[Eric Teo] Look ahead to strengthen cooperation in the time of COVID-19

The first four months of 2020 have flashed by, and we are almost in May! Cold winter has given way to sunny spring and the beautiful flowers are blooming again. I still remember attending several traditional New Year gatherings in early 2020 in Seoul and wishing everyone a Great Year of the White Metal Rat. Unfortunately, the Year of the Rat did not have an auspicious start. COVID-19 has wreaked havoc globally since the start of the year, with few countries spared from its devastation. Now ove

April 24, 2020

[Ana Palacio] US cannot become another Europe

In 1946, with war-ravaged Europe exhausted and in disarray, Britain’s wartime leader, Winston Churchill, gave a speech in Zurich in which he emphasized the need to “recreate the European fabric” in order to restore peace and freedom to the continent. “We must build a kind of United States of Europe,” Churchill declared. It was a foundational moment for what would become the European Union, even if Churchill’s views of the United Kingdom’s place in Europe

April 24, 2020

[Kim Myong-Sik] Time to reset economic goals, declare tolerance

On the day after the April 15 election, a lawyer friend of mine living in California sent me an SNS message, quoting French philosopher Joseph de Maistre: “Every nation gets the government it deserves.” Upon the news of the government party’s stunning victory in the latest National Assembly election here, he was telling me that Korean voters were never more reproachable than Americans who had elected Donald Trump in 2016. For the past week, experts wrestled with the question

April 23, 2020

[Keith Harrington] The spies who predicted COVID-19

Intelligence agencies are used to making headlines when they fail to do their job. But after months of US President Donald Trump ignoring their warnings about COVID-19, and after years of his administration discounting their alerts about the danger of a pandemic more generally, it is time that intelligence professionals receive the credit they deserve. It should come as no surprise that Trump repeatedly dismissed intelligence about the threat of the coronavirus throughout January and February.

April 23, 2020

[Robert J. Fouser] South Korea’s political realignment

Amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, South Korean voters went to the polls to choose a new National Assembly for the next four years. The ruling Democratic Party won a landslide victory, giving it an outright majority for the first time since 2004. The ruling party and its allied Together Citizens’ Party now hold 180 seats, or 60 percent, of the total 300 seats. This will make it easier for President Moon Jae-in to push his legislative agenda. As the election cycle approached, conservativ

April 23, 2020

[Mohamed Salah Eldin] Korea’s effort to overcome COVID-19: solidarity, alertness, innovation

“We are facing a global health crisis unlike any in the 75-year history of the United Nations.” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said this in a video news conference on March 19, urging urgent global action to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Thus the world has sought solidarity and cooperation as the keys to overcoming the crisis. So how is Korea coping with the crisis? The answer is in a YouTube video recently made by the Korean Culture

April 22, 2020

[Kim Seong-kon] Letter from a senior to younger generations

The April election is over. The outcome was a landslide victory for the progressive ruling party and a total disaster for the conservative opposition party. Of course, opinion varies depending on the person, but many say it was a victory of the younger generation over the older generation. If this is true, young people must be happy, whereas older people are disappointed, if not devastated. Right after the outcome of the election was revealed, someone sent me a heartrending poem circulating

April 22, 2020

[Pankaj Mishra] Old media suddenly has upper hand

The coronavirus pandemic has torn the veil off a long-obscured and frightening reality: Our economies are unconscionably fragile, propped up by low-wage jobs, and our health systems are tissue-thin. As companies go bankrupt and workers are laid off by the millions, it seems likely that most major economic and cultural institutions will suffer the shock of transition, if not extinction. These include the media, which has a key role to play in shaping how we think of and act upon this new world.

April 21, 2020

[Noah Smith] We will recover faster if payroll is protected

The US government’s first economic relief bill to cope with the coronavirus shutdown was a stopgap measure. With employment in a free fall and businesses shutting down across the country, Americans needed money in their pockets as fast as possible. Without the time to figure out the optimal policy, the government turned to an existing system that was in place and ready to go: unemployment insurance. Millions of newly unemployed Americans now use these benefits as an economic lifeline. The

April 21, 2020

[Conor Sen] Be prepared for profitless recovery

Reopening the US economy is going to be a slow, painful process and nothing like turning a light switch back on. Economic activity and employment is going to be down significantly for a while. If there’s any good news for workers it’s that the economic activity that does occur will be more labor-intensive than it was before the coronavirus dealt such a huge blow to the economy. We’re used to the past couple of rebounds from recessions being jobless recoveries, but this one wi

April 19, 2020

[Digital Simplicity] Unprecedented experiment with remote learning

South Korea is implementing an unprecedented educational experiment for remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic that is sweeping the entire world. The question is whether the country can get something positive out of its massive experiment, instead of losing hope in the face of loud complaints about the still fledgling virtual learning environment. On Wednesday, some 3.12 million students across the nation started the new semester through online learning. They were the second group

April 18, 2020

[Clara Ferreira Marques] Poorer nations need their own pandemic toolkit

With death rates beginning to peak in Western countries, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus crisis is moving toward the developing world. Yet bare hospitals, armies of informal workers and sprawling slums mean the poorest nations have struggled to pull down the shutters. Experiences in Asia and elsewhere suggest that limiting chaotic mass migration to rural areas can be a start. Throw in cash handouts and a concerted effort to educate and inform, and efforts to contain the virus begin to loo

April 17, 2020

[Jay Ambrose] Will socialism follow coronavirus?

Sen. Bernie Sanders has suspended his campaign for the presidency, but not his campaign for socialism, and I do mean socialism. It’s often said that, by any true definition of the term, he falls way short. In fact, if you check out his policy proposals, he’s there, definitely there, and we still have leftist cheers for a transition conceivably made more likely by the coronavirus pandemic. What Sanders wants is collective control of the economy, of production, distribution and trade

April 16, 2020

[Ivo Daalder] Amid the pandemic, a sobering lesson

For the past 30 years, international politics have been shaped by two fundamental realities: America’s unrivaled power and the forces of globalization. While already waning for some time, both realities are threatened with death blows from the COVID-19 pandemic. America emerged from the Cold War in 1990 as the sole remaining superpower. Its military was larger than that of the next 10 countries combined, and it was the only one with true global reach. Its economy accounted for more than a

April 15, 2020

[Kim Seong-kon] Will April be the cruelest month? Vote with hope

T.S. Eliot’s monumental poem “The Waste Land” begins with the famous line, “April is the cruelest month.” Eliot refers to April as the cruelest month because spring rain wakes us up from our warm, comfortable hibernation. The poem continues with a touch of sarcasm: “winter kept us warm, covering/ earth with forgetful snow.” Now, spring has come and we have to wake up and remember who we are and where we are. Today is Election Day in Korea for National

April 15, 2020

[Trudy Rubin] Virus lessons from Korea, Germany

As US fatalities from COVID-19 rise, Germany‘s death rate from the virus is roughly half that of America’s. As America‘s front-line health workers still struggle to obtain face masks, South Korea has a smooth system to distribute masks to its health workers and its entire population. Both countries are democracies and US allies, not authoritarian regimes like China. So shouldn’t we be looking at what these countries are doing right, and whether their methods are appli

April 12, 2020

[Ana Palacio] Can liberal democracy survive COVID-19?

By some mix of cruel irony and remarkable prescience, the theme of last year’s Venice Biennale -- the biennial art exhibition’s 58th incarnation -- was: “May you live in interesting times.” The line, purportedly a translation of an old Chinese curse, was meant to highlight the precariousness of life in this dangerous and uncertain age. With the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the world, and credible global leadership nowhere to be seen, that reality has become impossible to

April 11, 2020

[Serendipity] Too close for comfort?

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” So it feels today, the 10th day of voluntary self-isolation at home. Much to my relief, my younger child and husband returned home from the UK safe and in good health at the end of March, their plans disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The two are following the government’s orders for returnees to immediately go into self-isolation at home for 14 days and to be tested for the new coronavirus. Out of an abundance of caut

April 10, 2020

[Kim Myong-sik] Shoddy new parties corrupt election environment

　Liberty, democracy, peace, independence, progress, unification, justice -- these are words that have traditionally graced the titles of South Korean political parties over the past decades. 　What is regrettable about the Korean political environment today is that the actual performances of the parties here have little to do with the ideals adopted for their titles. After successive restructuring of parties and regrouping of politicians in recent years, the titles of Korea’s political

April 9, 2020

[Robert J. Fouser] Contribution to post-virus future

As the COVID-19 pandemic tightened its grip on the world, the focus has remained on slowing the spread to save lives and reduce the burden on strained medical systems. Nearly half the population of the world is under some sort of lockdown as governments adopt social distancing as the primary defense against the disease. This has caused a sharp contraction in economic activity that threatens the livelihoods of many. Amid the dire news, pundits have begun to turn their attention to a post-pandemi

April 8, 2020