The midterm elections in the United States last week upended the political scene. The Republicans had expected to ride a wave of discontent to take control of both houses of the US Congress, but, after more than a week of counting votes, the Democrats remain in control of the Senate. The Republicans will end up with a paper-thin majority in the House of Representatives, not the large margin they ...

Is it Dr. Mehmet Oz’s fault that the “red wave” expected by many Republicans didn’t materialize on Election Day? Did the Pennsylvania Senate candidate violate the physician’s Hippocratic Oath -- “first, do no harm” -- by inflicting severe damage to his own party’s electoral fortunes? You might think so, given the tenor of many post-election analyses. One of the main storylines of this year’s cam...

“The prosecutors’ job is to protect the people from crimes. Only criminals fear the prosecution that does its job properly. “The true prosecution reform, the real reform of criminal justice system is to establish a just law enforcement system to deal sternly with socially powerful people. There are countries on the earth that can do so and countries that cannot, but the Republic of Korea should ...

In the US midterm elections on Nov. 8, many political commentators and analysts had predicted a “red wave” or even a “red tsunami” that would have resulted in Republicans’ taking control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. However, no such thing happened. Instead, Republicans unexpectedly underperformed in the midterm. Expectations do not always match reality. What people though...

Anyone hoping that Russian President Vladimir Putin will soon find himself in the dock of the International Criminal Court should take several long, deep breaths. While Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine has not gone as planned, his grip on power remains unchallenged. And even if the ICC were to indict Putin for war crimes, it has no police force to arrest him. The international community simpl...

Halloween is over; Christmas beckons. “Monster Mash” is out; “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is in. Feel-good movies have replaced seasonal zombie and vampire flicks. In the US, our real-life zombie movie is called COVID-19, and it has caused more than 1 million deaths. Along with that, there have been hundreds of thousands of non-COVID-19 excess deaths, and the number of people with long-term ...

The timely release of a new film version of Erich Maria Remarque’s "All Quiet on the Western Front" offers a reminder of the close parallels between World War I and the current war between autocracies and democracies. The fighting now is in Ukraine, but, as in WWI, the broader war has several fronts: the energy front, the grain front and, less well noticed, the Western front. Across Western capit...

The concert hall remained eerily quiet as the conductor took his place at the podium. Then, all at once, the solemn sound of “Nimrod” from Elgar’s “Enigma Variations” filled the air. The evocative melody proved cathartic for the audience that had gathered less than a week after a crowd surge in Itaewon left 157 people dead. I saw people silently sobbing, wiping away tears. When the music ended, ...

When the Sewol ferry sank in April 2014, claiming 304 lives including 250 high school students, it was simply unbelievable that so many precious lives could be lost in coastal waters. The ferry capsized 24 kilometers off the island Jindo on the southwestern coast, but rescue operations were incredulously ineffective. The botched response severely dented public trust in the Park Geun-hye administr...

Recently, two events in the news shook the world. One was the tragic disaster in Itaewon that took away the lives of 156 people, including 26 foreigners from 14 countries, who died in a crowd crush while celebrating Halloween in Seoul. The other one was the violent assault on Paul Pelosi, husband of the US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, by a man with a hammer. Pelosi is now recovering from a skull f...

Fighting for the high ground on contentious political issues inspires a partisan twisting of the English language. Take this Oct. 19 news from Immigration and Customs Enforcement that “officers arrested 175 unlawfully present noncitizens with multiple DUI convictions.” “Unlawfully present noncitizens” is how our Department of Homeland Security describes illegal (a synonym for unlawful) aliens (t...

In recent weeks, several members of the Glasgow Financial Alliance on Net Zero -- a group of 450 financial institutions -- have quit over concerns about the cost of delivering on their climate commitments. In dropping out, they have given the lie to the notion that private financial institutions can lead the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. What the transition really needs is more ambitiou...

As the Fed raised interest rates by 75 basis points on Wednesday for the fourth time this year, financial markets are beginning to shake. Basically, the interest rate hikes in response to higher inflation is a reversal of nearly two decades of generally declining global interest rates, higher asset bubbles and not surprisingly, anemic growth. The Bank for International Settlements has just issue...

For the second time in my life, the threat of nuclear war is keeping me up at night. The first occasion was in 1983, when as a child, I sneaked out of my bedroom to watch the TV movie “The Day After.” That movie gave me a healthy appreciation for what a nuclear conflict between the United States and Russia might look like. Now, almost 40 years later, that fear has returned, as Russian President ...

The sound was unmistakable -- and potentially shattering. It was yet another reverberating sound of silence at a time when we needed to hear everyone speak out in condemnation. Thankfully, this time it was not a total silence. But it was an inexcusable silence from far too many famous names from one political party -- the Republicans. A violent attack had just occurred at the San Francisco home...