[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

ViewpointsOct. 22, 2024

[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

ViewpointsOct. 21, 2024

[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

ViewpointsOct. 21, 2024

[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

ViewpointsOct. 21, 2024

[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

ViewpointsOct. 18, 2024

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

ViewpointsOct. 17, 2024

[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

ViewpointsOct. 17, 2024

[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

ViewpointsOct. 17, 2024

[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

ViewpointsOct. 16, 2024

[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

ViewpointsOct. 16, 2024

[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

ViewpointsOct. 15, 2024

[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

ViewpointsOct. 15, 2024

[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

ViewpointsOct. 14, 2024

[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

ViewpointsOct. 14, 2024