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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[Kim Seong-kon] What we can learn from our school textbooks
When I entered elementary school right after the Korean War, there were not so many books for us to read in South Korea. The postwar landscape was bleak and barren, and few sources of knowledge and entertainment were available except for some pulp magazines, vacuum tube radios and movies. When I was given my textbooks on the first day of school, therefore, I was overjoyed and filled with anticipation. During those days, our textbooks were not only a valuable means of information and knowledge, b
Dec. 4, 2012
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Bond’s ‘Skyfall’ could be our very real nightmare
Anyone who has seen the latest James Bond film, “Skyfall,” would be hard-pressed to find any traditional espionage tradecraft. More actual spying would have meant less of Daniel Craig running around in a too-tight suit chasing bad guys. When the villain ― in this case a cyberterrorist played masterfully by Javier Bardem ― is able to turn around and say to Bond, “Why are you doing all this running around and wasting your energy?”, anyone who knows anything about real spying is tempted to yell at
Dec. 4, 2012
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Keep satellites ready for bad weather
Thanks to an unbroken stream of atmospheric and oceanic measurements beamed to Earth from well-positioned satellites, meteorologists were able to predict Hurricane Sandy’s monstrous power and strange path (tropical storms typically turn right, not left) long before it hit the New Jersey coast. It’s the kind of precision we might assume can only get better, as scientists fine-tune their instruments and forecast models. Instead, in a few years, weather predictions in the U.S. are in danger of beco
Dec. 3, 2012
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[J. Bradford DeLong] America’s political recession
BERKELEY ― The odds are now about 36 percent that the United States will be in a recession next year. The reason is entirely political: partisan polarization has reached levels never before seen, threatening to send the U.S. economy tumbling over the “fiscal cliff” ― the automatic tax increases and spending cuts that will take effect at the beginning of 2013 unless Democrats and Republicans agree otherwise.More than a century ago, during the first Gilded Age, American politics was sharply polari
Dec. 3, 2012
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Nobel prize, Psy and Confucian orthodoxy
Four years ago, as a high school student, I had a chance to visit POSTECH. I clearly recall one monolithic structure standing firm in the middle of the campus. It was a gray pedestal, lacking a statue to support. Someone said that it was prepared for the first Korean scientist to win a Nobel Prize in science. I hoped it would not be long until a statue was erected. However, nominees for the 2012 Nobel Prize were announced last October, and it looks like the pedestal will remain empty for a while
Dec. 3, 2012
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Rising plutocracy threatens democracy in the United States
LOS ANGELES ― There is a good chance Rafael Cebrian is going to make it. The handsome young Spaniard is already a rock star and accomplished actor back home. Now he’s moved to Los Angeles, where his generous talent is already being recognized in Hollywood. His native tongue is even a plus in the ever burgeoning Spanish language market ― in the U.S. and globally.Like so many before him, Cebrian says, “In the U.S. there’s hope, and the feeling that you can achieve whatever you want.” Indeed, this
Dec. 3, 2012
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[Joel Brinkley] Tyrants fear social media most
Most of the world’s dictators share a common fear, and it’s not of the United States, NATO, the United Nations or any outside entity. No, the force that most threatens them is social media.Originally designed as enhanced online chat forums for young Americans, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and the rest have spread around the world and are now being used as cudgels against authoritarian leaders in places like Vietnam, Russia, Belarus and Bahrain. In those states and so many others, the leaders are att
Dec. 3, 2012
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[Robert Reich] The plight of U.S. retail workers
We’re officially into Christmas buying season ― when American consumers determine the fate of American retailers and, indirectly, the American economy.What’s often forgotten is that consumers are also workers, and if their pay doesn’t keep up, they can’t keep the economy going.A half-century ago America’s largest private-sector employer was General Motors, whose full-time workers earned an average hourly wage of around $50, in today’s dollars, including health and pension benefits.Today, America
Dec. 2, 2012
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Turkish economy meets EU entrance criteria
BERLIN ― Until recently Turkey was a country that had to borrow from the International Monetary Fund. But positive developments over the last 10 years have led Turkey to become a country that now lends to the IMF instead.Our ability to do this is a result of policies of fiscal discipline we have implemented since our own crisis in 2001. In the past, we had debts to the IMF of $20 billion. Now, that is down to $1.7 billion. Our central bank has reserves of $115 billion.The crisis we have gone thr
Dec. 2, 2012
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Syria: Is the world waiting for genocide?
CAIRO ― From Nazi Germany to Rwanda, some of the most inhumane atrocities and genocides were committed while the rest of the world was watching. Today we are all witnessing the atrocities and mass destruction in Syria. Again we are observing it all unfold before our eyes, with heavy hearts perhaps, but no effective intervention to stop it.The regime of Bashar al-Assad is brutal. It is fighting a war with its own people, shelling them from the sea, bombing them from the air, and murdering them in
Dec. 2, 2012
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Abe’s dangerous manifesto
When Shinzo Abe, the leader of Japan’s main opposition party, talks about his vision for the country’s diplomacy and security, East Asia has every reason to prick up its ears.Opinion polls in Japan suggest the Liberal Democratic Party will win the House of Representatives election on Dec. 16, positioning Abe to become the next prime minister.He was eager to show his hardline credentials when releasing his party’s campaign pledges on Wednesday, presenting himself as a tough nut to crack if he tak
Dec. 2, 2012
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[Noeleen Heyzer] Building disability-inclusive society in Asia-Pacific
The 2012 London Paralympics captivated the world’s attention with the strength of the human spirit demonstrated by persons with disabilities. We were all moved by the determination and perseverance of the athletes to overcome the odds that defeat so many of us.What we saw of the London Paralympics gives reason to pause and reflect on the everyday struggles of persons with disabilities. Here in Asia-Pacific, there are 650 million persons with disabilities. They account for 15 percent of the popul
Dec. 2, 2012
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[Cass R. Sunstein] Holiday shopping traps to avoid
Behavioral economists study human errors. People don’t always make the best choices for themselves, so there’s good reason to doubt whether they will always make the best choices for others. If you’ve ever received a useless gadget, a horrendous tie or some kind of bowl, you’ll know that when people buy Christmas presents, they can blunder badly. Chances are pretty good that whatever you end up getting people this year, and however hard you try, some of your friends and family members aren’t goi
Dec. 2, 2012
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Reducing greenhouse emissions as top priority
Superstorm Sandy capped a year of bad weather in the United States. Droughts in the Midwest that dried up fields from Iowa to Texas. Heat waves along the Atlantic Seaboard and points inland last summer. An oddball winter that left typically snowy states in the Upper Midwest practically snowless while other areas were repeatedly blanketed with the white stuff.These unseasonal and dramatic events have wrought all kinds of havoc, but they have also had one positive effect: growing awareness that we
Nov. 30, 2012
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[Jeffrey D. Sachs] Polluters must pay for cleanup
NEW YORK ― When BP and its drilling partners caused the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the U.S. government demanded that BP finance the cleanup, compensate those who suffered damages, and pay criminal penalties for the violations that led to the disaster. BP has already committed more than $20 billion in remediation and penalties. Based on a settlement last week, BP will now pay the largest criminal penalty in U.S. history ― $4.5 billion.The same standards for environ
Nov. 30, 2012
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Why People’s Daily found Kim Jong-un sexy
It may turn out that the editors of the English language edition of the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece, People’s Daily, were only kidding when they ran a 55-image slideshow based on “Kim Jong-un Named The Onion’s Sexiest Man Alive for 2012.” But if it turns out that they weren’t, the explanation for how such an article ended up in China’s most important tribunal isn’t so hard to parse. In three distinct ways, the Onion’s satire was perfectly engineered to appeal to editorial biases ― some
Nov. 29, 2012
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[Bindu N. Lohani] Managing climate change risks
The jury may still be out on the link between climate change and natural disasters. But one thing is clear: weather-related disasters are increasing in both frequency and intensity. Witness the string of severe recent floods across Asia ― from Pakistan, to Thailand, to the Philippines ― and Hurricane Sandy in the U.S., which have vividly shown us how extreme weather events can bring entire countries to a virtual standstill. Volatile weather extremes are hitting Asia and the Pacific more often th
Nov. 29, 2012
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China’s new passport maps trigger controversy
The Mainland Affairs Council and the Presidential Office have both stepped up and asked the PRC government to not endanger the status quo by including two pages of scenery from Taiwan, as well as a map of the PRC’s claimed territory showing dashed lines going around Taiwan’s eastern seaboard, in its new microchip passports. The dashed lines extend southward to cover a vast disputed area in the South China Sea, triggering protests from rival claimants including Vietnam, the Philippines and even I
Nov. 29, 2012
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Nuclear policies should be based on realism, not popular emotions
How should Japan achieve a stable supply of power, which is indispensable for people’s livelihoods and economic growth? Energy policies will become a major issue in the House of Representatives election to be held Dec. 16.Nuclear power policies by the ruling and opposition parties have come under the spotlight due to the crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant following the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami.It will be difficult to resolve many issues facing
Nov. 29, 2012
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[Andrew Sheng] Handbook on ending corruption
Hurricane Sandy chased me out of Boston and since I could not get out via New York, I took a flight in the opposite direction to Mumbai. India has the most wonderful bookshops, full of the latest global hits at reasonable prices, but also Indian books that are not easily available abroad. Indian writers have a flair for the English language that is inimical and lyrical, reflecting the deep cultural respect for articulation, best summarized by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen’s book titled “The Argumen
Nov. 29, 2012