Most Popular
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Do Korean doctors make too much money?
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Korean industries gauge impact of Biden's steep tariffs on China
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Court refuses injunction on medical school expansion
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Why Korean crime stories typically feature nameless, faceless perpetrators
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Is FTC's conglomerate listing a boon or bane for Hybe?
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NewJeans to headline palace show
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Coupang's Kim Bom escapes chaebol chief designation again
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Debate on 'no-seniors zones' heats up
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S. Korea, Cambodia forge strategic partnership
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Rare mid-May heavy snow warning issued over mountainous areas of Gangwon
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To erase militarist past, Japan must re-learn it
It was raining heavily last week when I visited Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which commemorates Japanese who died in the “imperial cause.” But the tour buses still discharged scores of elderly Japanese visitors, and I received approving looks and even a faint smile from two Japanese women as we stood in the rain before the memorial to an Indian jurist called Radha Binod Pal. Pal was the only Indian judge at the so-called Tokyo Trials, Japan’s protracted version of Nuremberg. In his 1,2
April 15, 2013
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[Yuliya Tymoshenko] The Iron Lady as liberator
KHARKIV, UKRAINE ― Prison is always a place of mourning. But perhaps learning of Margaret Thatcher’s death in this place is grimly appropriate, because it made me remember the imprisoned society of my youth that Thatcher did so much to set free. For many of us who grew up in the Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe, Margaret Thatcher will always be a heroine. Not only did she espouse the cause of freedom ― particularly economic freedom ― in Britain and the West; by proclaiming Mikha
April 15, 2013
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Barack Obama is flying blind on drones
As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama was unsparing in his criticism of President George W. Bush’s anti-terrorism policies. He condemned torture and the infamous detention center at Guantanamo Bay, the lack of transparency and congressional oversight, the dubious legal framework and the blowback that was spawning more terrorists and diminishing U.S. standing in the world. Bush’s policies “compromised our most precious values,” Obama said then. “We cannot win a war unless we maintain the high grou
April 15, 2013
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[David Ignatius] Kim playing dangerous game
WASHINGTON ― One unlikely benefit of the North Korea crisis is that the world may be getting fed up with the country’s pugnacious young leader, Kim Jong-un. In his belligerent talk of war, Kim appears to have crossed a line, upsetting traditional allies such as China and Russia as well as the United States and South Korea. U.S. analysts doubt that Kim actually intends to attack. Instead, they predict he will seek some “culminating event,” such as another missile test, after which he will declare
April 14, 2013
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The inhumane practice of solitary confinement
The use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and detention centers has broken the bounds of reason and decency. The federal government reported last month that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency routinely holds hundreds of immigrants in solitary confinement ― even though the inmates are detained on civil charges. The news underscored the continued outlier status of the U.S., which subjects tens of thousands of inmates, including the nonviolent, to a practice that much of the world
April 14, 2013
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China’s unlikely rival: Japan
Of all the nightmares Chinese President Xi Jinping figured he would have to face, a resurgent Japan Inc. surely wasn’t among them. A major slowdown in the Chinese economy? Yes. Social instability? Absolutely. Debilitating pollution? Check. Rampant corruption eating away at the Communist Party’s legitimacy? You bet. An economically vibrant Japan emboldened to challenge China for leadership in Asia? Hardly. With an assertive Shinzo Abe at the helm, though, Japan may be poised to do just that, in w
April 14, 2013
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Fairness and carbon emissions reduction
PRINCETON ― A sense of fairness is universal among humans, but people often differ about exactly what fairness requires in a specific situation. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the debate over the need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in order to avoid dangerous climate change.China and the United States are the two largest GHG emitters, and it seems unlikely that any global agreement to reduce emissions will be effective unless both participate. Yet, in international climate negoti
April 14, 2013
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[Joseph Stiglitz and Arjun Jayadev] India’s drug ruling is patently wise decision
NEW YORK ― The Indian Supreme Court’s refusal to uphold the patent on Gleevec, the blockbuster cancer drug developed by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis, is good news for many of those in India suffering from cancer. If other developing countries follow India’s example, it will be good news elsewhere, too: more money could be devoted to other needs, whether fighting AIDS, providing education, or making investments that enable growth and poverty reduction.But the Indian decision also means
April 14, 2013
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A socialist lawmaker’s fiscal double life
PARIS ― The left revels in sex scandals involving preachy conservative moralists, but when members of the left get caught up in seedy financial scandals, so perverted and twisted is their relationship with money that the effect can be equally jaw-dropping and salacious.Former French Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac, who left his Socialist government post earlier this year amid allegations of a secret Swiss bank account, now faces a formal investigation for allegedly laundering the proceeds of tax
April 12, 2013
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[Robert Reich] The sequester just invisible
So far, the much-dreaded “sequester” ― some $85 billion in federal spending cuts between March and September 30 ― hasn’t been evident to most Americans.The dire warnings that had been issued from the White House beforehand ― threatening that Social Security checks would be delayed, airport security checks would be clogged and other federal facilities closed ― seem to have been overblown.Sure, March’s employment report was a big disappointment. But it’s hard to see any direct connection between t
April 12, 2013
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North Korean threat should not be ignored
North Korea’s recent threats to target South Korean and American cities with atomic destruction have the shrill belligerence of a 6-year-old’s temper tantrum. But while few analysts believe North Korea has the means to carry out its threats, U.S. and South Korean officials would nevertheless be unwise to ignore them. With tensions on the peninsula higher than at any time since the end of the Korean War, there’s great danger a conflict could break out by accident or through miscalculation.So far,
April 11, 2013
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[David Ignatius] The revolution of Thatcher
WASHINGTON ― People talk about transformational politicians. But watching Margaret Thatcher take down the British class system was an education in how it’s really done. It required the radical vision and iron will of someone who genuinely abhorred the status quo. Thatcher demolished the two conservative pillars of British society: the labor unions that held the parliamentary Labor Party in bondage and the upper-class Tory leaders who resembled the benign but hapless relics of “Downton Abbey.” It
April 11, 2013
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Strike highlights growing frustration in Hong Kong
Wong Shu Kwai’s hands are calloused from the 15 years he has spent as a dock worker, lashing containers at the world’s third-busiest port.For the past two weeks, though, they have been lying idle, twiddling on his phone or lighting cigarette after cigarette as the 49-year-old and hundreds of others wait listlessly in tents outside the Kwai Tsing Container Terminals.“We want to go back to work,” he says. “But we need Li Ka Shing to pay us what we deserve.”He and his colleagues say they drew daily
April 11, 2013
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Ending North Korea’s familiar gamesmanship
It never is wise to discount renewed conflict on the Korean peninsula, despite the latest brinkmanship showing a familiar pattern. If the military moves had happened in Kim Jong-il’s time, there was a reasonable predictability of a de-escalation after he was sure he had gained concessions from his interlocutors. But his young son, an enigma, now supposedly calls the shots ― and it could make all the difference.No one can claim to know if Kim Jong-un is the dominant strategist, or if he is being
April 11, 2013
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Clever ways needed to minimize waste
Waste happens. Everybody knows it. Still, it is shocking to admit that we waste an estimated NT$240 billion ($7.98 billion) worth of food each year in Taiwan. Based on the Council of Agriculture’s latest figures, the local CommonWealth Magazine estimates that 17 percent of the 567 kg of food we have access to on average per person is lost or wasted every year.In other words, the Chinese-language publication points out that each person throws away about NT$10,000 per year. In Taiwan, this waste t
April 11, 2013
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[Cielito F. Habito] Who’s afraid of ASEAN 2015?
I often hear the lament that we Filipinos are not as mindful as our neighbors appear to be of the impending closer integration of the Southeast Asian economies into the ASEAN Economic Community, to culminate less than two years from now. I have heard none of our candidates for national office in the coming elections address the topic, for example, in the way it figures in public discussions within our neighboring countries. And yet, this move of the 10 nations that make up the Association of Sou
April 11, 2013
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[Zhu Feng] North Korea’s step too far?
BEIJING ― After nearly a month of belligerent bluster from North Korea, China appears to have had enough, ending its silence about North Korea’s brinkmanship and suddenly roaring its disapproval of its ally’s reckless threats. China’s exceptional tough talk does not necessarily mean that it intends to abandon Kim Jong-un’s regime; but, at the very least, it does suggest that a radical shift in China’s policy toward North Korea might no longer be unthinkable.When Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi
April 10, 2013
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North Korea is following a well-worn pattern
Just a few months ago, on New Year’s Day, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, gave a televised speech to the nation calling for reconciliation with the South.“The past records of inter-Korean relations,” he intoned, “show that confrontation between fellow countrymen leads to nothing but war.” Kim added that he intended to embark on “an all-out struggle” to rejuvenate the nation’s destitute economy.That speech came shortly after the chubby new leader was photographed riding a roller coaster at Nor
April 10, 2013
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The global quest for new growth models
NEWPORT BEACH ― What is the most urgent economic priority shared by countries as diverse as Brazil, China, Cyprus, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Korea, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States?It is not debt and deficits; and it is not dealing with the aftermath of irresponsible lending and borrowing. Yes, these are relevant and, in a handful of cases, urgent. But the number one challenge facing these countries is to develop growth models that can provide more ample, well-paid, an
April 10, 2013
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The upside of giving in to N. Korea’s blackmail
With its provocation-a-day strategy, North Korea has almost exhausted the news media’s capacity for stories about the “ratcheting up” of tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Here’s some news from the North, though, that you may not have heard: In recent meetings, the ruling Korean Workers’ Party elected Pak Pong-ju, an economic reformer, to its Political Bureau, which steers political, policy and personnel decisions, and downgraded the role of the military by reducing its representation. Subsequent
April 10, 2013