Most Popular
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Jimin of BTS, actor Song Da-eun suspected to be dating, again
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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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‘Malice should not undermine the system, social order,’ says Hybe's Bang
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N. Korea slams planned S. Korea-US military drills, warns of 'catastrophic aftermath'
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[Robert J. Fouser] Social attitudes toward language proficiency
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N. Korea fires short-range ballistic missiles toward East Sea: JCS
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[Graphic News] How much do Korean adults read?
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N. Korea says it test-fired tactical ballistic missile with new guidance technology
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Hospital incentives help reduce elective birth
The evidence has been in for some time. Scheduling births may be convenient for physicians, hospitals and expectant parents, but it generally isn’t good for the health of mothers and children. It’s expensive to boot. To get a baby to arrive on schedule, doctors often perform a cesarean section, the most common surgery in the U.S. Since 1996, C-section rates have risen every year to 33 percent of all births in 2009. According to the World Health Organization, the right figure for any country is a
Dec. 9, 2012
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[Eli Park Sorensen] The arrival of a train and its many meanings
Auguste and Louis Lumière’s 50-second silent picture “The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station” from 1895 ― one of the earliest films ever made ― follows a train gradually approaching the camera until it passes at close range. The story goes that when the film was shown for the first time, a panicking audience thought the train would crash through the screen and crush everyone in the cinema. It is a pivotal moment in the history of cinema, one that brings together extreme fictional realism, s
Dec. 9, 2012
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Sandy reminds Tribeca what life is like in Asia
New York’s brush with developing-nation status is an even bigger warning for Asia than it is for the U.S. The city could be excused for wondering if it had suddenly been transported to Bangladesh in October. The deadly floods and crippling power outages following Hurricane Sandy made for more than graphic television. They made a mockery of the climate-change deniers. Just ask residents of lower Manhattan as they referred to neighborhoods such as pricey Tribeca as “Little North Korea.” The Asia r
Dec. 9, 2012
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Why are our politics so scary? Blame Hollywood
I’ve finally figured out why we spend so much time treating our political opponents as implacably evil. It’s because Hollywood, which used to offer us villains we could love reviling, seems to have forgotten how to make its bad guys bad. The other night on “Homeland,” the uber-terrorist the good guys have been chasing for a season and a half finally got to tell his side of the story. As it turns out, he’s not evil. It’s just that his family was blown to bits at the dinner table by a U.S. drone s
Dec. 9, 2012
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The real reason Buffett should pay more taxes
For most of the past six decades, the U.S. government has taken a lenient approach toward taxing financial wealth. Dividends from stocks and gains on long-term investments are currently taxed at 15 percent, compared with rates on ordinary income as high as 35 percent. The differential treatment has resulted in such attention-grabbing distortions as Warren Buffett paying a smaller share of his income in taxes than his secretary, and Mitt Romney paying an effective federal rate of only 14.1 percen
Dec. 7, 2012
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[David Ignatius] Power of an economic NATO
BERLIN ― At a recent meeting of German business and foreign-policy leaders, one participant summed up an anxiety that’s almost palpable here: “Europeans have a sense of being left alone. You Americans don’t understand how much we need you.” Europeans seem relieved that Barack Obama won re-election. (One German official wrote in an informal paper that his victory was “the best thing that could have happened to the U.S.”) But Europeans remain worried that the Obama administration’s famous “pivot”
Dec. 7, 2012
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Going back to the future on filibuster reform
The Senate needs to go back to the future on filibuster reform. Senators should have to stand their ground and raise their voices on the Senate floor, around the clock if necessary, a la Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” to keep legislation from coming to a vote.Back in the day, a minority senator had to have strong personal convictions against legislation to undertake the onerous, sleep-depriving filibuster, talking and talking and talking to block action. Today, a senator, or a
Dec. 6, 2012
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[Omar Ashour] Egypt’s democratic dictator?
CAIRO ― Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first-ever elected civilian president, recently granted himself sweeping temporary powers in order, he claims, to attain the objectives of the revolution that overthrew Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship. But the decrees incited strong opposition from many of the revolutionary forces that helped to overthrow Mubarak (as well as from forces loyal to him), with protests erupting anew in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.Morsi has thus been put in the odd position of having to defend h
Dec. 6, 2012
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Rise in bullying cases not cause for despair
Reported incidents of bullying nearly doubled between April and September this year, reaching 144,054 cases, compared with 70,000 cases for the entire previous school year, according to the education ministry.It might sound strange to say, but that increase may signal a certain step forward. The reasons for the huge increase in reported cases may have more to do with increased reporting, not necessarily more incidents.The real number of incidents in the past will remain unknown, but was surely u
Dec. 6, 2012
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A sign of openness
This may or may not be coincidence, but Xi Jinping’s first meeting with foreigners as general secretary of the Communist Party of China was with foreign experts working in China. That is a great way to highlight the nation’s gratitude to overseas friends who have contributed to its pursuit of prosperity. And an ideal occasion to showcase the desire to befriend the rest of the world. Those who were invited to sit down with the new CPC chief in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday,
Dec. 6, 2012
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Joint efforts needed to stop N.K. missile launch
North Korea recently announced it would launch a long-range ballistic missile between Monday and Dec. 22 under the guise of sending a “satellite” into orbit.However hard Pyongyang insists that its plan is to launch a satellite for peaceful purposes, the mechanism used to launch a missile is the same as that used to launch a satellite. It is a clear violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution prohibiting North Korea from conducting nuclear tests and “any launch using ballistic missile technol
Dec. 6, 2012
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[Niaz Murtaza] Five paradigms of globalization
Globalization provokes heated debates. While anti-globalization groups highlight the problems faced by developing countries from premature trade and capital inflow liberalization, its supporters emphasize the stagnation in countries like North Korea that remain delinked from the global economy.So, does globalization help or hurt developing countries?Since globalization is a complex concept, one must disaggregate it to answer this question meaningfully. Simply stated, globalization means an incre
Dec. 6, 2012
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Israel-Hamas could force rethink of ‘Pacific pivot’
The recent hostilities between Israel and Hamas are a chance for the United States to think strategically. Or, better yet, rethink ― specifically the Obama administration’s “pivot to the Pacific.”The challenge was issued ― “respectfully but forcefully” ― by Paul McHale, who has been a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania (1993-99) and an assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense (2003-09), and is a retired Marine colonel whose most recent deployment was to Afghanistan in 2007.At a
Dec. 5, 2012
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[David Ignatius] On Susan Rice, a close call
WASHINGTON ― The Republican assault on Susan Rice is a fabricated scandal, attacking her for repeating CIA talking points, almost verbatim, to explain the Benghazi attacks. The U.N. ambassador’s version, even with its omissions, may turn out to be closer to the truth than some of the inflammatory GOP rhetoric. But just because Rice is being unfairly pilloried, this doesn’t mean she would be a good secretary of state. And it’s a close call on the merits: Given her friendship with President Obama,
Dec. 5, 2012
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[Naomi Wolf] A death in Galway
NEW YORK ― The case of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist from India who had moved, with her husband, to Ireland, continues to reverberate around the world. Halappanavar, an expectant mother, died after her doctors, citing Ireland’s legal prohibition of abortion, refused to remove her 17-week-old fetus, despite allegedly acknowledging that the fetus was not viable and placing Halappanavar in an intensive-care unit as her condition deteriorated.Indian activists are outraged. “While there
Dec. 5, 2012
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‘Coalition of the willing’ rising against China
By disregarding its passport, China has sparked a torrent of diplomatic protests. The new passport carries a map that shows China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and on its border with India.China did not need to occupy the disputed territories through invasion by the People’s Liberation Army. It did not have to fire a shot to validate its claims based solely on a map, making the whole affair a paper coup.According to Bloomberg, three separate pages in the passport include China’s “n
Dec. 5, 2012
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[Park Sang-seek] A conflict between individualism and collectivism
In the recent American presidential election, the subject of grand debate was individualism versus community: a shift of emphasis from liberty to fraternity. In the ongoing presidential election in South Korea, it is the same. Why? The two are quite different kinds of countries: America is a mature Western democratic and capitalist country and South Korea an emergent Eastern democratic and capitalist country, but they suffer from the same problem ― a conflict between individualism and collectivi
Dec. 5, 2012
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[Daniel Fiedler] Ending rule by law in Korea
The recent news covering the misconduct and subsequent upheaval among South Korean prosecutors are a stark reminder of an unfortunate fact of life for many in South Korea; the inequity that pervades the South Korean system of justice. This inequity arises from both cultural and bureaucratic factors but in the end owes its existence primarily to the lack of indigenous roots for the international concept of the rule of law. The South Korean legal tradition, like the Chinese, is based on rule by la
Dec. 4, 2012
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China needs more investors like Carson Block
Nothing ruins a chief executive officer’s year faster than hearing the name Carson Block. Allen Chan can attest to that. In April, he resigned from Sino-Forest Corp., the Chinese forestry company he co-founded two decades ago, after being targeted by Block’s Muddy Waters LLC. The short-selling firm shot to fame by correctly betting on declines in stocks of Chinese companies listed in North America, much in the same way that David Einhorn rose to prominence for being right on Lehman Brothers Hold
Dec. 4, 2012
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Every mistress needs someone to play sugar daddy
I know we’re just settling in with our popcorn for the scene where the lawyers and PR handlers transform disgrace into opportunity for the players in the David Petraeus story. Already Petraeus is on the contrition circuit, saying last week he “screwed up royally.” Why next thing you know, he will be nominated to replace Hillary Clinton at the State Department. But before we move on to “Act II: The Image Rehab,” could we clear up this business about how women get depicted when the stuff hits the
Dec. 4, 2012