Most Popular
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Raising bookworms or robots? Why private reading academies thrive
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Yoon struggles amid lowest approval rating
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LG Display unveils world's most stretchable display
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Korean shipbuilders upbeat on Trump’s call for collaboration
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Fire at Posco plant in Pohang extinguished, but raises safety concerns
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Student backlash erupts as Dongduk Women's University weighs coed future
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What is South Korea’s 4B movement?
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BTS’ Jin to spread happiness with 1st solo album ‘Happy’
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Fire erupts at POSCO Pohang plant; 1 worker injured
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[Herald Interview] JobKorea’s Klik brings jobs, community to growing foreign workforce in Korea
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[Wang Son-taek] Basic guidelines of intelligence agency
Over the past few days, the Korean Peninsula has been exposed to a flood of sensitive security issues. Above all, the news that North Korea was sending 12,000 special forces troops to Russia drew attention not only from South Korea but also from the international community. This explosive story changed the mood of major domestic politics. In particular, the quantity of negative stories about President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife has decreased to a certain extent. There was also an incomprehensibl
Oct. 24, 2024
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[Kim Seong-kon] Becoming both a progressive and a conservative
If someone says that they are both a progressive and a conservative, or leftwing and rightwing, we may think that they are a sly opportunist, a hopelessly contradictory person, or a case of dissociative identity disorder. Not anymore. Today, a perfectly normal person can become such a broadminded person who can cross the border between the two and embrace them, if they have courage and capacity. Moreover, they are an ideal person we need in order to build a non-polarized, better society. The ren
Oct. 23, 2024
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[Neeraj Rajasekar] Wrong conversation about voter fraud
For the past decade, the United States has been mired in a repetitive, pointless conversation about “voter fraud,” helped in no small part by Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine voters’ faith in the electoral process. During the presidential debate with Kamala Harris in early September, Trump insisted that he was the true winner of the 2020 election, and he has repeatedly hinted that he will not accept the election results this November if they are not in his favor. Since
Oct. 23, 2024
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[Patrick Bolton, Haizhou Huang] Is China facing a deflationary trap?
About two years ago, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, China’s economy hit a roadblock. As all sectors underwent deleveraging, economic growth slowed, household savings rates increased and businesses scaled back their investments and accumulated savings. Many now wonder whether consumers and companies are stuck in a self-reinforcing cycle of declining spending and falling prices, which would have the pernicious effect of increasing the real value of debt. For a long time, the gove
Oct. 22, 2024
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[Contribution] Korean police seek paradigm shift in policing
By Choe Ju-weon Director general of Korean National Police Agency Future Policing Policy Bureau Visitors to South Korea are often astonished by how safe the country feels -- whether walking around at any time of the day or leaving a phone or wallet unattended in a cafe. Korea ranks well on numerous recent global safety rankings for personal security, and many cite the country’s stable public safety as a reason for living here. This sense of security stems from the high, law-abiding spirit
Oct. 21, 2024
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[Lee Kyong-hee] Readying young defectors for unification
Yeomyung School is where young North Korean refugees are wrapped in hope. Yeomyung means “the light of dawn.” It embodies hope for the dawning of unification. Perhaps its students will end up being the vanguards of unification as cross-border guides. But nowadays, accusations and provocations are eroding hopes. Of course, the Korean Peninsula is no stranger to bombast and hyperbole. For the authorities on both sides, verbal exchanges have been not much more than brinkmanship to gain
Oct. 21, 2024
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[Martin Schram] Ike, Reagan and Goldwater help bid your hand
After years of being a proud conservative Republican, you really weren’t happy when you realized some time ago that your patriotic party had somehow morphed into a hero-worshiping cult. But “Make America Great Again” at least made it sound like it was still your kind of place. So you stayed. Even though the mean-spirited, name-calling, threats and lies of Trump Republicans wasn’t really your thing. But in the last couple of weeks the Great News Funnel has been pouring all
Oct. 21, 2024
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[Robert Fouser] Random thoughts on Han Kang’s Nobel Prize
On October 10, the day after Hangeul Day, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Han Kang. The press stated that the award was given “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” As word of the award spread, South Koreans jumped for joy and having won a second Nobel Prize. Fans of Han Kang around the world were thrilled at her receiving the most prestigious literary award in the world. The announcement dominated the n
Oct. 18, 2024
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Guatemala had early role in disseminating Korean literature in Latin America
By Sara A. Solis-Castaneda Ambassador of Guatemala to Korea On the occasion of the 62nd anniversary of diplomatic relations between Guatemala and the Republic of Korea (1962-2024), it is essential to highlight a lesser-known aspect: Guatemala's early contribution to the dissemination of Korean literature in Latin America, even before the establishment of the Republic of Korea. This endeavor was spearheaded by the Guatemalan writer and diplomat Enrique Gomez Carrillo, who, in 1906, transla
Oct. 17, 2024
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[Wang Son-taek] Is the risk of another Korean War higher than ever?
The possibility of a war on the Korean Peninsula is once again in the spotlight. Robert Manning, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center, recently argued that the risk of conflict is the highest it has been since the 1950-53 Korean War. While the timeliness of this assessment is understandable, it is necessary to approach such claims with caution. The argument that the risk of war has escalated sharply is accurate in some respects and exaggerated in others. Tensions on the Korean Peninsula
Oct. 17, 2024
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[Mariana Chilton] The destructive legacy of mass starvation
In the year since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack, Israeli forces have killed an estimated 41,200 Palestinians, including 16,700 children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. But a recent letter in The Lancet puts the true death toll in Gaza much higher, at more than 186,000, when counting those killed as an indirect result of the conflict. Severe food shortages are certainly a contributing factor. Israel’s blockade and devastating bombing campaign have prevented the entry
Oct. 17, 2024
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[Jon D. Michaels, David L. Noll] Vigilante democracy raging in US
The insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was aimed at preventing the peaceful transfer of power after Donald Trump lost the US presidential election. This was clearly illegal, and the Justice Department has prosecuted hundreds for their crimes that day. Had they been successful, the plan for Jan. 7 and beyond was to legalize such attacks on democracy. While many Americans were shocked and chastened by the riot, one faction was energized by the events, which they saw as the first fruits
Oct. 16, 2024
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[Kim Seong-kon] The Nobel Prize in Literature and the task of translation
The news that novelist Han Kang has won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature came as a wonderful surprise to the Korean people. We feel it's been a long time coming: Whereas Japan already has three Nobel laureates in literature and China has two, Korea had none until last week. At last, Korea has become a country with a Nobel Prize winner in literature. These days, Korea is well known to the world, thanks to the immense popularity of Hallyu. In a sign of this recognition, McDonald's sold
Oct. 16, 2024
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[Grace Kao] Buddhism, Poet Seo Jeong-ju and BTS
What do poet Seo Jeong-Ju and Buddhism have to do with Hallyu and BTS? A lot, according to a lecture by the President of Dongguk University, Yun Jae-woong. His lecture this month at Yale University was titled “Love and Comfort in Korean Cultural Content: The Poetry of Seo Jeong-ju and the Music of BTS.” Professor Yun argues that Hallyu has roots in the earliest ideas from Korea and Buddhism. Notably, the poems are about the attentiveness to small things in life that offer comfort thr
Oct. 15, 2024
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[Andrew Sheng] October 1987 crash in historical perspective
On Oct. 19, 1987, following three days of decline in the New York stock market, the Hong Kong market dropped 10.5 percent after a rise of 89 percent in the last 12 months. Oct. 19 was Black Monday for New York, which triggered a worldwide stock crash. In US dollar terms, eight global stock markets declined by 20 to 29 percent, three by 30 to 39 percent, and three (Hong Kong, Australia and Singapore) by more than 40 percent. The total losses were estimated at $1.7 trillion or just under 10 percen
Oct. 15, 2024
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[Lorraine Ali] Elon Musk's courtship with MAGA
Multibillionaires are eccentric. It's common knowledge, like water is wet, fire is hot, "Joker: Folie a Deux" is a terrible film. From Jeff Bezos to Peter Thiel to Richard Branson to Howard Hughes (adjusting for inflation), they do weird things: shoot themselves into space, invest in treatments to "cure" aging, buy islands and wash their hands a lot. It's rare that the other 99.9 percent of us are directly exposed to their world-ownership whims, though we indirect
Oct. 14, 2024
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[Yoo Choon-sik] A rare apology for disappointing corporate earnings
There were two major events this week that surprised many people watching South Korea, myself included. First, a South Korean novelist won the Nobel Prize in Literature for the first time in the country's history, marking only the second time the country has won a Nobel Prize in any field. Her fans, fellow citizens and the whole world joined together in congratulating the novelist, Han Kang, on being awarded the world’s most prestigious literary prize. Of course, I was among them, but
Oct. 14, 2024
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[CONTRIBUTION] Greening finance sector for our climate
It is time to really accelerate the greening of the finance sector for our climate, people and our planet. Seoul has experienced its hottest September ever. It was sweltering. Farmers here and in other parts of the world are changing the crops they plant because the weather is now unfavorable for some crops to grow well. For people in poor countries extreme weather events often mean that families are pushed deeper into poverty. I trained as an environmental economist and what we do at the Global
Oct. 12, 2024
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[Lee Byung-jong] Time for stronger Seoul-Tokyo ties
For many young South Korean tourists, Japan is no doubt their favorite travel destination. It's close, cheap and familiar. They can indulge in shopping or enjoy tonkatsu (fried pork chops) or ramen. Yet until recently, they didn’t publicize or brag about their trips to Japan on social media. A strong anti-Japan sentiment caused by diplomatic rows between Seoul and Tokyo kept them from doing so. But all that has changed since their leaders began to mend bilateral relations early last
Oct. 11, 2024
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[Wang Son-taek] Some issues with the idea of an 'Asian NATO'
When Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba took office, he raised both expectations and concerns in Korea. On the one hand, his recognition of Japan's historical wrongdoing during its colonial period, including 35 years of occupation, offers hope for improving Korea-Japan relations. On the other hand, his foreign policy vision, particularly the proposal for an "Asian NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)," presents significant challenges. While his intentions may be grounded
Oct. 10, 2024