[Editorial] Lessons for security

It was a belated but due step for opposition leader Kim Han-gil to issue a warning Tuesday to a party lawmaker who downplayed the Defense Ministry’s probe into the three crashed drones recently found in inter-Korean border areas as “comedy.”Rep. Jung Cheong-rae of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy claimed last Friday the unmanned aerial vehicles might not have come from North Korea, but later changed his words after his reasoning was proven wrong. In the public eye, his flip-flopping seeme

April 16, 2014

[Editorial] Bottomless vessels

The pension funds for public servants and soldiers are like bottomless vessels. The government has to keep pouring money into them as payouts far exceed contributions. Reform of the two underfunded pension schemes is urgent, as their deficits have been snowballing due to the continued increase in the number of beneficiaries and the lengthening duration over which they receive benefits.The Finance Ministry said the government has paid almost 14 trillion won in taxpayers’ money into the two pensio

April 15, 2014

[Editorial] Obstructive parliament

Among the 16 standing committees of the National Assembly, the most unproductive one is the Science, ICT, Future Planning, Broadcasting and Communications Committee. Surprisingly, the committee has not passed a single legislative bill in the past eight months.The committee’s long name suggests its broad scope of business. It is in charge of matters falling under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and the Korea Communications Commission.The ministry was created t

April 15, 2014

[Editorial] Protect our children

The two recent cases in which children lost their lives at the hands of their stepmothers broke the hearts of many people. These cases should serve to bolster our efforts to protect children from domestic violence and other dangers. It was truly painful to learn about the details of the two cases as reported by intense media coverage. In both cases, stepmothers, one aged 41 and the other 36, were convicted of beating their stepdaughters, both 8 years old, to death. The court rulings that handed

April 14, 2014

[Editorial] Bad Bill of the Year

The primary authority and power of lawmakers comes from Article 40 of the Constitution: “The legislative power shall be vested in the National Assembly.” Under the Constitution and relevant laws that protect and guarantee the National Assembly’s exclusive right to make laws, its members are given authority and privileges unmatched by those granted to other branches of the government. Immunity is one such privilege. Because of such status, or perhaps despite it, the National Assembly is one of th

April 14, 2014

[Editorial] Profiting from repression

Tear gas has not been used by police to disperse protesters in Korea since 1999. The decision to ban its use was made by the government of late liberal President Kim Dae-jung, who had devoted his political life to the country’s pro-democracy movement.Over the decades before the military-backed dictatorial rule came to an end in 1987, tear gas used to pervade streets and college campuses across Korea as riot police or sometimes military troops clashed with citizens and students calling for democr

April 13, 2014

[Editorial] Japan’s constitution

Japan’s conscientious civil society members last week got a significant boost to their campaign for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the country’s postwar pacifist constitution. A group formed to recommend the Japanese people as prize candidates for their efforts to maintain the constitution said it had been notified by the Nobel Committee of being placed on this year’s candidacy list.The movement was kicked off a year ago by a Japanese housewife in her 30s, who was inspired when the EU receive

April 13, 2014

[Editorial] Stem N.K. provocations

Tension is running high on the peninsula over the North Korean threat of another nuclear test. A U.S. think tank said its examination of tunnel construction work at the nuclear test site in Punggyeri indicates that the North is ready to conduct “successive” nuclear bomb tests. North Korea has threatened several times that it will conduct a “new form” of nuclear test. It did not provide details, but experts suspect that the new test may be based on enriched uranium, unlike the three previous ones

April 11, 2014

[Editorial] Brain drain

Human capital is one of the most important factors in determining the competitiveness of a nation. It is against this backdrop that governments try to recruit and retain highly educated professionals. It is depressing, therefore, to learn that Korea is suffering from a serious brain drain, as shown by an index released by the International Institute for Management Development recently. The Swiss-based IMD’s annual Brain Drain Index put South Korea at 4.63, ranking 37th among 60 countries. A scor

April 11, 2014

[Editorial] Dual approach

Top envoys from South Korea, the U.S. and Japan warned North Korea not to take further provocative steps at talks in Washington early this week. The three countries agreed to make “united and effective” efforts to prevent the North from making further provocations, according to South Korea’s top nuclear envoy Hwang Joon-kook, who provided a briefing on the results of the meeting with his U.S. and Japanese counterparts.It was a rare show of unity between Seoul and Tokyo, which have long been at o

April 10, 2014

[Editorial] Debt-addicted nation

The Finance Ministry’s announcement this week that Korea’s national debt rose to a record-high 1.117 quadrillion won ($1.06 trillion) in 2013, up from 902 trillion won a year earlier, should alarm candidates in the June local elections, who have been competitively pouring out populist campaign pledges.The figure accounts for nearly 80 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. The fiscal account, excluding social security funds, posted a 21.1 trillion won deficit, the largest since 2009, w

April 10, 2014

[Editorial] Drones on spying missions

At first, the spying missions North Korea was found to have conducted using unmanned aerial vehicles were regarded as isolated cases. However, another crashed drone that was found in Gangwon Province on Sunday, and drone sightings reported by residents, now bolster the belief that the North is frequently sending unmanned aerial vehicles on spying missions.The drone collected in Samcheok, Gangwon Province, was the third in recent weeks after one found in Paju, a county in Gyeonggi Province that i

April 9, 2014

[Editorial] Retreat from nomination ban

On Tuesday, Rep. Ahn Cheol-soo, cochair of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy, backed down from his demand that the opposition party forgo the selection of nominees for the upcoming municipal elections. Instead, he agreed with his cochair, Rep. Kim Han-gil, to settle the issue through an equally weighted vote of party members and a public opinion poll.The outcome of the vote and the survey is not yet known. Ahn put on a bold face, professed unwavering opposition to the nomination system and

April 9, 2014

[Editorial] Crisis at rights watchdog

A global human rights body has deferred its decision on whether to maintain the highest “A” rating for Korea’s human rights watchdog, citing problems that impede its function. This is a serious setback for the reputation of not only the watchdog but also the nation as a whole. The International Coordination Committee of National Human Rights Institutions said last week it was withholding its grading of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea until October. This is a significant departure f

April 8, 2014

[Editorial] Wartime control transfer

South Korea and the United States have begun discussions about the possibility of deferring the transfer of the wartime operational control of the Korean military. Their timing is good. The latest developments on the Korean Peninsula necessitate such discussions. There have been news reports recently that the two sides now share the need to put off the transfer that is scheduled for December next year. Korean officials were quoted as saying that negotiations will start in earnest on the occasion

April 8, 2014

[Editorial] Unregistered children

A bill guaranteeing the basic rights of unregistered foreign children, most of whom live with illegal immigrant parents here, was not enacted during the parliamentary session last February. There is little likelihood that it will be passed in the extra session that started on April 1, as the main parties are preoccupied with staking out advantageous positions ahead of the nationwide local elections to be held in early June.It is regretful that the enactment of the bill, which is the result of ye

April 7, 2014

[Editorial] Political compromise

Korean voters last week saw the rare scene of a main opposition party leader visiting Cheong Wa Dae without an appointment to ask for talks with the president.Rep. Ahn Cheol-soo, cochairman of the New Politics Alliance for Democracy, filled out a request for a meeting with President Park Geun-hye, which he said was needed to discuss pending political issues, including a controversial system of nominating local election candidates. Received by a senior political affairs secretary to Park in a vis

April 7, 2014

[Editorial] Another N.K. nuke test?

North Korea has warned again that it would carry out another nuclear test. Ri Tong-il, the North’s deputy U.N. ambassador, said Friday that the world would have to “wait and see” what his country meant when it said late last month that it would conduct a “new form of nuclear test.”On March 30, the North’s Foreign Ministry said Pyongyang would not rule out a new form of nuclear test to bolster its nuclear deterrence. The ministry’s threat came three days after the U.N. Security Council issued a s

April 6, 2014

[Editorial] Abe’s true colors

The Japanese government again showed its true colors Friday by approving new elementary school textbooks that contained more assertive claims to Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo than current ones.Tokyo’s approval of the new textbooks is cause for deep concern as it means the Japanese government has started to teach young students with a distorted version of history, which could arouse hostility toward Korea and its people.The Japanese Education Ministry has reviewed eight Grade 5-6 social stu

April 6, 2014

[Editorial] Day of will making

Police offices and fire stations in Korea used to be troubled with a number of fake emergency calls on April Fool’s Day in the past. It is no longer so.The police department and the emergency operations center in Seoul said they received no prank calls on this year’s April Fool’s Day last Tuesday. Not many fake calls were reported in other metropolises and provinces across the country either.The decrease in mischievous callers, which was attributed largely to strengthened punishments and suits f

April 4, 2014