[Kim Seong-kon] Balancing nationalism and globalism

There are certain English words that Koreans misunderstand due to awkward or erroneous translations. For example, the Korean translation of “people” is “gungmin” in the famous phrase from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.” The Korean word, “gungmin,” means “citizens of a country.” However, the word “people” has nothing t

April 5, 2023

Indonesian foreign minister attends Iftar in Seoul

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi (front row, center) attended the Iftar dinner hosted by Indonesian Ambassador Gandi Sulistiyanto (front row, fourth from right) in Yeouido, Seoul, last Wednesday. Iftar is a meal taken by Muslims at sunset to break the daily fast during Ramadan. Marsudi was in Seoul to attend the 2nd Summit for Democracy, the Indo-Pacific Regional Anti-Corruption Meeting and the 4th Indonesia-Korea Joint Commission Meeting (JCM). The dinner was followed by an informal

April 4, 2023

[Adam Minter] Farmers are fighting for our right to repair our iPhones

The average Tesla-driving, iPhone-using suburbanite isn’t spending a lot of time worrying about tractor software payloads. They should, though. Fixing a broken-down farm tractor used to take just a wrench set and some elbow grease. Now repairs might require a mobile-device interface, online diagnostic tools and secure software updates, too. And that stuff isn't just sitting around in the barn. It’s mostly held at a shrinking number of manufacturer-authorized dealerships. As a

April 4, 2023

[Antara Haldar] Wanted: Vladimir Putin

The internet has recently been flooded with AI-generated images of Russian President Vladimir Putin being put on trial or incarcerated. But while the images are fake, international criminal justice is becoming a reality. On March 17, after years of being mired in controversy and crisis, the International Criminal Court surprised the world by formally indicting Putin and issuing a warrant for his arrest. The ICC’s specific charge -- that Putin is responsible for the unlawful abduction and d

April 3, 2023

[Song Young-gil] Low birthrate signals warning about ‘hopeless society’

South Korea has already entered into a "demographic onus" era under which the productive age population (15-64 years old) is less than the non-productive population (over 65 years old) due to the continually declining birthrate. The total fertility rate of South Korea dropped to 0.78 in 2022, the lowest in the world, indicating the significance of a childbirth problem in Korea. The figure is significantly lower than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average (1.5

April 3, 2023

[Elizabeth Shackelford] Consensus in foreign policy can be dangerous

With the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Iraq War, I’m reminded of the remarkable consensus behind that decision, which passed with strong bipartisan support. Experts, journalists and well-known media personalities joined the bandwagon too. Often, consensus is good. It clears away opposition and helps make things happen. But too often, quick agreement on hard problems is a sign of dangerous groupthink instead. This wide support has not aged well. It launched a bloody war, at a cost o

March 31, 2023

[Lee In-hyun] ‘Naatu Naatu’ proves universal power of music

Los Angeles, the heart of the movie and entertainment industries, held two big festivals recently: the Golden Globes and the Oscars. In my opinion, the Oscars is more valuable and popular than the Golden Globes. Although not many people sit and watch the Oscars on TV, I personally enjoy watching it every year. While many tend to focus on who won the best movie, the best actor, or the best actress award, I am most interested in who won the best music award. Three years ago, the Oscars gave four p

March 30, 2023

[Lee Kyong-hee] A long way to rekindle Kim-Obuchi spirit

“Thousands of kilometers from their homeland, there were Koreans on the South Pacific islands. They were civilian laborers who built bases for Japanese forces and at times were driven into battle as cannon fodder.” The narration opens “Koreans in the Pacific War,” a KBS documentary based on declassified material from the US National Archives and Records Administration. The 40-minute film, produced in 2021, mostly consists of United News film footage. It traces US Marines

March 30, 2023

[Kim Seong-kon] Living with ChatGPT and GPT-4

These days, artificial intelligence programs such as ChatGPT and GPT-4 are the talk of the town around the world. According to the press, approximately 100 million people are now conversing with ChatGPT every day. ChatGPT is convenient enough that people use it whenever necessary, heavily depending on it for many functions. ChatGPT can give us not only necessary information and knowledge, but also valuable advice and guidance. Thanks to the manifold conveniences of ChatGPT, there are now fewer r

March 29, 2023

[Contribution] Kazakhstan on way to important milestone

The start of this year could not have been any more different for Kazakhstan when compared to the tragic events of January 2022. Just over 12 months ago, our country was amid a violent coup attempt orchestrated by groups that wanted to see our nation collapse. There was a real possibility that Kazakhstan’s statehood would fall apart from within, which would have had reverberating consequences well beyond Central Asia. Fortunately, our country managed to not only recover from the wounds of

March 28, 2023

[Andrew Sheng] The global game of ChessGo

The geopolitical scenarios are so scary that we need new narratives to try and understand where it will all end -- nuclear annihilation or climate burning? Games are imitations of real life. They teach players how to think how the other would act, with better players learning to appreciate how the other player reads them. As all games are defined by rules, two-player games are actually far simpler than multi-player games. That is exactly where the global game has shifted, from a unipolar singl

March 28, 2023

[VIEWPOINT] The constitution of Uzbekistan enshrines norms of environmental law

  Today our life is undergoing profound qualitative changes. Cardinal reforms are rapidly forming a completely new image of our society. The new edition of our constitution contains special norms on ensuring environmental rights of citizens, in particular, everyone has the right to a comfortable environment, reliable information about its condition, the state takes measures on improvement, restoration and protection of the environment, maintaining the ecological balance, protection of the e

March 27, 2023

[Howard Davies] US financial regulatory system is still broken

When a bank fails, attention inevitably turns to its regulators. Who was asleep at the wheel? Who failed to spot the warning signs? The failure of Silicon Valley Bank is no exception. In the United States, these questions are often directed at many different agencies, since the system is complex and hard for outsiders to understand. So, the conclusion is often an inverted form of John F. Kennedy’s famous observation after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, to the effect that “success has many

March 27, 2023

[Martin Schram] Xi, Putin ‘no limits’ pact has limits

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin ended their Moscow summit last week by showcasing economic help and diplomatic support China will provide the now supplicant banana-less republic that is Putin’s Russia today. But even more importantly, the two autocratic presidents were careful not to spotlight this year’s most important reality: Apparently, their famous “no limits” partnership they boldly declared in 2022, just three weeks before Putin invaded Ukraine, has limits, after all

March 27, 2023

[Robert J. Fouser] The new robotics superpower

In Dobong-gu in northeast Seoul, the Seoul Robot & AI Museum (Seoul: RAIM), which was built mostly by robots and drones, is nearing completion. Scheduled to open this fall, the museum represents a daring effort to integrate robotics into the construction of a public building. Experiments in robotics development and implementation are active in South Korea and hold the potential to turn the country into the undisputed leader in robotics. In 2021, South Korea ranked first in the world in robot de

March 24, 2023

[Wang Son-taek] Japan must take sincere measures

President Yoon Suk Yeol completed a surprise visit to Tokyo last week. The two leaders of South Korea and Japan agreed to finish the 12-year-old confrontation and open a cooperative relationship toward the future. As a result, GSOMIA, or the Military Information Protection Agreement, was normalized. Japan will lift export restrictions on Korea, while Korea will drop its WTO complaint over Japan's unfair trade practices. Japan welcomed the Korean government's proposal for a significant

March 23, 2023

[Doyle McManus] SVB's demise a blessing in disguise

In the brief but spectacular collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, we may just have witnessed the best banking crisis ever. It might even have been useful. Nobody got seriously hurt, except bank executives who made bad decisions and shareholders who weren't paying attention. Those Silicon Valley libertarians who spent years demanding that government get out of the way earned their comeuppance when they begged the Federal Reserve to save them. "Where is (Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H.) Powe

March 23, 2023

[Kim Seong-kon] If you are proud of your country, act accordingly

According to newspaper reports, today’s young people in Korea feel lucky and proud to be born in South Korea. There is a plethora of reasons. For example, recently, the United Nations dubbed South Korea as a developed country, which suits the country in every sense. Indeed, South Korea has now become a fully developed, advanced country both economically and technologically. South Korea’s economy is the 4th largest in Asia and 13th in the world. Its military power, too, ranks 6th out

March 22, 2023

[Jeffrey Frankel] Fifty years of floating currencies

Fifty years ago this month, in March 1973, the Bretton Woods arrangement of fixed exchange rates was abandoned, and the world’s major currencies -- including the US dollar, pound, yen, and Deutsche Mark -- were allowed to float. At the time, the system’s demise was generally considered a policy failure. But the shift from fixed to flexible exchange rates was probably inevitable. The international monetary system that was designed at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, helped lay t

March 22, 2023

[Daniel DePetris] China brokers Iran-Saudi deal but the US benefits

There was a time, only a few short years ago, when Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman thought Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was worse than Adolf Hitler. “I believe that the Iranian supreme leader makes Hitler look good,” Prince Mohammed told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg in a 2018 interview. Hitler may have tried to conquer Europe, he said, but Iran is “trying to conquer the world.” Contrast those alarmist words with a dip

March 21, 2023