Powerful technology has perhaps never presented a bigger set of regulatory challenges for the US government. Before the state primary in January, Democrats in New Hampshire received robocalls playing AI-generated deepfake audio recordings of President Joe Biden encouraging them not to vote. Imagine political deepfakes that, say, incite Americans to violence. This scenario isn’t too hard to conjure given new research from NYU that describes the distribution of false, hateful or violent

ViewpointsMarch 26, 2024

Makgeolli, a milky-colored and lightly carbonated type of Korean rice wine, is a common topic of conversation in our household. Since 2015, my husband, Jeff Rubidge, has been brewing and uploading videos about makgeolli for his YouTube channel. It is a modest drink that only requires three ingredients to brew: rice, nuruk (a Korean fermentation starter) and water. It can be purchased for less than US $2 per bottle in Korea. I have also noticed its role in signaling virtue in K-dramas. Let me exp

ViewpointsMarch 26, 2024

The foreign exchange rate is an important price variable not just in the sense that it influences a wide range of economic activities such as exports and imports, but because it is often taken as reflecting the comparative strength of a country’s economic fundamentals against others. It also influences and is influenced by the country’s macroeconomic policies. South Korea is paying especially close attention to the exchange rate movement because it is a very open economy, relying hea

ViewpointsMarch 25, 2024

That digital is immaterial is simply a delusion, but this idea is not easy to dispel. We hold a screen, whether it be a smartphone, a tablet or a laptop, but looking at only the images on it, we are not really conscious of the physical machines. We tend to forget about them or take them for granted. However, the digital world we live in today is reliant on mechanical infrastructure and on natural resources, perhaps more critically so than ever. Think about the digital blackout caused by physical

ViewpointsMarch 24, 2024

When people think of multilingual cities, big names like New York and London immediately come to mind. Other important global hubs, such as Brussels, Dubai, Singapore, and Toronto are known for their linguistic diversity. But what about Seoul? With 95 percent of its residents being native speakers of Korean who were born in South Korea, Seoul does not give the impression of being a multilingual or multicultural city. At 5 percent, the percentage of residents born abroad is high by historical sta

ViewpointsMarch 22, 2024

The third Summit for Democracy was held in Seoul for three days from March 18. The event was significant because foreign ministers of major countries gathered to discuss Democracy for future generations and the sensitive problems from cutting-edge technologies, including Artificial Intelligence. In particular, Korea, one of the poorest countries and one of the military dictatorships 50 years ago, is proud to have become a prosperous country and hold a democracy summit. However, according to the

ViewpointsMarch 21, 2024

Few Koreans would deny that South Korea is a highly competitive society. People say that the competition is so stiff that your child should begin preparing for it as soon as he or she turns three years old. Indeed, parents send their three-year-olds to preschool and private academies for piano, violin or art lessons after school. Then, a little later, English-speaking kindergarten awaits your child. When your child enters elementary school, the competition for college entrance has already begun.

ViewpointsMarch 20, 2024

Last year, US President Joe Biden’s administration infuriated lobbyists representing Big Tech firms and others that profit from our personal data by denouncing a proposal that would have gutted domestic data privacy, online civil rights and liberties, and competition safeguards. Now, Biden’s new executive order on Americans’ data security reveals that the lobbyists had good reason to worry. After decades of data brokers and tech platforms exploiting Americans’ personal da

ViewpointsMarch 20, 2024

The doctors’ strikes in South Korea reminded me of what happened after I broke both of my ankles in Seoul last April. While there is never a good time or place to break one’s ankles, doing so while traveling abroad is quite a challenge. I was in Seoul giving talks at universities and meeting with people in the K-pop industry. While my friends joked that I should tell people that I fell while working as a backup dancer for a K-pop act, the truth is that I fell from a single missed ste

ViewpointsMarch 19, 2024

As an art enthusiast living in New York whose pastime is spent traveling to see art, I have never felt more proud to be Korean. Since last year, there have been so many special exhibitions of Korean art and solo exhibits of Korean artists taking place in the US and Europe. Adding to my excitement is the fact that there is more modern Korean art (from the 1860s to the 1970s) on display, which is relatively hard to find outside of Korea. These days, however, there seems to be a surplus of Korean a

ViewpointsMarch 19, 2024

South Korea’s economy is widely expected to post a pick-up in growth this year thanks to a recovery in exports after months of extremely poor performance. However, a recent series of data points to the slump in domestic demand worsening, and the construction sector’s troubles are particularly worrying as project-financing loans remain a key risk to the economy. Some of the project-financing loans, which surged in line with the booming property market, especially during the previou

ViewpointsMarch 18, 2024

In the United States, the long-term real safe interest rate – the inflation-adjusted return on low-risk investments such as Treasuries – is, in addition to “financial conditions,” the key mechanism influencing both the incentive to build and the balance of net exports (owing to its effect on the exchange rate). From early March to mid-May 2022, this metric jumped by more than one percentage point as the bond market realized that the US Federal Reserve would soon curtail i

ViewpointsMarch 18, 2024