The Korea Herald

[Lee Jae-min] Money is fungible

As a professor teaching international law I receive questions from people from time to time asking me whether UN Security Council resolutions are binding, that is whether they are ‘legally’ binding. The answer to that question is yes. I figure that those questions and perhaps the misperception of UNSC resolutions partly come from the title itself – “resolution.” In fact, many a resolution adopted domestically or internationally is not legally binding (unlike statutes or treaties), albeit politic

June 27, 2017

[Other view] Congress should pass new sanctions on Russia as meddling evidence grows

The Senate recently approved what would be a serious and needed check on the presidency. The bill would prevent President Donald Trump from easing sanctions without congressional review. It also would impose broad new penalties at key Russian economic sectors — punishment for blatant interference in the 2016 election.Final passage is even more vital given the revelation in a Washington Post story that such interference came at the direct order of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose specific

June 27, 2017

[Trudy Rubin] US student’s death should shine light on North Korea’s rights abuses

Anyone with human feelings is outraged by North Korea’s murder of Otto Warmbier.The term “murder” is justified, although we don’t know exactly how this bright, adventurous student was brutalized after his arrest on a tourist visit to North Korea. No other word describes the crime of sentencing Otto to 15 years of hard labor for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster, then holding him for more than a year while he lay in a coma — and cutting off any diplomatic access to him.Yet note that, unlike

June 26, 2017

[Trudy Rubin] US student’s death should shine light on North Korea’s rights abuses

[Virginia Heffernan] Ten years later, the iPhone owns us

Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone in January, 2007, before an adoring congregation, in his signature “Sermon on the Mount” style. On June 29, it became available to the public. Ten years later, the phone has spread like Christianity. The device represents “the pinnacle product of all capitalism,” as Brian Merchant argues in his new book, “The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone.” Merchant calls the adoption of the iPhone a “rapid, civilization-scale transformation.”Happy birthday, iP

June 26, 2017

[Virginia Heffernan] Ten years later, the iPhone owns us

[Steven Rosenbaum] The real side of fake news

Today’s digital devices and social networks deliver so much information that even the savviest consumer cannot evaluate all of it. We seem to be living in a version of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where truth is drowned in a sea of irrelevance. But the future need not be the dystopia that the present seems to suggest.The share of Americans who get their news from social media has grown rapidly in recent years, to 62 percent as of 2016. And yet, according to a recent study by the Pew Research

June 26, 2017

[Virginia Postrel] Immigrants make America great. So do their grandchildren

Here’s a helpful hint for my fellow immigration enthusiasts: stop dissing Americans whose ancestors got here before yours.It’s a common trope: “Immigrants make America great.” You can buy a T-shirt that says it. It sounds like a happy celebration of Americans by choice. But it quickly becomes a way to disparage Americans by birth.Take the recent New York Times column by Bret Stephens titled “Only Mass Deportation Can Save America.” An attempt at Swiftian satire, it was a divisive exercise in ide

June 26, 2017

[Gloria Johns] An open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin

Dear President Putin:There is no doubt that you control American politics and, in fact, you are now in control of the White House and the present and future state of democracy in the United States. That you have done this without firing a shot or shedding one ounce of blood of your kinsmen or ours proves that you deserve a place of highest notoriety on the world stage. Your achievement in bringing the most powerful nation to heel means that you, at least for a time, have assumed the role of the

June 26, 2017

[Other view] N. Korea no place for US tourists

It‘s easier for American tourists to travel to North Korea than to Cuba. It’s also more dangerous, as the death of college student Otto Warmbier after 17 months of North Korean captivity shows.But never mind the absurdity of President Donald Trump’s reimposition of travel restrictions to a relatively open and safe island 145 kilometers off the American coast. To prevent future deaths and protect US national security, the US Congress should ban US tourist travel to Kim Jong-un’s reclusive police

June 26, 2017

[Robert Park] An arms imbalance revisited

In a 2001 book on the 1950-53 catastrophe in Korea’s origins, George Washington University professor Richard Thornton analyzed the North and the South’s egregious, bewildering and glaring arms imbalance – which preceded war’s outbreak on June 25. He draws some shocking conclusions, and well-substantiated ones, to boot.　He noted “unambiguous tactical indicators provided by the truly massive Soviet arms supply” over the spring of 1950 “dramatically changed the relative balance of forces” between t

June 25, 2017

[Robert Park] An arms imbalance revisited

[Kent Harrington] Trump’s unraveling Korea policy

With every tweet or meeting with a foreign leader that US President Donald Trump completes, American officials find themselves struggling to reassure allies that the United States remains committed to their security. Nowhere is this truer than in Asia, where longstanding US strategic engagement, backed up by the world’s most advanced military, has maintained the balance of power for decades.Trump’s signature Asia policy -- his pledge to stop North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons -- should

June 25, 2017

[Kent Harrington] Trump’s unraveling Korea policy

[Chicago Tribune] When will Trump realize peril of Putin?

One of the most troubling aspects to the Kremlin’s meddling with the American presidential campaign has been that, since Donald Trump took office, Washington has not lifted a finger to punish Russia for its actions.That may change soon, now that the Senate has voted 98-2 to impose a new round of sanctions on America’s bellicose nemesis to the east. Those sanctions would hit the Russian economy’s mining, metals, shipping and railways sectors. They also would penalize Russians who carry out cybera

June 25, 2017

[David Volodzko] Keep trade with Korea free

In their summit this week, President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in are expected to renegotiate a landmark free-trade agreement the two countries struck 10 years ago, known as KORUS. Trump has called it a “disaster,” a “job-killing” deal and “a horrible deal made by Hillary.” He even claimed it “destroyed 100,000 jobs.”He’s wrong on pretty much all those counts. Although KORUS can still be improved, it has largely benefited both sides. Trump shouldn’t “terminate it,” as he’s

June 25, 2017

[Meghan L. O’Sullivan] In Saudi shakeup, economics tops counterterrorism

The latest big news out of the Middle East is that Saudi Arabian King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has ousted the crown prince and installed his 31-year-old son, Mohammed bin Salman, in that position. While the world waits to see more of the reaction from Saudis and others in the region, a few quick thoughts come to my mind. First, the news feels stunning because of its significance; if MbS (as the new crown prince is known) becomes king, he will be the first monarch who is not a son of King Abd

June 25, 2017

[Other view] Global warming in the classroom

There is a bubbling controversy about how to teach “manmade global warming” in the classroom. Is it a scientific certainty about which there can be no dispute? Or is it a theory about which people with differing viewpoints can have a legitimate debate?Let’s check in and see how the Associated Press reports on the issue: “The struggle over what American students learn about global warming is heating up as conservative lawmakers, climate change doubters and others attempt to push rejected or debun

June 25, 2017

[Carl P. Leubsdorf] Trump’s Cuba move more bark than bite

Cheered by Cuban-American supporters in Miami’s Little Havana, President Donald Trump announced grandly he was “canceling” his predecessor’s “terrible and misguided deal” between the US and Communist Cuba.Fortunately, Trump exaggerated the extent of his actions. Unfortunately, he took some, once more positioning himself on the wrong side of both history and public opinion.As President Barack Obama correctly foresaw, increasing Cuba’s relations with the democratic world, especially the United Sta

June 23, 2017

[Carl P. Leubsdorf] Trump’s Cuba move more bark than bite

[Justin Fox] Rural America is aging and shrinking

Americans in rural areas and small towns see the world a lot differently from those living in and around cities, according to a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll that the newspaper has been reporting on this week.A lot of the biggest differences in the poll have to do with values, or at least perceptions thereof: About 4 in 10 rural residents say their values are “very different” from those of people in cities and suburbs, while only 2 in 10 urban residents return the favor. But ther

June 23, 2017

[Other view] Putin, Trump and the peril of aerial chess

Five feet isn’t a whole lot of space, but Russia apparently thinks it’s just enough to send the US a message. On Monday, a Russian Su-27 fighter jet sidled up alongside a US Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance plane flying over the Baltic Sea, coming within 1.5 meters of the American aircraft. The Russian jet lingered for a few minutes, then veered away.On Wednesday, the Kremlin said a NATO F-16 fighter jet flew up to a Russian plane carrying Kremlin Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, again over the Ba

June 23, 2017

[Phil Robertson] Otto Warmbier’s death highlights NK rights abuses

The tragic death of 22-year-old American US student Otto Warmbier from unexplained injuries suffered during 17 months of detention in North Korea, shows the true face of that country’s government. A North Korean kangaroo court sentenced Warmbier to 15 years forced labor after he was caught moving a political banner from his hotel.　While Warmbier should have never been sent to trial in the first place, most expected that after a period of being isolated and interrogated, he would be returned home

June 22, 2017

[John Nery] Can the world hold Duterte to account?

Against the illegal drugs trade in his country, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has let slip the dogs of war — and the havoc includes thousands of dead Filipinos, most of them poor. As he prepares to mark a year in office at the end of this month, those who are anguished about the killings ask: Can the community of nations play a role in holding Duterte to account?The answer is complicated.The case can be made that constitutional remedies have been all but exhausted. Impeachment is no longe

June 22, 2017

[John Nery] Can the world hold Duterte to account?

[Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry] Why Macron’s rising and May’s falling

Once a dominant force in her country’s politics, British Prime Minister Theresa May looks increasingly like a lame duck leader, while French President Emmanuel Macron just swept the legislative elections in his country. Comparing the two leaders’ styles goes a long way to showing why one is up and the other down, especially their response to two dramatic events that threatened to upend their political career: the Whirlpool factory strike for Emmanuel Macron, and the tragic Grenfell Tower fire fo

June 22, 2017