[LZ Granderson] Don't blame Mexico on gun, drug

Ken Salazar, the US ambassador to Mexico, met with the Los Angeles Tiems for more than an hour while visiting California in November. Her was eager to talk up the celebrations surrounding the US-Mexico diplomacy bicentennial. We were eager to talk about the border. The pas de deuk featured a lot of platitudes, a couple of tense moments, and a number I can't shake: 13,000. That was the estimate Salazar gave for the number of Mexicans who were studying at our universities at the time. Many of

March 21, 2023

[George Soros] Updating my Munich predictions

It is exactly one month ago that I gave a speech on the eve of the Munich Security Conference. Since then, so many remarkable things have happened -- and have happened so fast -- that it is worth comparing my predictions of a month ago with the actual developments. The biggest changes have occurred in the global climate system. By this, I mean actual climate events and climate scientists’ understanding of those events. The main message I wanted to convey in Munich was that the global clima

March 20, 2023

[Yoon Young-kwan] How China lost Asia to the US

Since the dawn of international politics, smaller states have faced the formidable challenge of navigating great-power rivalries. Today, it is the geopolitical contest between the United States and China that has compelled countries to balance their competing national interests. Toward which side they gravitate depends on domestic and external circumstances. Consider the Philippines, which has an interest in maintaining both its growing economic ties with neighboring China as well as its half-

March 17, 2023

[Lee Kyong-hee] Forgive but not forget a lasting solution

President Yoon Suk Yeol’s controversial speech on the 104th anniversary of the March 1 Independence Movement prompted me to watch two movies: “A Resistance” and “Anarchist from Colony.” Both are based on the heart-wrenching fate of courageous Koreans who as teenagers joined the massive anti-Japanese protests of March 1, 1919. A presidential speech customarily marks the watershed event. Yoon, no stranger to delivering fuzzy logic, kept his first March 1 address so

March 16, 2023

[Jan-Werner Mueller] The dilemma of anti-populism

Following a year of halting negotiations, six of Turkey’s opposition parties have finally united behind a single presidential candidate in the election this May, with the hope of ending Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic and repressive two-decade rule. This month, the so-called Table of Six converged on Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the social democratic and secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), after having sidelined younger, more charismatic contenders s

March 15, 2023

[Kim Seong-kon] Doing the opposite of foreigners’ observations

In the late 19th and early 20th century, foreign adventurers, reporters and missionaries visited Joseon, which is now Korea. During their stay in the “Land of the Morning Calm,” they wrote some penetrating accounts describing pre-modern Korea. Some of them were favorable remarks, and others were somewhat negative observations, though amusing. For example, they unanimously praised the Korean people’s exquisite handcrafts such as pottery, and their superb skills at archery. They

March 15, 2023

[Josep Borrell] Honesty can advance the Middle East peace process

Too many people are dying every week in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, and millions are living in fear and hopelessness. The world’s response has been characterized by too many statements and too little action. That must change. We in the European Union and the wider international community need to do more. We know that people around the world expect us to work for peace, justice and international law everywhere. But to act successfully, we first must be honest with each

March 14, 2023

[Anastassia Fedyk, James Hodson, Ilona Sologoub] Russian opposition’s irrelevant demands

A year ago, two of us (Fedyk and Hodson) co-authored a commentary arguing that Russians would not rise up to stop President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. There was too much suppression of dissent in Putin’s Russia, we noted, and too much real support for the war among the public. That assessment proved correct. Still, there is a lingering question: What role are Russian “opposition” parties playing in the conflict? While Russian opposition figures like the jailed

March 14, 2023

[James Stavridis] US needs to create a Cyber Force

Two disturbing incidents roiled the cyber seas last week, one foreign and one domestic. They both strengthen the case -- which was already convincing, and which I have been making for almost a decade now -- for the creation of a US Cyber Force. The first incident was yet another cyberattack on a NATO member, Albania, by Iran. It was part of an ongoing Iranian campaign to attack Albania, a small Muslim nation of only about 3 million in the Balkans. The attacks have included zeroing out personal b

March 13, 2023

[Nicholas Goldberg] How I became a tool of China's propaganda machine

When I write critical columns about US policies and politics, I occasionally strike a nerve and get enraged letters from readers denouncing me as a traitor or suggesting I am providing grist for our nation's enemies. I've been told, for instance, that I should move to China because I'm anti-American. And when I raised the possibility of negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, I was accused of being Vladimir Putin's lapdog. I've never taken such accusations seriously beca

March 13, 2023

[Robert J. Fouser] Is Korean worth learning?

The 21st century has seen a boom in learning Korean around the world. The wave began in the early 2000s as hallyu gained popularity in Asia and grew in the 2010s as K-pop swept the world. Universities around the world have started and expanded Korean language classes, online classes have boomed, and K-pop fans have created informal learning networks spanning the globe. Meanwhile, the number of foreign students studying in South Korea grew rapidly, only to be cut short by travel restrictions duri

March 10, 2023

Jordan, The Korea Herald to bridge gap

Jordan's new ambassador to Korea, Asal Al-Tal, and The Korea Herald CEO Choi Jin-young agreed to seek ways to expand bilateral exchanges between South Korea and Jordan during her visit to the company in Seoul on Wednesday. Al-Tal expressed optimism on fostering a positive image of Jordan among Koreans and of Korea among Jordanians. She pointed to increasing economic cooperation and interpersonal exchanges between the two countries as reasons for hope. The operations of Korean companies such

March 9, 2023

[Vishal Gupta] An old tool to assess AI‘s ability

“AI passes US medical licensing exam.” “ChatGPT passes law school exams despite ‘mediocre’ performance.” “Would ChatGPT get a Wharton MBA?” Headlines such as these have recently touted (and often exaggerated) the successes of ChatGPT. These successes follow a long tradition of comparing AI‘s abilities to those of human experts, such as Deep Blue’s chess victory over Garry Kasparov in 1997, IBM Watson’s “Jeopardy!” vict

March 9, 2023

[Wang Son-taek] Solutions bared swiftly. Is it audacity or surrender?

On Monday, the South Korean government announced solutions regarding the issue of forced labor, one of the sources of diplomatic friction between South Korea and Japan. If Korea-Japan relations improve, Seoul can expect to have a positive impact on responding to the North Korean nuclear threat and expanding diplomatic space toward a global theater. However, whether the situation will unfold as the Yoon Suk Yeol government wishes is unclear. This is because the Yoon administration announced solut

March 9, 2023

[Kim Seong-kon] “Reverse mentoring” and the harmony of “digilog”

Recently, two of my friends sent me two radically different articles on the MZ generations. A Korean friend of mine sent me an interesting piece of writing that presumably someone had posted on the internet. The title was “An Era of Super-reversal and Reverse Mentoring.” An American friend of mine sent me an article titled, “Gen Z Is Apparently Baffled by Basic Technology” by Victor Tangermann. The article on reverse mentoring solemnly announces, “We are now living

March 8, 2023

[Paul Scharre] How to counter China’s scary use of AI tech

Nowhere is the competition in developing artificial intelligence fiercer than in the accelerating rivalry between the United States and China. At stake in this competition is not just who leads in AI but who sets the rules for how it is used. China is forging a new model of digital authoritarianism at home and is actively exporting it abroad. It has launched a national-level AI development plan with the intent to be the global leader by 2030. And it is spending billions on AI deployment, trainin

March 7, 2023

[Martin Schram] One-China policy can be win-win for all

Tweets and texts were popping all over the place on Wednesday. Not only were China’s economic experts surprised -- but their leaders were actually satisfied. China’s economy had just rebounded quite strongly, as the country reopened after its full-stop COVID shutdown. February’s numbers showed China’s manufacturing sector registered its largest growth in a decade. So, this may be a good time to remind China’s President Xi Jinping of something I warned him about just

March 7, 2023

[Mariana Mazzucato, Rosie Collington] Consultants and the crisis of capitalism

In recent years, McKinsey & Company has become a household name -- but for all the wrong reasons. One of the “Big Three” consulting firms, its work for major corporations and governments has increasingly become a source of scandal and intrigue around the world. In the United States, for example, McKinsey agreed to pay nearly $600 million for its role in the deadly opioid epidemic, following allegations that it had advised Purdue Pharma on how to “turbocharge” sales of Oxy

March 6, 2023

[Song Young-gil] Lessons from France’s energy policies

Increasing the share of nuclear energy to replace renewable energy is considered a move against carbon neutrality. Whenever the current South Korean government insists on the legitimacy of its pro-nuclear energy policy, France, a powerhouse in nuclear energy, is cited as a successful case. However, a closer look at France’s nuclear power policy within the framework of its energy mix shows that Korea and France are quite different in many aspects. The two nations' energy policies share

March 6, 2023