Most Popular
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Korea enters full election mode
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Seoul bus drivers go on general strike, cause morning rush hour delays
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Immigrant woman stabbed to death by Korean husband
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Official campaigning kicks off for April 10 elections
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Lee Jong-sup resigns as envoy to Australia
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Yellow dust engulfs S. Korea, advisory alert issued
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S. Korea to boost support for single-parent families
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Court upholds jail term for man who attempted to murder ex-girlfriend
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Kia EV9 wins world car of year
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Korea misses out on global bond index boost
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[Andreas Kluth] America has new Axis of Evil
Since Feb. 24, 2022, and especially since Oct. 7, 2023, a specter has haunted the world and worried President Joe Biden in particular: Will Russia’s war against Ukraine, or Israel’s against Hamas, draw in other belligerents, perhaps even culminating in World War III? Biden has therefore done everything in his power to support Ukraine and Israel while also keeping the US and its Western allies out of direct confrontations with Russia, Hamas’ backers in Iran, and their Chinese
Jan. 9, 2024
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[Shang-Jin Wei] How can the world's growth engine do better?
The global economy demonstrated remarkable resilience in 2023, as the United States defied expectations and managed to avoid a recession. India, Vietnam, and Japan also achieved impressive economic performance given the circumstances. But while these countries have good reasons to be optimistic about 2024, China will most likely be the single largest contributor to global GDP growth this year. This may come as a surprise to many, given the wave of increasingly gloomy forecasts for the Chinese
Jan. 9, 2024
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[Peter Singer] Killing innocents in Israel and Gaza
Last year, I was invited to join other Princeton University academics in viewing a compilation of raw footage from GoPro cameras carried by Hamas gunmen killing civilians in Israel on Oct. 7. Additional video and audio material came from dashboard cameras, traffic cameras, phone intercepts and victims’ phones. The invitation carried a warning that the footage would show horrific violence and murder. I avoid violent movies, so my instinctive response was to decline the invitation. But as so
Jan. 8, 2024
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[Jean Guerrero] How to converse with your MAGA dad
Lately, I avoid conversations with my father because of his passion for lecturing me about politics from a hard-right perspective. It began during COVID lockdowns. Not long ago, he told me he sees Tucker Carlson as a hero. Exasperated, I told him he was idolizing a guy who had mocked his daughter's reporting on national TV. He shook his head as if I were lying or whining, then soliloquized about Carlson's defense of traditional masculinity. "Tucker has balls down to the floor,&quo
Jan. 5, 2024
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[Serendipity] Golden Rule
It was a hectic year-end. Flying 13 hours for a family reunion, doing last-minute gift shopping and getting together with extended family for Christmas dinner kept me busy with scarcely any time to think about the coming year, much less the requisite New Year’s resolutions. Coming up with New Year’s resolutions, as perfunctory as they may be, for me is an opportunity to ruminate on how I want to live the next 12 months. Of course, by February, I would come to realize that I had bit
Jan. 4, 2024
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[Andreas Kluth] Only patriotism can save the US from nationalism
It’s patriotism when love of your own people comes first; it’s nationalism when hate for people other than your own comes first. That definition comes from Charles de Gaulle, a former national hero and president of France. It’s worth keeping in mind as we enter an election year in the US where these two deceptively similar and yet utterly contrary forces will clash. De Gaulle was onto something subtle but big. Patriotism, when you observe that warm feeling welling up inside of
Jan. 4, 2024
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[Karin Klein] Holiday travel darkens climate picture
The jetliner was packed so tight that I couldn’t even work on my laptop. The tray table was too low and the seat in front too far back. The screen on the seat in front was too close for my eyes to focus on a movie. I’ve opened cans of sardines that seemed to have more room. My partner, Rick, and I were among the 7.5 million estimated US air travelers this holiday season, a record number since the American Automobile Association started tracking numbers in 2000. We headed from LAX to
Jan. 4, 2024
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[Kim Seong-kon] What we wish for in the Year of the Dragon
According to the Chinese zodiac, 2024 is the Year of the Dragon. In classical Western mythology, dragons are hideous monsters to be slain by valiant warriors. Thus, dragon-slaying was an initiation ritual for would-be heroes. For example, Beowulf, Siegfried and Tristan were among the famous dragon slayers of medieval and early modern legends. In classical Chinese mythology, however, a dragon is a pious and auspicious creature that soars into the sky. A python has to wait a thousand years to beco
Jan. 3, 2024
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[Noah Feldman] NYT’s edge in suit against OpenAI
The lawsuit filed by the New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement pits one of the great establishment media institutions against the purveyor of a transformative new technology. Symbolically, the case promises a clash of the titans: labor-intensive human newsgathering against pushbutton information produced by artificial intelligence. But legally, the case represents something different: a classic instance of the lag between established law and emerging technology.
Jan. 3, 2024
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[Jeremy Adelman] What kind of authoritarian would Trump be?
Following Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election in 2016, many pundits predicted a worldwide breakdown of democracy, and some warned of civil war. But, aside from Africa’s Sahel region, military coups remain rare, and civil wars rarer still. Instead, democracies have tended to break down through civilian coups. Such coups have been of three types in the post-Cold War era. Two have attracted much media attention; the one that should worry us the most, especially give
Jan. 2, 2024
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[Robert Fouser] Improving housing quality in Seoul
City rankings often produce strange results. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s high ranking for Osaka, Japan in recent years has always struck me as odd. The group produces the “Global Liveability Ranking” report for cities around the world. The 2023 report examined 172 cities around the world using more than 30 quantitative and qualitative indicators. Among Asian cities, Osaka was tied for 10th place with Auckland, New Zealand. The most liveable city ranked as Vienna, Austria,
Dec. 29, 2023
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[Steven Kull, J.P. Thomas] Safeguarding democracy from AI
The Founding Fathers of the United States asserted that elected officials should listen to and be influenced by the views of the electorate. As James Madison said, “It is the reason, alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government.” However, the means for government officials to hear from the people are limited. Elected officials receive emails, letters, phone calls and input at town halls, and some agencies occasionally ask for public comments on complex regu
Dec. 28, 2023
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[Wang Son-taek] Beyond the security dilemma and Pyrrhic victory
Year 2023 has been another eventful year, as we have experienced in the past, and foreign and security policies are not exceptions. There were some successes in diplomacy with the Republic of Korea, but there were also many disappointing and embarrassing scenes. There has been some progress in the Korea-US alliance, Korea-Japan relations and Korea-US-Japan cooperation. However, as a reaction xto the three nations' solidarity, North Korea has shown more provocative actions, and China, Russi
Dec. 28, 2023
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[J. Bradford DeLong] The US Fed's remarkable feat
Monetary-policy watchers are currently divided into two groups. But perhaps both sides should pause and reflect on where we were 18 months ago and where we are now. On one side of the divide are those of us who still obsess over the great imbalance between the supply of savings and the demand for funds for real investment. These were the conditions that underpinned a decade of zero-lower-bound (ZLB) interest rates and secular stagnation (low growth due to structurally low aggregate demand) after
Dec. 27, 2023
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[Kim Seong-kon] Reminiscing about the turbulent year, 2023
The tempestuous year 2023 is waning and the hopeful year 2024 is dawning. Looking back upon this past year, the best thing that happened was the announcement of the end of the COVID-19 health crisis after the pandemic had devastated the world for three years. The worst thing that happened was the terrible war between Israel and Hamas that broke out amidst the ongoing horrors of the war in Ukraine, making so many people’s lives miserable. In addition, we witnessed the awesome power of artif
Dec. 27, 2023
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[Erwin Chemerinsky] Decide on Colorado's ruling quickly
The Colorado Supreme Court did the country an enormous service by ruling that Donald Trump is ineligible to be president and squarely presenting the constitutional issue before the US Supreme Court. The high court should take the case and decide quickly whether Donald Trump is disqualified from the ballot because of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. It would be a political nightmare to resolve this question after Trump wins the Republican nomination or even worse, after he’s elected presi
Dec. 26, 2023
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[Martin Schram] Challenges of a leader-lite world
The Donald and Bibi are two of a kind. Among the things they have in common is that they are not up to coping with the challenges of today. We are about to see why. The world has been watching as these two men well into their 70s, with courtroom trials pending, have appeared willing to do whatever it takes to regain or retain the power – and not end up in jail. Even if it meant shattering their nation’s democracy. They have seemed desperate to remain in control. Until things explod
Dec. 21, 2023
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[Anastassia Fedyk, Tatyana Deryugina] Talks can’t end the Ukraine war, because Russia lies
Following the full-scale invasion by Russia in February 2022, Ukraine has suffered tremendously. Tens of thousands have died, and a quarter of the country’s prewar population has been displaced. Homes, neighborhoods and entire cities have been reduced to rubble. Some question the wisdom of Ukraine continuing to fight back instead of seeking to negotiate with Russia. President Vladimir Putin himself claims he “does not reject the idea of peace talks,” while prominent figures hav
Dec. 21, 2023
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[Jonathan Bernstein] Will 3rd parties hurt Biden or Trump?
With former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney’s comments that she’s considering an independent bid for president against Donald Trump, experts are beginning to game out how she and other third-party candidates could affect next year’s election. A political action committee backing independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign announced that it’s planning to spend at least $10 million to get his name on that ballot in 10 states. And the quasi-party No Labels has threatened
Dec. 20, 2023
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[Kim Seong-kon] For world peace, we should all be like 'The Interpreter'
The 2005 American political thriller, “The Interpreter,” directed by Sydney Pollack, illustrates how a good politician who was once a rebel leader fighting tyranny can easily turn into a dictator himself when he possesses political power. They say that you become a monster when you fight a monster. Of course, after slaying the monster, the idea is that you should return to being a normal human. Unfortunately, however, many monster fighters remain monsters and become dictators themsel
Dec. 20, 2023