The Korea Herald

[Christopher Balding] Channeling Tom Selleck, China tries reverse mortgages

The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission wants to help the elderly enjoy their golden years in comfort. With the world’s fastest-aging population and a pension system beset by shortfalls, China is turning to a staple of late-night television commercials -- reverse mortgages -- to help out retirees. It just might work.　Outside of Beijing and Shanghai, China’s real estate market is nearly moribund after years of spiraling values drove home ownership beyond the reach of many people. In

Aug. 21, 2018

[Lee Jae-min] Just one word, but a sea of difference

It was about 10 years ago when I visited Baku, Azerbaijan, several times, right by the Caspian Sea. A seaward view from the city was like that of any other city at the tip of an ocean. Its vastness matches almost that of the Black Sea, with five countries bordering it. The sea contains a variety of fish. Rich pockets of gas and oil, you bet. Beaches, of course. It even has salty water. In a sense, it contains everything a ‘sea’ would have. Except one thing: an outside route. It is landlocked. Th

Aug. 21, 2018

[Lee Jae-min] Just one word, but a sea of difference

[Jeffrey D. Sachs] We are all climate refugees now

Modern humans, born into one climate era, called the Holocene, have crossed the border into another, the Anthropocene. But instead of a Moses guiding humanity in this new and dangerous wilderness, a gang of science deniers and polluters currently misguides humanity to ever-greater danger. We are all climate refugees now and must chart a path to safety. The Holocene was the geological age that started more than 10,000 years ago, with favorable climate conditions that supported human civilization

Aug. 21, 2018

[Penny Pritzker] What China needs to understand about Trump

It was late November 2016, and my Chinese counterpart, Vice Premier Wang Yang, was visiting Washington, DC. Over the course of my tenure as US Secretary of Commerce, the vice premier and I had developed a warm and candid relationship. Since this was to be our last official meeting, I decided to do something a bit different: take him to rural Virginia for a traditional Thanksgiving meal.While we were surrounded by our usual phalanx of security, we effectively sat alone, with the exception of our

Aug. 20, 2018

[Penny Pritzker] What China needs to understand about Trump

[David Ignatius] Consequences of US disengagement

An Arab diplomat recently chided an American audience for speculating about what “the new Middle East” may look like. Open your eyes, he said: The new Middle East is already here. And, personally, I fear its baseline expectation is that American power and values won’t matter in the way they once did.The diplomat was Yousef al-Otaiba, the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates, and he was speaking at a public gathering last month of the Aspen Security Forum. He explained to an audience of policym

Aug. 20, 2018

[David Ignatius] Consequences of US disengagement

[Michael Pettis] Trade war won’t dent China’s GDP

Analysts are trying urgently to evaluate the potential impact of a full-fledged trade war on the Chinese economy. This typically involves estimating how much various tariff scenarios will reduce China’s GDP growth, with current estimates ranging from the minimal, 0.1 or 0.2 percentage point, to the substantial -- as much as 2 percentage points.　This is probably the right way to evaluate the impact of external shocks on other countries. For China, however, it’s wholly inappropriate. The fact is t

Aug. 20, 2018

[Zaki Laidi] How Europe can learn to project power

US President Donald Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker may have averted a trade war last month, but the challenges confronting the European Union are far from resolved. In today’s increasingly Hobbesian global environment, the EU can survive only by increasing its capacity to project power.With the 1957 Treaty of Rome, Europe shed what remained of its militaristic impulses and focused on building a single market. From then on, Europe’s only means of projecting power woul

Aug. 20, 2018

[Veena Dubal] Gig companies keep trying to evade the law

Gig companies such as Uber, DoorDash and Instacart portray themselves as brave and brilliant innovators, underdog entrepreneurs whose explosive growth simply reflects that they’ve built a better mousetrap. But the companies have been sued again and again, in the United States and around the globe, by workers who say these businesses prosper by violating their workers’ basic legal rights.　That charge invites a question: Can gig companies survive without breaking the law? Apparently not, according

Aug. 20, 2018

[Minxin Pei] China’s summer of discontent

Politics has a nasty habit of surprising us -- especially in a country like China, where there is little transparency and a lot of intrigue. Five months ago, President Xi Jinping jolted his countrymen by abolishing the presidential term limit and signaling his intention to serve for life. But the real surprise was to come later.At the time of Xi’s announcement, the conventional wisdom was that his dominance inside the Chinese party-state was virtually absolute, and thus that his authority could

Aug. 19, 2018

[Minxin Pei] China’s summer of discontent

[Lawrence H. Summers] How to make global economy work for everyone

Since the end of World War II, a broad consensus in support of global economic integration as a force for peace and prosperity has been a pillar of the international order. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall a generation ago, the power of markets in promoting economic progress has been universally recognized. From global trade agreements to the European Union project; from the Bretton Woods institutions to the removal of pervasive capital controls; from expanded foreign direct investment to incre

Aug. 19, 2018

[Lawrence H. Summers] How to make global economy work for everyone

[Noah Smith] The great recession never ended for college humanities

Humanities education in the US is in free fall. And the decline probably shows that the nature of what American students want out of college education is changing -- more young people are in it for the money.　University of Washington history professor Benjamin Schmidt recently wrote a long blog post in which he showed, very convincingly, that the number of American undergraduates majoring in the humanities has dropped in the last decade. Five years ago, Schmidt thought that it might be a tempora

Aug. 19, 2018

[James Stavridis] US needs a Space Force and a Cyber Force

Sadly, the proposal for a new US Space Force has become a punchline on late-night TV. It is being battered as a needless new bureaucracy, a competitor for the private sector, and an idea that will lead to a vicious militarization of space. None of these arguments is correct.　Many of those denigrating the idea are under-informed and spring-loaded to dislike the idea because it is proposed by President Donald Trump. I have plenty of policy disagreements with the Trump administration, but on this i

Aug. 19, 2018

[Shannon O’Neil] Latin America needs better judges

Latin America’s judiciaries are engulfed in corruption scandals. In Colombia a former Supreme Court member was arrested on charges of corruption and bribery. In Peru multiple judges stand accused of trading favorable rulings and shortened sentences for money and perks. In Guatemala, lawyers and justices face charges of rigging Supreme Court appointments. And in Mexico the attorney general’s office fired one of its own for delving too deep into alleged bribes to the former head of the national oi

Aug. 19, 2018

[Therese Raphael] Erdogan makes some worrying friends

Relations between the US and Turkey have been deteriorating almost as fast as the Turkish lira. In a speech on the Black Sea coast Saturday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the ultimate dig against an ally: He threatened to switch teams.　“Before it is too late, Washington must give up the misguided notion that our relationship can be asymmetrical and come to terms with the fact that Turkey has alternatives,” he told the crowd. If the “disrespect” continues, his government will seek “

Aug. 16, 2018

[Therese Raphael] Erdogan makes some worrying friends

[Tyler Cowen] Trump hurts US exports in the marketplace of ideas

If you are a believer in free markets, you might be tempted to be pleased by some of the more positive policies of the Trump administration: Lxower corporate tax rates, more market-friendly judges, a greater emphasis on deregulation. Resist (the temptation, if not the administration). When it comes to ideas, the lifeblood of capitalism, the influence of President Donald Trump isn’t nearly so benign.　In fact, even without considering its policy on free trade, advocates of dynamic capitalism shoul

Aug. 16, 2018

[Kim Myong-sik] Worst lawlessness reigns in Street of Justice

The new Seoul Eastern Detention House, or “Dongbu Guchiso,” is located on Jeongui-ro, or “Justice Street,” in Munjeong-dong. Across the street are the Seoul Eastern District Court and Seoul Eastern Prosecutors’ Office adjoining each other. Opened a little over a year ago, Dongbu Guchiso has become the judgment grounds of old power, as it accommodates many “celebrities” from the administrations of presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye who are being prosecuted under the Moon Jae-in government

Aug. 15, 2018

[Kim Myong-sik] Worst lawlessness reigns in Street of Justice

[Eli Lake] Montenegro takes on Russia, US, former CIA officer

It sounds like a spy novel. A former CIA case officer joins a cabal of pro-Russian rebels attempting to kill the prime minister of a small Balkan country. The coup fails, the officer returns to the US -- and now authorities in the Balkans want the former spy for questioning.　Last week Montenegro announced it is seeking extradition of the retired US spy, Joseph Assad, for his role in an attempted coup there in 2016. If the allegations are true, this story has a twist worthy of an airport-bookstor

Aug. 15, 2018

[Cathy O’Neil] Mark Zuckerberg is totally out of his depth

I might be the only person on Earth feeling sorry for the big boys of technology. Jack Dorsey from Twitter, Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, all those Google nerds: They’re monumentally screwed, because they have no idea how to tame the monsters they have created.　The way I see it, these guys -- and they are mostly guys -- were arbitrarily chosen. They started with some good ideas, some luck, great timing, got lots of people to believe in their rosy vision, and they won the unicorn lottery. Little

Aug. 15, 2018

[Tyler Cowen] How your personality traits affect your paycheck

What makes really smart people tick? Why do some end up earning so much more than others? And how much do these disparate outcomes have to do with their personalities? A new study by Miriam Gensowski, at the University of Copenhagen, sheds fascinating light on these and other questions.　Gensowski revisits a data set from all schools in California, grades 1-8, in 1921-1922, based on the students who scored in the top 0.5 percent of IQ distribution. At the time that meant scores of 140 or higher.

Aug. 15, 2018

[Yang Sung-jin] One small summer reading suggestion 　

With the suffocating summer heat slowly slackening a bit in South Korea, some vacationers on the beach may be still happily stuck with sci-fi and fantasy. If they have a couple more days to burn through their summer holiday by digging into the escapist genres, I recommend one more title. Or maybe three titles (sorry, I’m not good at math), since this is a three-volume series: “We Are Legion (We Are Bob)”; “For We Are Many”; “All These Worlds.” Written by computer programmer-turned-celebrated wri

Aug. 15, 2018

[Yang Sung-jin] One small summer reading suggestion