The National Pension Service, South Korea’s pension fund manager, should stop playing safe by investing in low-yielding bonds, a notable Korean economist said. Instead, it should be a little more aggressive by seeking riskier assets overseas to secure “medium returns, if not high returns,” through investment diversification, he said. Otherwise, the country’s pension fund will soon run dry up for...

This year marks the 130th anniversary of the adoption of modern postal services on the Korean Peninsula and the establishment of the state-run mail service provider Korea Post. Over the years, technological advancements such as the Internet and smart gadgets have changed the way people and industries communicate and have opened up new transnational business opportunities. While these changes se...

Korean TV dramas have been popular across Asia for the past decade, with series like “Autumn in My Heart,” “Jewel in the Palace” and the most recent “My Love from the Star” all being major hits. Now, Korean dramas are paving the way across the U.S., triggered by new platforms such as on-demand Internet streaming media. “People in the U.S. are gripped by Korean dramas because they are very differ...

Macquarie, an Australia-based global financial service group, puts a priority on building public trust for sustainable growth in Korea, the top management of the group’s Korean arm said. “It’s obvious and we know that our reputation is everything to us. Without a reputation we have nothing,” Macquarie Group of Companies Korea chairman John Walker said in an interview with The Korea Herald last F...

The vexing debt problem has come back to haunt the Korean economy. Back in the late 1990s, the economy suffered from humongous corporate debts, but this time, the mounting household debt has set alarm bells ringing. “South Korea’s surging household debt can trigger serious economic crisis,’’ Jun Sung-in, an economics professor at Hongik University told The Korea Herald in an interview Thursday. ...

Korea has often been lauded for having an education system that is near the top of most global education rankings and has been declared a model by many foreign leaders including U.S. President Barack Obama. But with more Koreans viewing learning as labor rather than a chance to improve oneself, the country is seeking to implement a culture of lifelong learning and is trying to nurture students b...

Simon Abkarian, a French-Armenian actor who played Col. Amanulla in “Kaboul Kitchen,” flew from the ongoing Venice International Film Festival to receive the grand prize at the Seoul International Drama Awards. It is his first visit to Korea. Reflecting on his diverse roles in films, TV dramas and plays over the past 30 years, the 52-year-old actor said he considers two things when selecting a d...

Norwegian actress and director of “Mammon” Cecile Mosli, the Best Miniseries award winner, says she believes that small changes from the perceived norms can make a statement. “I try to put different people from different countries, backgrounds and genders all together in my works,” said Mosli. “For example, if the role is written for a male part, I change it to female,” which makes it more inte...

Alexy Levykin has dedicated most of his life to the preservation of Russian history. As a former supervisor of studies at the Moscow Kremlin Museum for nearly 10 years and now the director of The State Historical Museum, Levykin is a firm believer that museums are gateways to both the past and the future. “The human memory is the guarantor of preservation and development of personality,” he sai...

Aside from being the largest museum in the Western Hemisphere, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is one of the most renowned and best-known museums in the world, attracting more than 6.2 million visitors every year. As the Met’s chief audience development officer, Donna Williams says she has had a number of opportunities to work closely with her local Korean-American community, add...

Artist Rirkrit Tiravanija breaks the typical museum stereotypes. He cooked and served Thai curry to visitors at a gallery in New York in the early 1990s. What many thought was an opening event continued throughout the exhibition. He loves eschewing the usual museum paradigm: an artist, artwork and audience. He turned an exhibition space into a live radio broadcasting studio at the Guggenheim Mu...

The Korean government is advised to push for the growth of the mobile payment market, not to hold back on security concerns. “Too many concerns over security online may hamper the mobile massenger payment market in an infant stage of growth,” Kim Yeong-rin, president of the Financial Security Agency, told The Korea Herald in a recent interview. His remark came amid growing security concerns ove...

An international documentary festival was held last week in Seoul, bringing filmmakers, documentary fans and producers together under the theme of “hope lies within us.” The 11th EBS International Documentary Festival, which screened presentations in theaters and on TV at the same time, featured over 50 documentaries from 23 countries for seven days. Among the participants at this year’s editio...

Kwon Joon-mo, founder and chairman of 4:33, a Korean mobile game developer, presents himself as a man of mystery. He does not know exactly which direction he will take his venture or what specific games he will introduce next. Like going through a maze of uncharted territory in games he loves to play three hours a day, he likes to use his creative ingenuity to keep guessing what path he will ta...

Actress Song Hye-kyo was careful to begin her interview with The Korea Herald on Monday with an apology. A week has passed since news of a tax evasion scandal involving the actress shocked many of her fans. The timing was especially unfavorable for Song, who was set to promote her new movie “My Brilliant Life” ahead of its Sept. 3 release. She nevertheless decided to open up to the media to apo...