Most Popular
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‘Gimflation’ in S. Korea as dried seaweed prices grow on rising global demand
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S. Korea's gender pay gap worst in OECD
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Yoon to resume diplomatic activity via 3-way summit with Japan, China
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SM, YG Entertainment’s K-pop groups benefit from troubles at Hybe
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South Korea unveils W26tr support program for chip industry
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Yoon rejects Lee's proposal for pension reform talks
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S. Korea to hold rotating presidency of UN Security Council next month
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Student nabbed for biking naked 'due to stress'
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Police arrest mastermind behind last year's palace vandalism
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Tax-payers shouldering most of burden for pension childbirth credit programs
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[Yoon Young-kwan] A trilateral FTA: Asia’s next axis
SEOUL ― Last month, the leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea agreed to begin negotiations later this year on a trilateral free-trade agreement. If the talks succeed, the global trade map will need to be redrawn. An FTA that encompasses, respectively, the world’s second, third, and 12th biggest economies (in purchasing power parity terms in 2011), with a population of 1.5 billion, would dwarf the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement, comprising the United States, Canada,
June 18, 2012
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[Joel Brinkley] Opportunists ready for Afghanistan
Even before NATO forces begin leaving Afghanistan, predator nations are pouring lavish praise, diplomatic agreements and buckets full of cash on Afghan leaders, trying to win access to the nation’s vast natural resources after Western troops leave.Chief among them are China, Iran and India ― nations that contributed nothing toward the military effort over the last decade but hope to reap benefits from it anyway.For example, in Beijing late last week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Chinese Pre
June 18, 2012
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Help for Holocaust victims
In Europe, as the Nazis rose to power, many Jews tried to protect themselves and their families financially by purchasing life insurance policies, annuities, even dowry policies. For decades after World War II, getting payment on those policies ― particularly difficult when survivors and heirs had been stripped of all their possessions, including family records ― became part of the larger challenge of how to compensate those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis. Two bills in Congress would hel
June 18, 2012
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Wave of self-immolations against Chinese rule
PRAGUE ― The grim spectacle of young monks, nuns, and lay people setting themselves on fire to protest conditions in their homeland is a stark reminder of the gloom and despair that now prevails on the Tibetan Plateau. These acts of self-immolation ― at least 36 since March 2011 ― have been staged to protest the increasingly heavy controls that China’s government in Beijing has imposed on Buddhist religious practices. At the end of May, a self-immolation occurred for the first time, in Lhasa, th
June 18, 2012
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The German soul and the Italian volksgeist
ROME ― The romantic side of the Germanic soul has always loved the Italian volksgeist. Like Goethe, northerners have long sought to escape, if only on temporary vacations, an unforgiving ethos of prudence and discipline in search of the charming inefficiency and sensuality of Mediterranean climes and culture.The single European currency, combined with the burdens of the Bismarck-invented welfare state that faces demographic demise and competition from the rising rest around the globe, has put an
June 18, 2012
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China must let activist Chen return home
NEW YORK ― Western media describe my friend and colleague Chen Guangcheng as a blind activist who made a flight to freedom when China allowed him to journey from Beijing to the United States. What is essential about Chen is neither his blindness nor his family’s visit to the U.S., but the fact that he upholds a vision of universal human rights, a vision that can be fully realized only when, and if, China honors its promise to allow him one day to return home.China has a history of forcing schola
June 17, 2012
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[David Ignatius] Lebanon sitting on the edge
BEIRUT ― For a generation, Lebanese lived the nightmare of sectarian civil war. Now they are watching a similar vortex gather velocity in neighboring Syria, and many fear that Lebanon will be sucked into a conflict that nearly everyone dreads. Already, the Syrian strife is starting to bleed into Lebanon. The Akkar region in the northeast has become a transit point for medical and other relief supplies ― and the Syrian opposition hopes to use it as a staging ground for operations across the borde
June 17, 2012
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Birdseye’s story of a foodie’s passion
Every generation has its own foodies. Clarence Birdseye, born in Brooklyn in 1886 and remembered as the father of frozen food, was one of the leading foodies of his generation.He loved food, talked about it constantly and mentioned what he was eating in almost every letter he wrote. In a 1915 letter to his family from Labrador, where he was a fur trader, Birdseye wrote: “Every letter has to begin with something about food. These are the two items of principal interest today,” and proceeded to de
June 17, 2012
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[Meghan Daum] Speaking down to all Americans from Congress
Lest you think the bullying and foot-stomping of Congress most resemble a tantrum-prone bunch of second-graders, think again. Data compiled by the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group focused on greater transparency in Washington, has shown that today’s congressional “dialogue” is actually on a par with a 10th-grader’s verbal prowess.By running our representatives’ speeches through what’s called the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, which associates longer sentences and more complex words wit
June 17, 2012
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[George Soros] Eurozone needs banking union to stem crisis
NEW YORK ― It is now clear that the main cause of the euro crisis is the member states’ surrender of their right to print money to the European Central Bank. They did not understand just what that surrender entailed ― and neither did the European authorities.When the euro was introduced, regulators allowed banks to buy unlimited amounts of government bonds without setting aside any equity capital, and the ECB discounted all eurozone government bonds on equal terms. Commercial banks found it adva
June 17, 2012
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[Volker Perthes] When democratic powers collide
BERLIN ― The multipolar nature of today’s international system will again be on display at the upcoming G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico. Global problems are no longer solved, crises managed, or global rules defined, let alone implemented, the old-fashioned way, by a few, mostly Western, powers. Incipient great and middle powers, such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, and South Africa, also demand their say.Some of these powers are still emerging economies. Politically, however, m
June 15, 2012
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India’s cold shoulder to U.S. courtship
There’s a party in the Asia Pacific, and the United States wants India to be its date. As U.S. foreign policy “pivots” away from the Middle East and Europe and toward Asia, U.S. officials are doing everything they can to cozy up to the nation that Mark Twain once called “the cradle of the human race.”America’s courtship ― a bipartisan effort ― has included the great-power equivalent of sending flowers (civil nuclear technology under George W. Bush), chocolates (more than $8 billion in U.S. arms
June 15, 2012
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Keeping calm as two giant neighbors embrace
Even if there exists residual distrust between China and Russia as a legacy of Mao Zedong’s split with Nikita Khrushchev, the two nations have much to gain from strategic cooperation. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, of which Russia is a founder member, is one platform for collaboration on the Asian land mass ― an economic and security linkage that is not only natural but also progressive.Russian President Vladimir Putin was his usual blunt self, ahead of his state visit to China last week
June 15, 2012
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Ethnic, sectarian unrest escalates in Myanmar
The escalation of ethnic and sectarian violence in Myanmar has not only raised questions about the future of the democratic reforms in the country but also highlighted the plight of the country’s Muslim minority.The unrest in Myanmar’s Rakhine state erupted last week when around 300 Arakan Buddhists allegedly attacked a bus in which Muslims were traveling, killing 10 passengers apparently in retaliation for the rape and killing of an Arakan girl allegedly by three Rohingya suspects. The ensuing
June 15, 2012
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The unfortunate reality of Taiwanese politics
As the U.S. beef issue was scheduled to go through the Legislature for voting , tensions have risen between the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) and the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The ruling Kuomintang (KMT) has instructed its party legislators to vote unanimously on the passing of the U.S. beef-related amendment draft to the Act Governing Food Sanitation or face party disciplinary measures, which includes at least a fine of $1,000, the KMT party caucus announced on June 7.Meanwhile,
June 15, 2012
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[Andrew Sheng] Taking care of the old is this generation’s responsibility
Oscar Wilde used to say that the tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. I belong to the baby boomer generation, born from 1946 to 1965 that helped to create an era of incredible economic prosperity and technology, and also responsible for the biggest financial bubble, as well as consumers of planetary resources at a rate that will leave future generations poorer. Many of us feel that before we go to the other side, we must do something to give back to society what we w
June 15, 2012
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[Ban Ki-moon] A global movement for change
Next week, world leaders gather for a momentous occasion ― the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro. Will it be a success? In my opinion, yes. To be sure, the negotiations have been lengthy. Even now there is more disagreement than agreement on the details of the so-called “outcome document” that will emerge. Yet that will not be the defining measure. Far more important is what the Rio conference has already accomplished. And that is to build a global movement f
June 14, 2012
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Getting America’s financial house in order
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke implored lawmakers last week to keep the federal government from driving off a “fiscal cliff” ― a phrase he coined earlier this year to describe the hefty spending cuts and tax increases scheduled to take effect simultaneously in January. But he was talking to the wrong audience. The two men he should have been lobbying are the ones running for president.Bernanke’s remarks came amid a global economic slowdown, with Europe, Asia and China in varying degree
June 14, 2012
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[Jeffrey D. Sachs] Support aid for health care as it saves lives
NEW YORK ― The critics of foreign aid are wrong. A growing flood of data shows that death rates in many poor countries are falling sharply, and that aid-supported programs for health-care delivery have played a key role. Aid works; it saves lives.One of the newest studies, by Gabriel Demombynes and Sofia Trommlerova, shows that Kenya’s infant mortality (deaths under the age of one year) has plummeted in recent years, and attributes a significant part of the gain to the massive uptake of anti-mal
June 14, 2012
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Save Europe’s marriage with a trial separation
The euro is not a fundamentally bad idea. It just needs a timeout while some critical kinks are worked out. Europe is at least two economies: a northern tier we might call Hanseatica and a southern one we will call Mediterranea. The Hanseatic economy is primarily commercial and industrial, and relies on exports. The Mediterranean economy remains more pastoral and agricultural, and relies on debt for its purchases of manufactured goods from the north. The divide, rooted in topography, climate and
June 14, 2012