While I studied at teachers’ college, I dreamt of being a good teacher who played a small part in making our society better, and I also wanted to enjoy my free time reading English literature. I vividly remember how elated I was when I became an English teacher at a public school. However, my teacher’s life was very different from what I had expected. I was too busy to talk about a better society while working with accumulated paperwork and teaching textbook English for exams. I could not even f

May 30, 2012

Japan’s economy has been in a deep funk for two decades. China is in desperate need of a new economic and political model. And yet Korea keeps going from strength to strength, and is on track to overtake Japan’s income per capita.Korea’s economic catch-up has been nothing short of miraculous. Its income per capita has jumped from less than 20 percent of Japan’s four decades ago to 90 percent today. The catch-up vis-a-vis the U.S. is equally impressive ― from about 10 percent of U.S. income per c

May 30, 2012

This past week South Korea hosted the APEC education summit in Gyeongju -- a certain nod to Korea’s recent rise in the international arena with events such as the 2010 G20 summit and the nuclear summit hosted last month. Korea is making waves in respect to its educational system with statements of affirmation from such luminaries as U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and U.S. President Obama. There are naysayers from within the “trenches” of Korean education who challenge this grand rhetoric, ho

May 30, 2012

PARIS ― The euro, many now believe, will not survive a failed political class in Greece or escalating levels of unemployment in Spain: just wait another few months, they say, the European Union’s irresistible collapse has started.Dark prophecies are often wrong, but they may also become self-fulfilling. Let’s be honest: playing Cassandra nowadays is not only tempting in a media world where “good news is no news”; it actually seems more justified than ever. For the EU, the situation has never app

May 29, 2012

Global trading patterns have become increasingly intertwined. So too has global prosperity. Rather than products or services simply originating in one country and being sold in another, value is often added by many countries involved in complex supply chains. This means that one country’s success in enabling trade not only plays a significant part in its own overall competitiveness, and by association, prosperity, but also has implications for the competitiveness of other countries. Moreover, si

May 29, 2012

Did you hear about the new bill that would allow the U.S. government’s official overseas information agency to rebroadcast its content onto American TV and radio? The bipartisan Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 was introduced in Congress last week by Reps. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) and Adam Smith (D-Washington), both of whom are presumably dissatisfied with their satellite TV package and think more government-produced content would go down better with an after-work beer.Not really. As Thornb

May 28, 2012

CAIRO ― A few days ago, I watched a debate between Amr Moussa and Abdel Moneim Aboul-fotoh, two of the leading candidates among the 13 running for president of Egypt. This stunning debate went on for more than four hours and was watched by millions of Egyptians and Arabs. Contrary to the perception around the world that Egypt is inexorably sinking into chaos and intolerance, this debate in many ways reflects the hope for a new Egypt following last year’s January 25 revolution.From the time of Ra

May 28, 2012

In the millions of words written about Europe’s debt crisis, Germany is typically cast as the responsible adult and Greece as the profligate child. Prudent Germany, the narrative goes, is loath to bail out freeloading Greece, which borrowed more than it could afford and now must suffer the consequences. Would it surprise you to know that Europe’s taxpayers have provided as much financial support to Germany as they have to Greece? An examination of European money flows and central-bank balance sh

May 28, 2012

Recent weeks have seen what some are calling a “shareholder spring” in the U.S. and Europe. Investors, led by institutional shareholders (traditionally a quiescent bunch), have protested pay awards for top executives at several big public companies, and in some cases have overturned them. European Union regulators are now considering a next step: giving owners a binding vote on top pay instead of the nonbinding “say on pay” that prevails in much of the EU and in the U.S. since 2011, compliments

May 27, 2012

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts ― It is with regret that we announce the death of inflation targeting. The monetary-policy regime, known as IT to friends, evidently passed away in September 2008. The lack of an official announcement until now attests to the esteem in which it was held, its usefulness as an ornament of credibility for central banks, and fears that there might be no good candidates to succeed it as the preferred anchor for monetary policy.Inflation targeting was born in New Zealand in Ma

May 27, 2012

WASHINGTON ― Rearranging the deck chairs would not have saved the Titanic. Nor did the endless debates on the shape of the table in the Vietnam negotiations advance the effort to end that malign conflict. Nevertheless, many American presidents have successfully redesigned talks with adversaries in bold new ways to strengthen national security without war. Such boldness is now needed in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt negotiated personally with Soviet F

May 27, 2012

The second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster passed with little fanfare last month. But with our government on the brink of allowing the oil industry to explore in America’s remote Arctic Ocean this summer, it is worth revisiting some of the lessons learned from the biggest oil spill in the nation’s history. Stopping that spill took three months, even though it occurred in the relatively calm waters of the Gulf of Mexico near Coast Guard stations, cleanup equipment, and abundant shor

May 25, 2012