Most Popular
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Jimin of BTS, actor Song Da-eun suspected to be dating, again
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Police raid popera singer Kim Ho-joong's house over hit-and-run suspicions
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What's next for the government's push in quota hike?
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Trump may like to 'solve' N. Korean nuclear problem if reelected: ex-official
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Woman falls to death from acquaintance's home after exhibiting ‘unexplained' behaviors
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N. Korea slams planned S. Korea-US military drills, warns of 'catastrophic aftermath'
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N. Korea fires short-range ballistic missiles toward East Sea: JCS
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‘Malice should not undermine the system, social order,’ says Hybe's Bang
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[Robert J. Fouser] Social attitudes toward language proficiency
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[Graphic News] How much do Korean adults read?
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Obama’s four more years in White House
Four years ago, on a bright, cold Jan. 20, Barack Obama took his first oath of office as president and proclaimed a new post-partisan era. “The stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply,” the Obama of 2009 said.The second four years of a two-term president’s tenure are always different from the first, but it’s hard to overstate how different Obama’s second term feels, even before his inauguration. He has most of the same goals and many of the same aides, but in
Jan. 23, 2013
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[David Ignatius] A powerful symbol for Saudis
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia ― Recently, Saudi Arabia saw something that people in the kingdom often talk about but rarely witness ― a potentially important political reform. King Abdullah announced Jan. 11 that 30 women would join the kingdom’s Shura Council, a consultative body of 150 persons, and that women henceforth would hold 20 percent of the seats. Skeptics cautioned that it’s a symbolic move, since this is an advisory group that doesn’t actually enact any legislation. But it’s a powerful symbol
Jan. 23, 2013
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Japan’s leaders won’t recognize wartime crimes
This month 75 years ago, the people of Nanking, China’s ancient capital city, were in the midst of one of the worst atrocities in history, the infamous Rape of Nanking. The truth of what actually happened is at the center of a bitter dispute between China and Japan that continues to play out in present-day relations.Many Chinese see Japan’s election last month of ultraconservative nationalist Shinzo Abe as prime minister as just the latest in a string of insults. And it was recently reported tha
Jan. 23, 2013
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Good and not-so-good ethics in the Land of the Morning Calm
Having worked and lived in Korea for 12 years now, I have observed many traditions and ethics ― mostly good, some less good.I’ve seen some Korean bus drivers literally greet every person who enters or disembarks his bus. It is extremely courteous, and one can only imagine how much such a person has invested on the “bank of good ethics” at the end of his life. I was wondering, though, whether he could keep it up. Some express-bus drivers courteously stand at the exit of the bus to greet all the p
Jan. 23, 2013
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[Kim Myong-sik] Misadventure over income tax on the clergy
There seem to be a couple myths on both sides of the ongoing (revived) controversy over taxation of clergy members. And at the heart of the debates is an anti-religious atmosphere gripping today’s Korean society. Financial authorities started the taxation move out of inaccurate observations of the religious community and are now finding dubious excuses to explain their withdrawal.Many advocates of income tax collection from Christian ministers and Buddhist priests suppose that churches and templ
Jan. 23, 2013
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[Lee Jae-min] Trade Ministry restructuring?
One of the key features of the Presidential Transition Committee’s governmental organization restructuring blueprint is to carve out the trade function of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and assign it to the new Ministry of Industry, Trade and Energy (currently, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy). The rationale mentioned by a committee member was the synergy effect expected from the combination of industrial policy and trade policy, so that Seoul’s trade agreement negotiations and impl
Jan. 22, 2013
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Obama’s agenda: Everything, all at once
President Barack Obama began his second term on Sunday with room to breathe. The global financial system is not failing, the U.S. housing market is not collapsing, and American jobs are not evaporating. Meanwhile, after a convincing win in November, his approval rating is robust, and the federal government’s fiscal condition is fitfully, contentiously improving. Yet any notion that Obama might use his second term merely to consolidate the shaky gains of his first, particularly the complex implem
Jan. 22, 2013
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[Meghan Daum] Jodie Foster comes out ― as human
It’s the news the nation’s been trying to digest all week (at least before Lance Armstrong made everyone lose their lunch): Jodie Foster, one of the industry’s most cool and collected figures, is capable of being a rambling mess.You’ve heard about it 100 times by now. Accepting the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes on Sunday night, Foster spent seven minutes chipping away at her image as the industry’s most staid and no-nonsense Hollywood power player.She began by
Jan. 22, 2013
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[Kim Seong-kon] Absurd and enigmatic quirks prevalent in Korea
Foreigners living in Korea may find some idiosyncrasies in Korean society quite difficult to understand. Some of the baffling phenomena stem from cultural differences, so foreigners can come to learn and accept the differences. But some phenomena are unreasonable and inscrutable to logical foreign eyes, and even to some native ones for that matter. When you drive to northern Seoul, for example, you must pay a toll as soon as you cross one of the bridges over the Han River. It is a well-known fac
Jan. 22, 2013
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[Dominique Moisi] French intervention in Mali
PARIS ― While hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Paris against the right of homosexual couples to marry and adopt children, French troops were arriving in Mali to stop a coalition of Islamist and rebel forces from taking control of its capital, Bamako, and creating in the Sahel a sanctuary for terrorists.These are trying times for French President Franois Hollande. Besieged economically at home, where his popularity is at its lowest since his election last year, can he regain credibility, if
Jan. 21, 2013
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Air pollution changing Chinese public’s attitude
Ever wonder what life in the United States would be like without a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency? The people of China have gotten a whiff of what happens when there are minimal pollution controls, and they are choking on it.That the air in Beijing is badly polluted is not exactly a new development, but this is: Now, it’s gotten so bad that the complaints are showing up in state-run media where the crisis is not only recognized but the need to be open and honest about it is, too.Photograph
Jan. 21, 2013
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U.S. will leave Afghanistan to warlords and Taliban
“We wanted a clear message from Obama that the U.S. will continue to support democracy in Afghanistan,” Fawzia Koofi, a lawmaker and human-rights activist, said this month. “It’s the only alternative to Talibanization.” Her honesty revealed the plain truth, without official pieties and doublespeak: The U.S. is quitting Afghanistan, and the morning after it does, the Taliban will begin the reconquest of that tragic land. After 11 years, and a toll of more than 2,000 Americans killed, 18,000 wound
Jan. 21, 2013
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Argentina cautionary tale as U.S. debates debt limit
You know all those warnings about how America’s addiction to deficit spending is going to make us look like Greece?Stop worrying. The bigger concern should be that America will look like Argentina.That could happen, theoretically, if the threatened refusal by Republicans in the House to raise the federal debt limit leads to a default on U.S. government bonds. How bad would it be, you ask?Think about this: Because of lawsuits over Argentina’s 2001 default on nearly $100 billion in sovereign debt,
Jan. 21, 2013
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[Joel Brinkley] Food security still a major issue in SE Asia
LUANG PRABANG, Laos ― Travel through Southeast Asia, and wherever you go you’ll find statues of Buddha ― meditating, cogitating, calling for peace or for rain. The multiple poses are varied, and each one has its own meaning.But only one pose shows the Buddha actually grinning. That’s the Buddha who is fat, sitting in a chair, his belly so big it looks like he’ll be unable to stand up.This might seem odd, given that Buddhism is generally an ascetic faith. To reach enlightenment, you’re supposed t
Jan. 21, 2013
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French action in Mali gives U.S. breathing space
It took the fear that Mali’s capital would fall to Islamic militants for the U.S. and France to part agreeably on the question of intervention. France has sent troops; the U.S. won’t, though it will help in other ways. That’s an appropriate division of labor, given the different stakes the countries have in Mali. It’s a welcome one, too. The U.S. can’t spearhead every battle against jihadists with global ambitions. If U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen created that impression, the
Jan. 20, 2013
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[Robert Reich] Break up Wall Street giants
TARP, the infamous Troubled Assets Relief Program that bailed out Wall Street in 2008, is finally over. The Treasury Department recently announced it will soon be completing the sale of the remaining shares it owns of the banks and of General Motors.But it’s not really over. The biggest Wall Street banks are now far bigger than they were four years ago when they were considered too big to fail. The five largest have almost 44 percent of all U.S. bank deposits. That’s up from 37 percent in 2007,
Jan. 20, 2013
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2013 to be a testing year for Asian economies
The growth rate of emerging Asian economies is expected to increase in 2013. But inflation and gloomy external conditions still pose a challenge for the macroeconomic policies of many of these economies. In the medium term, their growth rate will be higher than other regions but lower than it was before the global financial crisis. This squarely puts the focus on economic reform and restructuring.Though Asia’s economy is likely to bottom out this year, it will find it difficult to overcome the p
Jan. 20, 2013
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The global Indian
KOCHI, INDIA ― No other country has anything like it ― an annual jamboree of its diaspora, conducted with great fanfare by its government. India has been doing it, with great success, for a decade, timed to recall the return to India of the most famous Indian expatriate of them all, Mahatma Gandhi, who alighted from his South African ship in Bombay on Jan. 9, 1915. As I write, the southern port city of Kochi is overflowing with expatriate Indians celebrating their connection to their motherland.
Jan. 20, 2013
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[Zaki Ladi] Will France have to go it alone on security affairs?
PARIS ― In less than two years, France has carried out three decisive foreign military interventions. In March 2011, its airstrikes in Libya (alongside those of Great Britain) thwarted Colonel Muammar el-Gadhafi’s troops as they prepared to retake the city of Benghazi. A month later, French forces in Cote d’Ivoire arrested President Laurent Gbagbo, who had refused to recognize his rival’s election victory, putting the country at risk of civil war. Now France has intervened in Mali.The latest int
Jan. 20, 2013
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[David Ignatius] Afghanistan’s changing ways
NEW DELHI ― For Americans weary of nearly a dozen years of war, Afghanistan often seems like a country where nothing ever changes and the same story of ethnic and tribal struggle repeats itself in an endless loop. But Afghanistan’s demographics have changed in significant ways over the past decade. Rather than being mired in a perpetual feudal twilight, it’s actually becoming a modern country. The statistical evidence of change, gathered from USAID data and other sources, is overwhelming. The ur
Jan. 18, 2013