[Editorial] Tourist police

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon has been enthusiastic about making the capital city more attractive ― and fairer ― to foreign visitors. Last year, he disguised himself as a Japanese traveler, then took a taxi and came by shops in popular tourist areas to check on the practice of overcharging foreigners. What he experienced at that time led the city government to work out a scheme for compensating foreign tourists for the amount by which they were ripped off.In a further reflection of his will to turn

July 10, 2013

[Editorial] Rocky obstacle

Tokyo has prompted a strong protest from Seoul by reiterating its claim to South Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo in its annual defense paper released Tuesday. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said Seoul would never tolerate Tokyo’s claim to Dokdo, which “is clearly indigenous territory of Korea in terms of history, geography and international law.”The annual report, the first issued under hawkish Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who took office in December, also criticized China for having taken coerci

July 10, 2013

[Editorial] Public sector reform

State-owned enterprises and other public organizations take up a large portion of the Korean economy. The combined budget of these 295 entities is 575 trillion won this year, far larger than the central government’s budget of about 350 trillion won.These institutions exist to provide a wide array of indispensible public services, but they do not enjoy a high reputation among the public due to their rapidly growing debt and lax management practices. Last year, their cumulative debt reached 493.4

July 9, 2013

[Editorial] Aviation safety

The crash of Asiana Airlines’ Boeing 777 jet at San Francisco International Airport is a wake-up call for the Korean aviation industry, which enjoys a good global reputation for safety.In the mid-1990s, Korea’s two flag carriers ― Asiana and its bigger rival Korean Air ― suffered a string of fatal incidents, which led to a downgrading of the nation’s aviation safety rating in 1999.The humiliation prompted the Seoul government to undertake a comprehensive reform of its aviation regulatory system.

July 9, 2013

[Editorial] Digital addiction

A local mobile operator recently launched what it says is the world’s fastest wireless network. The new technology, named LTE-Advanced, has been touted as being able to download data at speeds twice as fast as existing LTE networks and 10 times faster than third-generation services.The launch of the LTE-A network was the latest example of Korea showing off the high-tech prowess of its mobile industry. The sector has grown here on the back of an explosive increase in the number of Korean smartpho

July 8, 2013

[Editorial] Positive momentum

For the latest inter-Korean agreement to reopen a joint factory park “when ready” to be put in practice, the South and the North must clear up matters left ambiguous during their marathon talks at the truce village of Panmunjeom on the weekend.The two sides will meet again Wednesday at the Gaeseong industrial complex in North Korea to discuss detailed conditions for reviving the last remaining symbol of cross-border cooperation, which has been closed for the past three months. Under the initial

July 8, 2013

[Editorial] Pledges to provinces

In the heat of campaigning, those running for public office and their parties commit themselves to locally demanded big-ticket projects. Their ballpark cost estimates, some of them as large as trillions of won, are not much of their concern. To the candidates and their parties, winning the elections is the overriding goal.It was the same with Park Geun-hye and her defeated rival, Moon Jae-in, during the run-up to the December presidential election. They attempted to upstage each other in making

July 7, 2013

[Editorial] No party nomination

Party nomination is most likely to be banned in municipal elections, beginning in June next year. The ruling Saenuri Party and the opposition Democratic Party are moving to revise the election law for such a ban when the National Assembly opens its regular session in September.There is no problem with party nomination itself. What is wrong with a party seeking to advance its causes at the municipal level by selecting their own nominees for local elections?Moreover, those running for election to

July 7, 2013

[Editorial] Multiple borrowing

Household debt, after peaking at 963.8 trillion won at the end of December, declined to 961.6 trillion won at the end of March. But this should not give top economic policymakers a false sense of security. Household debt is still a ticking bomb.Debt grew at alarming rates in the wake of the 1997-98 Asian financial meltdown ― twice as fast as disposable income. During the 1999-2012 period, debt accelerated at an annual rate of 11.7 percent. It took just eight years for household debt to double fr

July 5, 2013

[Editorial] Gaeseong at crossroads

Sophisticated machinery and electronic devices in a factory need regular maintenance. They cannot be left idle for a long period of time without proper maintenance and repair, and this is even more true during the rainy season because they are vulnerable to humidity.That is the reason why 46 South Korean companies, which used to produce machinery and electronics parts in the North Korean border town of Gaeseong, have repeatedly demanded that their staff be allowed to cross the border into the No

July 5, 2013

[Editorial] Female empowerment

Women account for exactly half of Korea’s 50 million people, according to government figures released last week, reaching the 50 percent mark for the first time since the national statistics office began compiling demographic data in 1970. The proportion of women in the population, which stood at 49.5 percent in 1980, rose to 49.9 percent in 2010.The steady increase in women’s demographic weight reflects the disappearance of traditional preference for male offspring as well as longer female life

July 4, 2013

[Editorial] Ties with Australia

Despite the geographical distance between them, South Korea and Australia have many geopolitical and economic interests in common.Australia, which lost 340 of its soldiers in the 1950-53 Korean War, has since staunchly sided with the South against threats from the North. Its roles have been instrumental in coping with tensions triggered by Pyongyang’s third nuclear test in February. While expressing firm solidarity with Seoul, Canberra has appealed to the Chinese government to help keep its reca

July 4, 2013

[Editorial] End to NLL dispute

In a new twist to the controversy over the 2007 inter-Korea summit transcript, the National Assembly has passed a bipartisan bill to request the perusal and disclosure of the document’s original version kept at the National Archives of Korea.Under the law on the management of presidential records, access to the document requires approval by at least two-thirds of the 300-member National Assembly. In a Tuesday vote, 257 lawmakers of the ruling and opposition parties supported the proposal.With th

July 3, 2013

[Editorial] Another bill to pay

The government has reaffirmed that it would implement without fail all regional development promises that President Park Geun-hye made during her election campaign last year.It is praiseworthy for the administration to try to follow up through the president’s campaign pledges. Yet the problem is that it simply lacks the required wherewithal.Finance Minister Hyun Oh-seok has reported to the ruling Saenuri Party that it would cost the government 124 trillion won to deliver on all of the 105 region

July 3, 2013

[Editorial] Beleaguered regime

North Korea broke its silence on President Park Geun-hye’s visit to China a day after the South Korean leader returned home after forging deeper personal bonds with her Chinese counterpart and agreeing to bolster cooperation between the two countries.In a statement issued Monday by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, an organization in charge of cross-border affairs, Pyongyang lambasted Park for her demand that it should abandon its nuclear weapons programs. “Our nucl

July 2, 2013

[Editorial] Domestic violence

It is worrisome that Korean society has recently seen a surge in domestic violence cases. The number of people arrested for domestic abuse increased by nearly 30 percent from a year earlier to 8,762 last year, according to government figures. Moreover, the second-offense rate quadrupled over the past four years to 32.2 percent in 2012, suggesting there had been inadequate efforts to prevent family violence.The cases of some husbands beaten by their wives have been cited as reflecting changes in

July 2, 2013

[Editorial] Harming national interest

Korea Water Resources Corp. is set to take legal action against Korean environmental activists who recently made misleading allegations against it in Thailand. The company is on the brink of winning two water management contracts there with a combined value of 6.1 trillion won.The state-run corporation heads a Korean consortium that was chosen on June 10 as the preferred bidder for two key components of the 11.5 trillion-won megaproject promoted by the Thai government to prevent the Chao Phraya

July 1, 2013

[Editorial] Seoul-Beijing trust

President Park Geun-hye has wrapped up her highly successful visit to China. During the four-day trip, she has captured the hearts and minds of the Chinese, laying the groundwork for enhanced ties between the two neighbors in the next 20 years.Before leaving for China, Park described her visit as “a journey of hearts and trust.” The description well summed up the main objective of her trip to China: She sought to bond the peoples of the two countries together with trust.Park has built her relati

July 1, 2013

[Editorial] Minimum hourly wage

The statutory deadline for fixing the 2014 minimum hourly wage has come and gone. True, it should not come as a surprise, as it is usually the case. What is worrisome, however, is that the chances are slim that the new minimum wage will be determined anytime soon.Labor and management are far apart over the proper level of the minimum wage, dimming the prospects for an early resolution of their conflict. Those representing the public interest will have to propose a compromise if labor and managem

June 30, 2013

[Editorial] Cutting tuition fees

Tuition fees at universities dropped for the second consecutive year this year. True, the average margin was miniscule at 0.46 percent. Still, it may be said that the small decline cannot be belittled when it is compared with the whopping tuition increases in the go-go years of the previous decade.The recent taming of the bullish tuition fees is nonetheless dimmed by President Park Geun-hye’s election promise to cut them by half during the next five years of her governance. University tuition fe

June 30, 2013