today. Now sea levels are rising again. Last September, Arctic sea ice covered the smallest area ever recorded. All but one of the ten warmest years since 1880, when global records began to be kept, have occurred in the twenty-fir
Aug. 11, 2013
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Providing good journalism isn’t complicated
My father used to say that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who do what they say they are going to do, and everybody else. I thought of that maxim when I heard that the Graham family was selling the Washington Post to Jeff Bezos, the chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc. When Amazon went public in 1997, Bezos was the frontman, evangelizing his vision of not only the world’s biggest bookstore but also the world’s dominant retailer. This, from the CEO of a company that was lo
Aug. 11, 2013
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Meet the mysterious Mr. th3j35t3r
Major media outlets have featured him as representative of a new generation of “patriot hackers.” He sent an old laptop to the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., where it’s now on display. He claims to have launched hacking attacks on websites ranging from jihadist forums to WikiLeaks. Last week, a guest on the syndicated radio program “Coast to Coast AM” described the individual hiding behind “The Jester” moniker (or “th3j35t3r” in hacker lingo) as “not somebody in someone’s basement
Aug. 11, 2013
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Obama needs push to shake up higher education
President Barack Obama keeps declaring war on rising college costs. In a speech at Knox College last month, he vowed to unveil an “aggressive strategy to shake up the system, tackle rising costs and improve value.” He said something similar in his 2012 State of the Union address, so I’m a little skeptical that much will happen. As students get ready to go to college this month, let me suggest ways to “shake up the system” and “tackle rising costs.” In doing so, I would point out that two things
Aug. 11, 2013
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[Eli Park Sorensen] How the modern world undermines secrecy efforts
The French sociologist Luc Boltanski has argued that conspiracy theories and general public suspicion toward the state apparatus tend to thrive in bureaucratic societies where the information gap between those in power and those without increases. Now, since WikiLeaks set in motion a series of spectacular cases revealing the nature and extent of covert government operations, it would seem that the word “suspicion” hardly makes sense anymore, at least not in the way it used to. For with the acces
Aug. 11, 2013
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China’s worst nightmare is turning Japanese
Few words strike greater fear in the hearts of economists and politicians than “Japanization.” That specter of chronic malaise, deflation and bad debt has driven central bankers from Ben S. Bernanke in the U.S. to Mario Draghi in Europe to flood markets with liquidity in an effort to avert their own lost decades. It should worry China, then, that experts on this dreaded scenario are turning their attention to Beijing. Take Brian Reading, whose quest to understand what the world can learn from To
Aug. 9, 2013
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[David Ignatius] Hope for Arab democracy
WASHINGTON ― History tells us that revolution often triggers counterrevolution: The spontaneous, euphoric moments of liberation are eclipsed by the forces of repression ― with reaction often dressed in uniform. The counterrevolution is gathering momentum in the Arab world, two years after the uprisings that toppled rulers in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has fought back brutally to preserve his dictatorship; Egypt’s generals ousted the Muslim Brotherhood government
Aug. 9, 2013
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Pope’s view on women’s role in church
Last week, Pope Francis loosed a media tsunami by dropping a pebble of sanity into an ocean of religious angst. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?” he told reporters on the flight back to Rome after his trip to Brazil.What did it mean? Was he changing church teaching? And how might it affect 1.2 billion Roman Catholics worldwide?Hundreds of news stories and thousands of blogs, tweets and commentaries later, most observers heard in Francis’ statem
Aug. 8, 2013
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[Mohamed A. El-Erian] Forced normality in Europe
NEWPORT BEACH ― August is traditionally Europe’s holiday month, with many government officials taking several weeks off. In the process, important initiatives are put on hold until the “great return” at the beginning of September.This year, there is another reason why Europe has pressed the pause button for August. With a looming election in Germany, few wish to undermine Chancellor Angela Merkel’s likely victory. After all, Germany is central to Europe’s well-being, and Merkel’s steady hand has
Aug. 8, 2013
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Uncle Sam can’t beat out the Chinese in Myanmar
With sanctions against Myanmar lifted, U.S. President Barack Obama is launching a new American charm offensive in that country to vie against the People’s Republic of China as chief economic benefactor. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe doesn’t want to be outdone. Both visited Naypyidaw and Yangon, promising help to Myanmar after President Thein Sein’s quasi-democratic change in government.Myanmar, known for hundreds of years as Burma, is a country very rich in oil and natural gas, which are wa
Aug. 8, 2013
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Keeping it real on jobs and competition
A survey by The Straits Times, which shows that six in 10 people think their jobs are good, reveals a high degree of job satisfaction in Singapore. The finding helps place in perspective social chatter that tends to focus on stress at work and unfair employment practices. While those concerns are not to be brushed aside, it is clear that a maturing Singapore economy has produced confident and positive workers who can work well as a team. The definition of a good job ― one which offers satisfacto
Aug. 8, 2013