The Korea Herald

[Lee Jae-min] Still Torn Between Two Cities

Recent price hikes for housing in Seoul have fanned deep frustration among those living outside Seoul. While prices in Seoul are going through the roof, real estate markets elsewhere are struggling with too many vacancies. Local money is flocking to the Seoul real estate market in droves. As ever, people and money keep coming to Seoul.Seoul’s status as a powerful magnet for people and national resources is a chronic problem for Korea. The Seoul Metropolitan Area accounted for 49.5 percent of the

Oct. 2, 2018

[Lee Jae-min] Still Torn Between Two Cities

[David Fickling] China’s claims on trade with US don’t add up

China has marked the latest ratcheting-up of trade tensions with a misplaced history lesson.　Far from worrying about its economic role in the world, the US should recognize just how well the two nations already support each other, according to a white paper released by China’s State Council: China-US bilateral trade has a strong complementarity. The US stands at the mid- and high-end in global value chains and it exports capital goods and intermediary goods to China. Remaining at the mid- and lo

Oct. 1, 2018

[Adam Minter] Big Brother creating two Chinas

Chinese authorities, who have long tried to limit the influence of foreign media and ideas, recently marked an escalation. In the span of a few days, authorities blocked access to Twitch, the video game live-streaming platform owned by Amazon.com; ordered a purge of foreign content from school textbooks; and proposed restricting foreign programming -- especially shows on current events -- from TV and online streaming sites.One might take the clampdown as yet more evidence of the government’s hol

Oct. 1, 2018

[Noah Smith] How Japan’s Abe should spend next three years

Japan’s economy is doing well. Unemployment is at multidecade lows. Capital expenditure is up, as is return on equity. And wages are finally rising. For the longer-term, Japan also looks strong. Contrary to the popular myth that the country suffered multiple lost decades after the bursting of the bubble economy in about 1990, Japan has outperformed many other rich countries in terms of real gross domestic product per working age population since the year 2000.　It’s small wonder, therefore, that

Oct. 1, 2018

[Noah Smith] How Japan’s Abe should spend next three years

[Shirin Ebadi & Christophe Deloire] Defending democracy’s essence

On Dec. 10, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, affirming the view that “the will of the people” -- democracy -- should form the basis of any government. But seven decades later, the world’s democracies are in peril. After a fourfold increase in the number of democracies between the end of World War II and 2000, we are now in a sustained period of political regression. Once-open societies are veering toward dictatorship, and in many countr

Oct. 1, 2018

[Timothy L. O’Brien] Trump and politics of disruption

When US President Donald Trump gave his first press conference in 19 months on Wednesday, he was asked about the laughter that greeted him at the United Nations after he claimed that “in the history of our country” his administration had proven to be unusually successful.“They weren’t laughing at me. They were laughing with me. We had fun. That was not laughing at me,” Trump replied. “So the fake news said people laughed at President Trump. They didn’t laugh at me. People had a good time with me

Oct. 1, 2018

[Timothy L. O’Brien] Trump and politics of disruption

[Adam Minter] Marriage in China shouldn’t break the bank

Getting married isn’t cheap in China. In Da’anliu, a small farming village outside Beijing, the local “bride price” -- the fee that a groom’s family pays to a bride’s in advance of their nuptials -- recently breached the $30,000 mark. That’s extreme for a village where incomes average $2,900 per year. So, this summer, local officials decreed that bride prices and associated wedding expenses shouldn’t exceed $2,900. Violators will be treated as human traffickers.Da’anliu’s price controls went vir

Sept. 30, 2018

[Adam Minter] Marriage in China shouldn’t break the bank

[Devendra Saksena] Uncle Sam has become Uncle Scrooge

World War II left the world in shambles. Europe was devastated; all major cities had been destroyed, the flower of European youth was gone, lying in unmarked graves. Asia had fared little better; China and Southeast Asia had borne the brunt of Japanese aggression, which itself had two nuclear bombs dropped on it. Africa had been devastated by the battling armies of Montgomery and Rommel. The Japanese had come to India’s doorstep and the Great Bengal Famine had inflicted horrendous causalities on

Sept. 30, 2018

[Devendra Saksena] Uncle Sam has become Uncle Scrooge

[David Ignatius] America is living under a volcano

America watched three searing versions of reality television this week. They all demonstrated that under the glare of the lights and the stress of questioning, character reveals itself. Christine Blasey Ford was a startlingly powerful witness before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, in part because she had been unknown to most Americans before the cameras started rolling. Her answers were clear and concise. She described what she remembered from 36 years ago, and what she didn’t. She n

Sept. 30, 2018

[Daniel Moss] Asia’s aversion to bank accounts a big deal

There’s a flaw in the forecast for an ever-rising Asia: a vast gap in the financial system. Big slices of the population don’t have a bank account.It’s hard to see the region reaching its full potential, let alone surpassing the US as an economic superpower, until this bridge is crossed. An economy without broad use of banks cannot grow into a superpower.East Asia and the Pacific seem to be making progress on this. Seventy-one percent of adults have a bank account or equivalent at a mobile money

Sept. 30, 2018

[Ferdinando Giugliano] Italy’s extraordinary act of self-harm

The budget that the Italian government is about to pass is a remarkable act of economic self-harm. The measures defy the rules of prudent debt management in order to fund outlays that will do little to improve Italy’s competitiveness. Most important, they tell investors that the populists have the upper hand in government. Italy’s creditworthiness is now that of its ruling parties: the League and the 5-Star Movement.The Italian government aims to run a budget deficit of 2.4 percent of gross dome

Sept. 30, 2018

[Eli Lake] Trump’s UN speech almost adds up to doctrine

President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is often caricatured as a mass of contradictions. He rails against the dumb wars of his predecessors, but has yet to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria. He taunted and threatened North Korea’s tyrannical leader, only to later meet him in Singapore for a lavish summit. Trump kisses up to Russia’s autocratic president, but his government sells weapons to Russia’s enemies and sanctions its senior officials.There is some truth to these criticis

Sept. 27, 2018

[Eli Lake] Trump’s UN speech almost adds up to doctrine

[Anjani Trivedi] China racing to top in income inequality

During China’s greatest period of economic growth, fed by widespread industrialization that lifted millions out of poverty, inequality has also increased -- at the fastest pace and to the highest level in the world. It may get worse.China’s Gini coefficient, a widely used measure of income dispersion across a population, has risen more steeply over the last decade than in any other country, according to an International Monetary Fund working paper. Some inequality is to be expected with industri

Sept. 27, 2018

[Trudy Rubin] 4 reasons why declaring peace on the Korean Peninsula is a bad idea

US President Donald Trump appears eager to declare that peace has come to the Korean Peninsula.　The president has deluded himself that North Korea is well on its way to getting rid of its nuclear weapons. Last week, he excitedly tweeted: “North Korea recommits to denuclearization -- we’ve come a long way.”　Yet Trump looks eager to overrule his top advisers, who warn of the risks of declaring peace before North Korea gets serious about eliminating its nuclear arsenal.　Instead the president may li

Sept. 26, 2018

[Kim Myong-sik] To receive Kim Jong-un in Seoul peacefully

People often say that President Moon Jae-in is a good man, but instantly add that he is “not necessarily a strong or capable leader, though.” The constantly smiling president demonstrated his affable character on his two-night, three-day visit to North Korea last week, during which he signed a broadly worded peace communique with North Korean chief Kim Jong-un and produced a fairly detailed agreement on reducing military tension in the Demilitarized Zone. Doubtless, Moon was immersed in the warm

Sept. 26, 2018

[Kim Myong-sik] To receive Kim Jong-un in Seoul peacefully

[Shuli Ren] Crazy-rich Asians are so yesterday in China

There’s a new breed of spender in charge of China’s wallets, and it’s not crazy-rich Asians.The rise of Pinduoduo Inc. and the decline of JD.com Inc. are good proxies for this shift. Founded three years ago, the e-commerce site Pinduoduo processed transactions worth 262 billion yuan ($38.3 billion) in the second quarter, just 40 percent shy of JD’s gross merchandise volume. The smaller company now has more annual active users than JD, China’s second-largest e-commerce provider with 16 percent of

Sept. 26, 2018

[Kim Hoo-ran] Staying clear-eyed on N. Korea more important than ever

The third summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang last week had many Instagrammable moments.There was the pomp and ceremony of Moon’s arrival at Sunan International Airport where he was greeted by Kim and his senior officials, ceremonial guards and a 21-gun salute. A motorcade through the Pyongyang thoroughfare saw the two leaders standing side by side in an open-top car waving at the crowds of people in colorful hanbok chanting “Unifica

Sept. 26, 2018

[Kim Hoo-ran] Staying clear-eyed on N. Korea more important than ever

[Ann McFeatters] Trump never appeals to our better angels

There is growing worry that Americans may be becoming less compassionate.There is a sense the dog-eat-dog world of national politics is filtering down. People are being worn down by crisis after crisis, by being pounded over and over by rhetoric that the US must be selfish and upend the world order to get what is best for it.US President Donald Trump was cheered by a certain section of citizens when he stood in front of Americans who had lost everything in two hurricanes -- including 2,975 of th

Sept. 26, 2018

[David Ignatius] Israeli-Palestinian peace process is dead

This month commemorates two pinnacles for the benign, naive superpower that was America, both involving our now-lost role as Middle East peacemaker. Forty years ago, President Jimmy Carter brokered the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt; and 25 years ago, President Bill Clinton presided over the signing of the Oslo Accord between Israel and the Palestinians. As we looked this week at the old photographs of beaming American presidents grandly mediating between adversaries, what was happe

Sept. 20, 2018

[David Ignatius] Israeli-Palestinian peace process is dead

[Pankaj Mishra] What Economist gets wrong about liberalism

Last weekend in London, the Economist braved angry protesters to host Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, and white nationalist, at the magazine’s Open Future festival. The week before, outrage on social media and threatened cancellations from invited speakers had forced the New Yorker to cancel a similar public interview with Bannon.The Economist has been a self-conscious flag-bearer of Anglo-American liberalism since it started publication 175 years ago. As its editor wrote

Sept. 20, 2018