The Korea Herald

[Le Hong Hiep] Lies, damn lies, and Vietnam’s trade statistics

On April 17, Bloomberg reported that China had overtaken the United States as Vietnam’s largest export market. According to figures cited by the news organization and tallied by the International Monetary Fund, Vietnam’s exports to China totaled $50.6 billion in 2017, compared to $46.5 billion in exports to the US.If these numbers are accurate, they would represent a significant shift in the triangular relationship between Vietnam, China and the US. As Bloomberg succinctly put it, the data under

April 29, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] Nobel Prize for Trump and Kim is no joke

Coral, one of the top British bookmakers, has Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un as favorites -- at 2-to-1 odds -- to win the Nobel Peace Prize this year. They’re ahead of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Saudi activist Raif Badawi, Pope Francis and other potential winners. With Friday’s summit between Kim and his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in, they could both deserve it.　There’s a lesson in this, and it’s about more than “normalization” -- a phrase we’ve been endlessly cautio

April 29, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] Nobel Prize for Trump and Kim is no joke

[Eli Lake] Beware Korean peace trap

On the surface it looks like the doubters were wrong.　North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, traveled into South Korea on Friday to meet his counterpart. They agreed in principle at least to formally end the war that has divided the peninsula they share. Kim even agreed to a joint statement calling for the denuclearization of the peninsula. What’s not to like?　Plenty. To understand why, examine the “Panmunjeom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula” issued by Kim a

April 29, 2018

[Adam Minter] For China’s Buddhist monks, an IPO too far

In China, religion is big business. The famed Shaolin Temple owns dozens of companies and its abbot is popularly known as the “CEO monk.” Two of China’s four sacred Buddhist mountains are publicly listed. So management at Mount Putuo Tourism Development, which oversees a third holy mountain, probably thought that their own initial public offering would cause little controversy.It didn’t work out that way. Last week, after an unrelenting campaign against the IPO by furious monks, China’s top secu

April 27, 2018

[Adam Minter] For China’s Buddhist monks, an IPO too far

[Bloomberg] Dealing With China’s high-tech ambitions

President Donald Trump’s handling of the trade relationship with China poses a threat both to the US and to the world economy -- but even his harshest critics agree with him on one thing. China’s bid to dominate the high-tech industries of the future often bends or breaks the rules of liberal international commerce, and needs to be checked.What’s important, and what this administration finds so difficult, is to be smart about it.　Through its “Made in China 2025” blueprint and assorted plans and

April 27, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] Why a Trump-Kim deal has a good shot

Saturday’s announcement by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that his country will stop testing nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles is a sign that Kim is ready to do a deal with Donald Trump -- and that he understands how a deal with Trump can be made. It’s a delicate dance that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of Iran are no doubt watching closely. If Kim can swing this, the devil himself presumably could.　Even before the US enters an agreement with North Korea

April 26, 2018

[Michael Schuman] Don’t waste Korea summit

Hope is again rising on the Korean Peninsula. On Friday, South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un are to hold a summit in the Demilitarized Zone that has divided the two states for 65 years. The meeting raises the prospect that this pointless and anachronistic conflict can finally be brought to an end, or at the very least, the tensions now threatening global security and world financial markets can be reduced.　But it‘s important to remember that we’ve been here

April 26, 2018

[Michael Schuman] Don’t waste Korea summit

[Francis Wilkinson] America still needs its ‘new seed’ immigrants

The case for high-skilled immigration to the US isn’t hard to make. All those Ph.D.s in science and technology help build the nation’s advanced infrastructure while adding to the store of human capital and generating national wealth.　As a 2016 Congressional Research Service report stated, “This workforce is seen by many as a catalyst of US global economic competitiveness and is likewise considered a key element of the legislative options aimed at stimulating economic growth.”　 The low-skilled im

April 26, 2018

[James Stavridis] North Korea’s secret weapon: A huge electromagnetic storm

The diplomatic circuit is awash in optimism as the proposed summit between North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump draws near. Indeed, Trump is right to go to the table with the North Koreans and negotiate for full denuclearization.Still, given the long history of North Korea’s double-dealing, outright lying, and surreptitious construction of weapons of mass destruction, the likelihood of Kim actually surrendering his nuclear weapons is extremely low, no matter what he says

April 26, 2018

[James Stavridis] North Korea’s secret weapon: A huge electromagnetic storm

[Jay Ambrose] Will Trump surprise us with North Korea?

President Donald Trump is full of surprises -- major surprises, such as getting elected in the first place. Can he now deliver the biggest surprise of all by getting North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal, something that just might save the world from annihilation?　Probably not, many observers say. They agree it would be hallelujah time if he pulled something like that off in a summit meeting with Kim Jong-un, supreme leader of the socialist slave state. But Kim and his family have spent mur

April 26, 2018

[Kim Myong-sik] Internet leviathan serves as hotbed for political virus

Living in the 21st century we owe a lot to the geniuses and entrepreneurs who have played a part in the development of the computer technology and mobile communications. Everyone breathing in the contemporary world saves a lot of time, energy and money in obtaining information and data that he or she needs for everyday life -- far more than actually needed.　Our family is well familiar with the time-worn story of the young father spending agonizing weeks waiting for a letter from his wife after w

April 25, 2018

[Kim Myong-sik] Internet leviathan serves as hotbed for political virus

[The Chicago Tribune] Trump is taking smart, calculated risk with North Korea talks

In July 1971, President Richard Nixon jolted the international status quo -- and set diplomatic nerves worldwide fluttering -- by announcing he would visit China. “Never in history, to our knowledge, have diplomatic relations progressed so fast from the Ping-Pong table to the Presidency,” this page breathlessly observed.　Nixon’s bold overture reshaped the modern world and has paid vast dividends to Washington, to Beijing and to the general stability of global geopolitics.　Now another potentially

April 25, 2018

[Andrew Wolman] Human rights and North Korea talks

Human rights activists can be forgiven if they show less than complete enthusiasm for the upcoming summit meetings between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his South Korean and American counterparts. It is not just the distinct possibility of failure that they fear, although there is that. There is also the prospect that even if the talks succeed in lowering peninsular tensions or -- in a best-case scenario -- bringing a peace treaty and denuclearization, they will do so at the cost of legiti

April 25, 2018

[Elizabeth Rosenberg, Neil Bhatiya] Don’t let up on North Korea now

The administration of US President Donald Trump may or may not be right in thinking that its “maximum pressure” campaign has brought North Korea to the bargaining table. What’s certain is that there remain cracks in that campaign. To sustain pressure on the Pyongyang regime and give the US leverage in upcoming talks between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, they need to be plugged.　Certainly, the Trump administration deserves credit for coordinating the harshest set of sanctions ever le

April 25, 2018

[Elizabeth Rosenberg, Neil Bhatiya] Don’t let up on North Korea now

[Ana Palacio] Macron’s vital message

When Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France last year, he was presented as a kind of European savior, a wunderkind who had burst onto the French political scene just in the nick of time. Now, many are asking, with a combination of schadenfreude and defeatism, whether Macron’s star burned too bright -- and so is destined to burn out fast. But this focus on Macron’s record so far threatens to overshadow his crucial message about the future of European democracy.Macron won the French presi

April 25, 2018

[Kang So-young] Big changes lie ahead for media industry

The conventional TV era is expected to come to an end. Trends have changed to TV-centered content received via set-top boxes, such as cable TV and internet-based online video-streaming contents. The impact from the emergence of “Over the Top” services, resulting from the swift development of information and communication technology, has spelled the end for the conventional TV age. Even the number of households with no TV has been increasing.The top issue in the cutting-edge media industry is now

April 25, 2018

[Kim Seong-kon] Cultural differences: enlightening and embarrassing

Cultural differences are always intriguing and fascinating. Of course, as humans we all tend to feel similar emotions in similar situations. Nevertheless, we often perceive things differently due to cultural differences. That is why cultural understanding is crucial in this rapidly globalizing world. Sometime, even professors learn from their students due to cultural differences. When I taught at Brigham Young University two decades ago, I assigned the Korean short story “Kapitan Lee” to my Amer

April 24, 2018

[Kim Seong-kon] Cultural differences: enlightening and embarrassing

[Hal Brands] Congress again punts on Trump’s war powers

Something odd is happening in the relationship between Congress and the executive branch regarding the use of military force. For decades, or even longer, countless senators and representatives have complained that presidents are not properly respectful of their constitutional prerogatives in making decisions on employing US military power. And today, most Democrats and a number of Republicans seem to agree that President Donald Trump is an impulsive, erratic, even dangerous commander-in-chief.　

April 24, 2018

[Robert J. Fouser] Managing expectations for the upcoming summits

This Friday President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will meet for the first time. Expectations are running high that the summit will start a process that leads to peace and eventual reunification of the divided people. These high expectations come after years of tension that escalated sharply in 2017 after a series of North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile tests. Expectations are also running high that the proposed meeting between Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump w

April 24, 2018

[Robert J. Fouser] Managing expectations for the upcoming summits

[Justin Fendos] Dealing with Trump is only a first step

The year is 1994. The United States and North Korea have just signed an agreement finalizing terms for denuclearization. No, this is not a piece of science fiction; it is something that actually happened. And yet, for some reason, North Korea remains today in possession of nuclear weapons. So what went wrong?First, let’s recount what happened in 1993. That year, as a member of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), North Korea hosted inspectors from the International Atomi

April 24, 2018