[Editorial] Security vision

During his visit here earlier this month, Glyn Davies, U.S. special envoy for North Korea policy, took time out of his official schedule for talks with Foreign Ministry officials to hold a series of informal meetings with diplomatic and security advisers to the three major presidential candidates.According to diplomatic sources and aides to the presidential contenders, the U.S. envoy sought to grasp what policy initiatives the next administration in Seoul would take toward Pyongyang in the two d

Oct. 30, 2012

[Editorial] Spitting into the wind

Territorial and historical disputes between Korea and Japan have recently spilled over into an unexpected area ― U.S. soil. A wooden stake written with a slogan claiming Japan’s sovereignty over the Dokdo islets controlled by Korea was found at the entrance of the Korean consulate in New York on Saturday. A day before, a similar stake was spotted driven in beside a monument for Korean comfort women in Palisades Park in New Jersey.A right-wing Japanese activist came forward Monday to claim his gr

Oct. 30, 2012

[Editorial] Looming food crisis

As international cereal prices continue to rise, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has come up with a plan to increase the production of winter cereals, such as wheat and barley, and coarse fodders. The ministry’s response calls for increasing the sown areas of winter grains and roughage from 250,000 hectares last year to around 300,000 hectares this year using farmland that lies idle in winter.The ministry seeks to boost the self-sufficiency rate of wheat from 2 percent

Oct. 29, 2012

[Editorial] Reforming pensions

A recent report of the Korea Development Institute has again called for reform of the Basic Old-age Pension plan.The pension is intended to provide income support to elders who were unable to prepare for a comfortable life in their old age. It grants the bottom 70 percent of people aged 65 or older a monthly fixed benefit of up to 94,600 won ($86).Yet the KDI report has found that the program pays benefits to many wealthy seniors who do not need them, while excluding a large number of elders who

Oct. 29, 2012

[Editorial] Lost address

After five months of efforts, officials at the National Archives of Korea last week succeeded in restoring a deteriorated map printed by the Japanese government in the 1930s, which shows the Dokdo islets as Korean territory. The map drawn up by the headquarters of the Imperial Japanese Army draws a thick line between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, which was under its colonial rule at that time, and places Dokdo and nearby Ulleungdo on the peninsula’s side.The archive officials should be praised

Oct. 28, 2012

[Editorial] Impetus for deregulation

After the board members of the Green Climate Fund voted earlier this month to place its secretariat in Songdo, a newly developed international town in Incheon, officials here were quick to trumpet the potentially huge economic benefits of hosting the global body.Strategy and Finance Minister Bahk Jae-wan said its economic impact could be considered the same as a global corporation coming to the country. Researchers estimated that hosting the secretariat of the GCF, a U.N. fund established in 201

Oct. 28, 2012

[Editorial] Strengthening won

Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. is taking applications for early retirement ― the first since it started as the shipbuilding division of Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co. in 1970. POSCO has dropped out of the vaunted club of corporate behemoths with 1 trillion won or more in quarterly operating profits.The two companies are among the top Korean business conglomerates that are taking a beating from the deepening global slump of European origin. But it appears that the worst is yet to come. Wi

Oct. 26, 2012

[Editorial] Suspect first family

President Lee Myung-bak’s son, Si-hyung, returned home Thursday night after 14 hours of questioning as a criminal suspect by investigators working for an independent counsel. In a new investigation into a property scandal involving the president and his family, the independent counsel is set to summon the president’s older brother, Lee Sang-eun, for questioning soon.The widening investigation is juxtaposed against an earlier decision by the prosecution to file criminal charges against none of th

Oct. 26, 2012

[Editorial] Overseas voters

Doubts are mounting over the appropriateness and efficiency of the measure to allow Koreans living abroad to cast ballots for presidential and parliamentary elections at home, as only a meager proportion of them have shown interest in exercising their voting rights.An additional amount of money can be justified to give the rising number of overseas Koreans more opportunities to express their political preference and thus increase the voter turnout to strengthen the representativeness of each ele

Oct. 25, 2012

[Editorial] It’s not the number

Independent presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo recently proposed reducing the number of parliamentary seats, now set at 300, preferably by 100. He said the money to be saved from the cut, which is estimated to reach up to 100 billion won ($90 million) per year, could be used to help alleviate youth unemployment and work out better policies.This suggestion, along with his other proposals to cut state subsidies for parties and abolish their central organizations, appears aimed at highlighting hi

Oct. 25, 2012

[Editorial] Government expansion

Whichever of the top three candidates is elected as the next president, the administration is likely to be significantly expanded. The three candidates ― Park Geun-hye of the ruling Saenuri Party, Moon Jae-in of the main opposition Democratic United Party and independent candidate Ahn Cheol-soo ― all favor a big government and make no bones about expanding it. This is disturbing in light of Parkison’s law ― that bureaucracies tend to get bigger even when no conscious efforts are made to expand t

Oct. 24, 2012

[Editorial] Space program must go on

Korea is set to make its third and final attempt to launch a satellite using the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1, a carrier rocket developed with the assistance of Russia. If weather conditions allow, the KSLV-1, also called the Naro-1, will blast off from the Naro Space Center in Goheung, on the southwestern coast of the nation, Friday afternoon to put a science satellite into orbit 302 kilometers above the earth. All necessary pre-launch preparations and checks have been made, except a final dry-

Oct. 24, 2012

[Editorial] Risky provocations

It goes without saying that South Korea has to deal resolutely with any unprovoked security threat from North Korea. It has every right to retaliate against a North Korean attack many times more, as it promises. Failure to do so would make the South Korean military look like a paper tiger, encouraging bolder hostilities from the North.But North Korea’s latest threat to launch an artillery strike against the Imjin Pavillion in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, was a different situation. It was a response

Oct. 23, 2012

[Editorial] Early candidacy talks

Only a month is left until registration starts for presidential candidates. Park Geun-hye is set to register with the National Election Commission as the standard-bearer of the ruling Saenuri Party on Nov. 25 or 26.However, it is not clear yet who will register as Park’s main adversary ― Moon Jae-in of the main opposition Democratic United Party, the popular, independent Ahn Cheol-soo, or both. Moon and Ahn, who have promised to make a deal on who of the two will represent the opposition, have y

Oct. 23, 2012

[Editorial] Presence in global bodies

Korea had a string of successes last week on the international stage. It was selected Saturday to be home to the Green Climate Fund, a U.N. fund launched in 2011 to help fight global warming by funneling money from developed to developing countries. A day earlier, Korea won the right to host the next biennial meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity at the end of its 11th session in Hyderabad, India. On Thursday, the country was elected as a non-permanen

Oct. 22, 2012

[Editorial] Investigative rights

The issue of how to coordinate investigative authority between the prosecution and the police is resurfacing as major presidential candidates have expressed their intent to address it as part of campaign pledges to reform the prosecution.For the past decades, the two powerful agencies have been at the loggerheads over whether to allow the police independent investigative rights. The latest clash came last year when a parliamentary committee on judicial reform pushed to revise the code of crimina

Oct. 22, 2012

[Editorial] A seat on Security Council

South Korea’s election as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for the years 2013-14 is another manifestation of its growing influence on the global stage. The Security Council is the most powerful U.N. organ. It is entitled to make legally binding decisions on issues related to international peace and security. Only the council can authorize military action or economic sanctions against a country that threatens global peace or engages in acts of aggression.As such, a se

Oct. 21, 2012

[Editorial] Don’t kill the goose

North Korea has started to drop tax bombs on South Korean companies operating in the Gaeseong industrial complex in the North.According to reports, Pyongyang has recently imposed corporate income and business taxes totaling $160,000 on eight of the 123 South Korean companies in the complex.Of the eight firms, one was slapped with $87,000 while another was levied $30,000. One company has already paid about $20,000 in taxes to the North.Pyongyang has also told 21 companies to submit various docume

Oct. 21, 2012

[Editorial] Lost reading season

In Korea, autumn is ― more accurately, used to be ― called the season for reading for its pleasantly cool weather and extended night hours. Around this time of year, many events and programs were arranged by the news media and publishers to encourage people to read more books to deepen their thinking and improve their quality of life.In recent years, however, the intellectual description of autumn has hardly been heard of and efforts to boost the season for reading have dwindled. This fall, it s

Oct. 19, 2012

[Editorial] Historical obstacle

Pictures of Japanese ministers and politicians visiting a war shrine in Tokyo this week remind us again of the deep-seated historical obstacle to building a friendly partnership among Northeast Asian neighbors whose ties have already been frayed over rekindled territorial disputes.Two cabinet members and 67 parliamentarians paid respects at Yasukuni Shrine, which honors 2.5 million war dead including 14 convicted Class A war criminals from World War II, Thursday, a day after opposition party lea

Oct. 19, 2012