[Kim Seong-kon] Korea’s image battered by coronavirus outbreak

Until the recent outbreak of the new coronavirus, South Korea’s reputation in the international community could not have been better. For the past few decades, Samsung, LG, and Hyundai have significantly upgraded the image of South Korea. So have BTS and, more recently, the Academy Award-winning film “Parasite.” In addition to Hallyu that has enchanted young people on foreign soils, many countries have watched the spectacular economic success of South Korea with admiration and

March 10, 2020

[Nisha Gopalan] SARS lessons inoculate HK against epidemic

Hong Kong has fewer coronavirus cases than the US, Singapore or Italy. That might seem surprising for a city that sits on the doorstep of mainland China and has intertwining business, tourism and personal connections with the source of the epidemic. The reason can be summed up in one word: SARS. The outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003 sowed extreme caution in Hong Kong, a former British colony that had returned to Chinese sovereignty six years earlier. The city, which maintain

March 9, 2020

[Kevin Rudd] COVID-19 trumps nationalism

I was recently walking along East 29th Street in Manhattan, after visiting a friend at Bellevue Hospital, when I was roused from my thoughts by a middle-aged white male screaming at an old Chinese man, “Get the fuck out of my country, you piece of Chinese shit!” The old man was stunned. So was I, before I bellowed back (deploying the full range of my native Australian vocabulary), “Fuck off and leave him alone, you white racist piece of shit!” The pedestrian traffic sto

March 9, 2020

[Clara Ferreira Marques] Coronavirus is human credit crunch

It is the flow of people, as much as money, that keeps the global economy ticking over. It follows that a sudden halt to the movement of workers, shoppers and tourists should worry us just as much as the drying up of credit during the global financial crisis in 2008. With fewer obvious quick fixes, the virus outbreak should perhaps concern us even more. A little over a decade ago, it was the US housing market that soured. Investors lost confidence after years of unbridled lending and poor regul

March 8, 2020

[Gregory A. Maniatis, Monette Zard] COVID-19 blame game threatens us all

As the new coronavirus, COVID-19, nears pandemic status, a second scourge has followed in its path: a virulent racism that scapegoats refugees, asylum-seekers and foreigners more generally as the cause of the outbreak. This is not only false and cruel, but also dangerous. Politicizing the crisis and stigmatizing whole populations risks turning fiction into fact by stoking fear and driving the disease underground, making it more difficult to manage. Have we forgotten the central lesson of the HIV

March 8, 2020

[Digital Simplicity] Working from home brings its own challenges

As the novel coronavirus spreads, a growing number of office workers in South Korea and elsewhere are being pushed out of their cozy cubicles and forced to work remotely. However, if you’re working remotely, your humble abode is not always home sweet home. My general perception of working from home is mixed. As a journalist, I have spent most of my career working remotely. I usually commuted to and from the government agencies or companies that I covered, and returned to the newsroom o

March 6, 2020

[Andy Mukherjee] Hong Kong’s helicopter money struggles for lift

If you’re raining cash on people and want them to spend it, you have to convince them that the benevolence is being financed by printing money. Nobody wants to worry about being taxed more in the future. These things are going to be problematic for Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan. He plans to give away 10,000 Hong Kong dollars ($1,285) to every adult permanent resident to blunt the economic impact of the coronavirus, but since he can’t conjure money at will, he’s bein

March 5, 2020

[Faye Flam] How to prepare (rationally) for coronavirus

About a month ago, I prepared for COVID-19, then just known as the coronavirus, by refilling some essential heart medications I was worried might run out if there were serious supply chain disruptions. The pills were for my cat -- I figured it was better to be safe than sorry. And now that coronavirus has spread to well over 50 countries, more and more people are confronting the question of how much preparation is enough, whether for themselves or those people and pets relying on them. Experts

March 5, 2020

[Anjani Trivedi] We need to prepare for pandemics. They’ll keep coming

When it comes to infectious disease outbreaks, we just haven’t learned. It’s not as if we weren’t warned. Last year, a report by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, a body put together by the World Health Organization and the World Bank Group, said that there was “a very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen killing 50 to 80 million people and wiping out nearly 5 percent of the world’s economy.” A pandemic on

March 4, 2020

[Ferdinando Giugliano] Italy shows how to tackle coronavirus impact

The Italian government has announced a stimulus package of 3.6 billion euros ($4 billion) to help the economy cope with the Coronavirus outbreak. The response appears timely and proportionate. Rome can always add to the stimulus later -- provided the financial markets allow it. Roberto Gualtieri, minister of finance, said in an interview Sunday that he was looking at a three-step plan to support companies and workers. Italy is the European country most affected country by the COVID-19 epidemic,

March 4, 2020

[Eli Lake] Why Taliban is hailing US peace plan

On the eve of the ceremony to sign an agreement with the US to begin peace negotiations, the Taliban declared it had already won. “This is a day of victory,” said Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, a Taliban negotiator. “Victory has come with the help of God.” In one sense, this crowing seems premature. While it’s true that the US intends to reduce its troop presence from more than 12,000 to 8,600, further withdrawals are conditioned on the Taliban adhering to its co

March 3, 2020

[Kim Seong-kon] Between Seoul and Granada: Memories of Alhambra

Ostensibly, the Alhambra Palace does not seem to have anything to do with the “fourth industrial revolution.” The former is a famous 13th century Moorish palace located in Granada, Spain and the latter a recent phenomenon that deals with artificial intelligence, the internet of things, 3d printers, smart cars that drive themselves, drone technology, nanotechnology, 5g mobile communications and augmented reality. Recently, however, Korean TV show “Memories of the Alhambra&rdqu

March 3, 2020

[Ferdinando Giugliano] Europe’s coronavirus plan is not enough

The economic damage from the coronavirus epidemic has prompted calls for Europe to relax its fiscal rules to allow governments to cut taxes and increase spending. The European Commission seems to agree: Paolo Gentiloni, its economy czar, has hinted that affected governments -- such as Italy -- may enjoy some budget “flexibility” to deal with the emergency.　 Granting more leeway is a welcome step, but it’s only a second-best approach. The virus risks affecting some countries mu

March 2, 2020

[David Fickling] What the virus end game will look like

Pandemics come and pandemics go. In the grip of a new infection spreading around a planet with no natural immunity, it can feel like the sky is falling. Over the coming months, it’s likely that a significant share of the world’s population will experience some of the dread of the COVID-19 coronavirus that people in China have suffered over the past few months. Many will die. Still, the likely end-point of this outbreak will see it settle down as an endemic disease -- one of the sui

March 1, 2020

[Noah Feldman] Coronavirus has come to the US and lawsuits won’t be far behind

The coronavirus called COVID-19 has spread beyond its origin in Wuhan, China, and has arrived on U.S. shores. I’m a law professor, not an epidemiologist, so my thoughts immediately turned to how the law would shape America’s collective response to a broader pandemic -- and what the government’s power will mean for individual rights under the Constitution. It’s a question that could soon become an urgent one -- I recently interviewed Marc Lipsitch, the brilliant epidemiol

March 1, 2020

[David Fickling] Coronavirus complacency is worse than panic

Don’t think about a white bear. What did you just see in your mind’s eye? If the answer was “a white bear,” you’ll have grasped one of the problems facing public health officials in talking about the risks from the Covid-19 coronavirus. The message most experts will want to convey is, naturally, “Don’t panic.” But it’s almost impossible for humans to hear that instruction without its alarming echo: “Panic.” If Covid-19 turns in

Feb. 27, 2020

[Jean Pisani-Ferry] A radical way out of the EU budget maze

In 2003, I co-authored a report on the future of the European Union -- the Sapir report -- in which we observed that the expenditures, revenues, and procedures of the EU budget were all inconsistent with the EU’s objectives. We therefore advocated a radical restructuring of what had become a “historical relic.” Seventeen years later, little has changed. Two years ago, when negotiations on the budget for 2021-2027 started, I pointed out that the outcome would reveal what the EU

Feb. 27, 2020

[Serendipity] Do not let virus destroy us

  The entire country, and increasingly the world, is gripped by the fear of a possible viral pandemic. In South Korea, what seemed at first controllable is now virtually out of control, with new confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infections growing by the hundreds every day and the number of deaths -- most of patients already in poor health with preexisting conditions -- climbing as well. The government has been releasing information on the infected, providing a timeline of their wherea

Feb. 27, 2020

[Kim Myong-sik] ‘Crime and punishment’ of former president

Last week, the Seoul Appellate Court handed down a sentence of 17 years’ imprisonment to Lee Myung-bak, who was president of the South Korea from Feb. 25, 2008, to Feb. 24, 2013. The judge added two more years to the 15-year term the Seoul Central District Court had given him in October 2018. There are some possibilities of a change in his future. The Supreme Court may deliver him a different final verdict – if he chooses to appeal. The Justice Ministry may suspend the execution of

Feb. 26, 2020