The Korea Herald

[Victor D. Cha] Human rights key to North Korea deal

If Donald Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi this week goes as the US president hopes, the two will emerge trumpeting promises of North Korea’s denuclearization, the proclamation of an end to the Korean War, and commitments by the international business community and multilateral lending institutions to transform the nation led by “Little Rocket Man,” in Trump’s words, into the “economic rocket” of Asia.　While there’s probably a better chance of pigs flying over Pyongya

Feb. 24, 2019

[Victor D. Cha] Human rights key to North Korea deal

[Ruti Teitel] Should America ever apologize?

Earlier this month, academics at the American University in Cairo declared no confidence in the institution’s president, following his decision to grant US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo an uncontested platform for a partisan foreign-policy speech last month. Pompeo used the occasion to decry former President Barack Obama’s own pronouncements from the same stage a decade earlier, and to issue an implicit endorsement of the Middle East’s reigning autocrats.Pompeo’s primary line of attack against

Feb. 21, 2019

[Christopher Balding] Bad jobs data could bite China

China has long been criticized both for its obsession with GDP statistics and their quality: Pressuring cadres to meet growth targets has encouraged a risky buildup of debt and, at times, the outright fabrication of numbers. If anything, though, the quality of China’s official employment data is even worse -- and the inaccuracies could have equally dangerous repercussions.　Until relatively recently, Chinese GDP growth would fluctuate even while remaining robust. The same can’t be said for jobles

Feb. 21, 2019

[Christopher Balding] Bad jobs data could bite China

[Michael Schuman] Why US and China can’t make a deal

Optimism that the US and China can reach a trade deal is rising, with another round of intensive negotiations in Washington this week. What buoyant investors are ignoring, however, is that the talks have become a test of strength between the world’s two great powers -- or, more accurately, a test of how accurate each nation’s sense of its own strength is.　The inconvenient fact is that neither country possesses the power to impose its will on the other. The US is not on its own capable of compell

Feb. 21, 2019

[Michael Schuman] Why US and China can’t make a deal

[Noah Feldman] Huawei and 5G: A case study in the future of free trade

President Donald Trump is reportedly close to issuing an executive order that would ban Chinese companies like Huawei Technologies Co. from building 5G wireless networks in the US. The significance of such an order goes beyond its obvious implications for American telecommunications companies.　The prospect of closing technology-related markets to competitors from China raises a fundamental problem that is going to plague policymakers for the foreseeable future: How can they draw the line between

Feb. 21, 2019

[Anjani Trivedi] Buffett’s China ride is losing power with investors

It’s backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, buoyed by China’s green energy policies and has a track record as a pioneer in the world’s largest car market. Surely, BYD has all the ingredients of a winning electric-car maker?　Yet investors aren’t convinced. The company’s Hong Kong-traded stock has fallen more than 30 percent in the past year and even declined after BYD posted a 290 percent jump in January electric-vehicles sales from a year earlier to 28,668 units. That outpaced a 149 perc

Feb. 21, 2019

[Kim Hoo-ran] Gwangju deniers damage democracy

In Gwangju for the first time a few years ago, I walked down Geumnanro, the site of violent clashes between Gwangju locals and troops enforcing martial law on May 18, 1980. Events were being held on the broad avenue closed off to traffic for the day -- a play, a concert and a samulnori performance to name but a few, all commemorating the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement. There were few people in attendance, but that didn’t seem to matter. These were people remembering the massacre in whic

Feb. 20, 2019

[Kim Hoo-ran] Gwangju deniers damage democracy

[Leonid Bershidsky] Even Trump can’t drive Europe into Russia’s arms

As the US demands more from Europe and castigates it ever more stridently, it’s increasingly clear that Russia is missing a historic opportunity. If President Vladimir Putin hadn’t made Russia an unreliable partner for its neighbors, he’d be poised to realize his fondest dream: of displacing the US as Europe’s security guarantor.　Despite European officials’ determination to preserve what’s left of the US-led liberal world order, the cracks in the transatlantic alliance are obvious. They were one

Feb. 20, 2019

[Leonid Bershidsky] Even Trump can’t drive Europe into Russia’s arms

[Tyler Cowen] Seven lessons about blackmail

Every now and then, a few apparently random news events come together and influence how you see the world. My most recent lesson is that blackmail and blackmail risk are a lot more common than I had thought.　The first relevant news event is the allegation by Jeff Bezos that the National Enquirer has been blackmailing him with the threat to release photos of his private parts (there is much more detail to this story). Several other people have since alleged that the Enquirer has engaged in additi

Feb. 20, 2019

[Timothy L. O’Brien] In Trump’s world, he never loses

Hanging on a wall behind the omelet bar at President Donald Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida -- where the commander in chief apparently stopped for a bite on Saturday after declaring a national emergency the day before -- is an old, framed poster. It’s from an ad campaign Walgreens once ran featuring the president back when he was the sorcerer of “The Apprentice.”　In white block letters on the poster, next to a photo of Trump cocking his index finger at the camera and shouting in fu

Feb. 20, 2019

[Andy Mukherjee] Aging Singapore tries to avoid Japan trap

Japan has aged; Singapore is aging. Japan’s workforce is shrinking; Singapore’s has plateaued. Japan’s homogeneous society has struggled with immigration; Singapore’s island culture has been welcoming of foreigners, though increasingly less so.　So is the city-state scoring an own-goal by inviting a demographic decline and Japanese-style lost decades? 　After Monday’s annual government budget, in which Singaporean Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat announced stronger curbs on immigrants in service in

Feb. 20, 2019

[Kim Seong-kon] Be confident and overcome inferiority complex

Watching popular American sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” Korean viewers could be appalled at the character Sheldon making fun of Howard for holding only a master’s degree from MIT. In the show, Sheldon, who is a theoretical physicist with a Ph.D. from Harvard, openly mocks Howard for his lower academic degree and his alma mater, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If a Korean TV series aired such a scene of belittling a specific degree or university, it would immediately create a nationwide sc

Feb. 19, 2019

[Kim Seong-kon] Be confident and overcome inferiority complex

[James Stavridis] How US can escape Graveyard of Empires

The problems in Afghanistan often feel intractable, like a knot of countless ropes bound together. Every time a strand is pulled, another part of the knot tightens up. Currently, the Taliban refuse to have talks with the Afghan government, which they label a puppet regime; the Kabul government insists that any power-sharing agreement allow limited numbers of Western troops to remain; the Pakistanis, who have long sheltered Taliban leaders, are unwilling to fully encourage a peace settlement; the

Feb. 19, 2019

[Lee Jae-min] It’s a good club to join, but the question is membership fee

Still a bit of a tongue twister even to experts: hard to pronounce and difficult to remember. Many tend to get the sequence of the letters wrong. The CPTPP stands for the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership. As the name speaks for itself, this is a treaty to save the TPP -- an originally 12-nation trade agreement in the Pacific region, spearheaded by the United States. Upon Washington’s withdrawal in January 2017, the remaining 11 states joined forces to rescue the deal

Feb. 19, 2019

[Lee Jae-min] It’s a good club to join, but the question is membership fee

[Leonid Bershidsky] Artificial Intelligence is getting good at fake news

Algorithms have long been able to produce basic news stories from press releases or sets of financial data; that’s not much of a threat to most humans in the news business. Now, however, artificial intelligence has taken a step further. It’s learned to perform a tougher task -- to produce convincing-looking fake news.　Stringing together a few formulaic passages from a set of numbers is a mechanical job. Inventing a fake news story on a random subject requires imagination; not every human is up t

Feb. 19, 2019

[Hal Brands] Are Russia and China getting closer? US spy chiefs think so

Substance often runs a distant second to drama in the age of Donald Trump. So it was when America’s intelligence chiefs visited Capitol Hill recently to deliver their agencies’ annual worldwide threat assessment. It got traction in the news media largely because Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA director Gina Haspel gave testimony that implicitly cut across Trump’s policies toward North Korea and Iran. Kim Jong-un has no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons, Coats and Has

Feb. 19, 2019

[Andrew Sheng] Embrace diversity or accept divorce

Two major divorces are in the making in March. The obvious one is Brexit, which officially occurs on March 29. The other is the deadline for the US-China trade negotiations on March 1, when US tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports will increase from 10 percent to 25 percent. Even though a trade deal is likely, as both sides want to have a deal and the market is expecting one, this will come down to the wire as the gap in what can be achieved in the deal is still daunting.　Both negotia

Feb. 18, 2019

[Andrew Sheng] Embrace diversity or accept divorce

[Michael Schuman] What North Korea could learn from Vietnam

Vietnam is more than a convenient neutral site for the second summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, which is slated for later this month. The Southeast Asian nation is being held up as a model for what Kim’s isolated country could become if he adopts sweeping market reforms.　The choice facing Kim at the Hanoi summit is the same as it’s always been: weapons or wealth. The US has long offered North Korea a chance to develop its moribund economy in exchange

Feb. 18, 2019

[Michael Schuman] What North Korea could learn from Vietnam

[Anjani Trivedi and Shuli Ren] China’s default wave spares the biggest fish

Brace yourself: A growing number of hard-up Chinese borrowers are not making good on their debts. The pattern is all too familiar.　After a record year of defaults in 2018, two big issuers failed to meet their obligations in recent weeks. Coal miner Wintime Energy Co., one of China’s biggest defaulters last year, missed interest payments again this month. Beijing Orient Landscape & Environment Co., which builds water-treatment plants, was late on a 500 million yuan ($73.8 million) bond due this m

Feb. 18, 2019

[Leonid Bershidsky] Europeans grow tired of US-led alliance

As the US-led world order continues to fall apart, second-tier powers are trying to salvage what they can. But in Germany and France, at least, voters don’t really want the US to be part of the process.　The annual Munich Security Report, which provides the starting point for discussion at the annual security forum in the German city, is often a good indication of the Western security community’s current mood. The 2019 report, titled “The Great Puzzle: Who Will Pick Up the Pieces?” is somewhat le

Feb. 18, 2019