The Korea Herald

[Kim Ji-hyun] Thirst for a female leader

“No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half of its citizens.” — Michelle Obama ... It’s a well-known quote, and by a woman who was a working professional, a mother and also the wife of one of the most respected men on earth. So the saying, that behind every great man is a great woman, really does ring true in this case. And unlike many of Obama’s predecessors, Michelle went her own way and showed that the wife of a

June 14, 2017

[Kim Ji-hyun] Thirst for a female leader

[Albert R. Hunt] Read this book. It’ll rattle you.

Before settling in for pleasurable summer books, read Graham Allison’s “Destined for War: Can American and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?”A warning label: It’s going to scare the hell out of you.It starts with the Athenian historian’s chronicle of the conflict between Sparta and Athens in the fifth century BC as a way to tackle the larger question of whether war can be averted when an aggressive rising nation threatens a dominant power. Allison, a renowned Harvard University scholar and nationa

June 13, 2017

[Kim Seong-kon] Waiting for our Maxwell’s Demon

In his short story “Entropy” and his celebrated novel “The Crying of Lot 49,” Thomas Pynchon warns us of the possible annihilation of human civilization, using the second law of thermodynamics, also known as the entropy theory. According to Pynchon and the entropy theory, if everything becomes the same without diversity in an isolated system, its molecules will stop moving and the system will be in a steady state of equilibrium. Then the system will be pronounced dead, as the increase of entropy

June 13, 2017

[Kim Seong-kon] Waiting for our Maxwell’s Demon

[Robin Abcarian] Comey’s lessons for harassed workers

Harassed people of the American workplace, listen and learn.James Comey has something to teach you.Last week, a lot of us thought former FBI Director Comey’s interactions with President Donald Trump were eerily reminiscent of the kind of harassment many women experience in the workplace.Comey said he felt uneasy in meetings with Trump. Trump, he said, tried to get him alone and then asked him to do things that made him squirm.And then, when Comey appeared Thursday before the Senate Intelligence

June 13, 2017

[Lee Jae-min] Bringing chorus back to KORUS

Since the inauguration of the Trump Administration, South Korea has been holding its breath. The fate of the five-year-old Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement (once termed as “KORUS” FTA hinting at chorus) has suddenly become uncertain. The dreaded term “termination” finally surfaced during President Trump’s interview on April 28, where he described the trade pact as “a horrible deal that should’ve never been made,” vowing renegotiation and possible termination. This has set South Korea scr

June 13, 2017

[Lee Jae-min] Bringing chorus back to KORUS

[Raj Persaud & Adiran Furnham] The snap election trap

The Conservative Party’s loss of its parliamentary majority in the United Kingdom’s snap election has proved political pundits, pollsters and other prognosticators wrong once again. And, once again, various explanations are being offered for an outcome that few expected.For example, many have pointed out that Theresa May, the Conservative prime minister, campaigned poorly and that pollsters’ models underestimated turnout by younger voters. At the same time, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the oppos

June 13, 2017

[Other view] ‘War on drugs’ is costing thousands of lives

While American foreign policy has for years fixated on the conflict in Syria and the Middle East, just across the border in Mexico and throughout Central America tens of thousands of people lost their lives last year because of the conflict between drug cartels competing to deliver illicit drugs into the United States.According to a recent report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, while approximately 50,000 lives were lost in Syria last year, approximately 39,000 were killed

June 13, 2017

[Jan-Werner Mueller] Theresa May’s other citizens of nowhere

British Prime Minister Theresa May has, of her own volition, stripped her Conservative Party of its governing parliamentary majority by calling an early election. If she stays on as prime minister, she will also strip British citizens of the political and economic rights conferred by membership in the European Union. But May’s habit of stripping away people’s rights and powers is not new: For years, she has been normalizing the practice of stripping certain Britons of their citizenship altogethe

June 12, 2017

[Jan-Werner Mueller] Theresa May’s other citizens of nowhere

[Other view] Theresa May’s disastrous failure

UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s election gamble has failed disastrously. The consequences are dire for her party and government, and could be equally bad for her country’s relationship with Europe.May had hoped to increase her Conservative majority in Parliament, and instead has seen it wiped out. The Tories are the largest party in the House of Commons and with the support of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionists intend to form a government. Directing policy and passing legislation, however,

June 12, 2017

[Fabiola Santiago] Did Cuba issue play a role in Rubio’s questioning of Comey?

It may be hard to fathom outside of Miami, but the island of Cuba and Cuban-American politics could have played a role in Thursday’s historic hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.Did the influential Republican senator from Miami on the committee, Marco Rubio, trade the integrity of this country for the pledge of a US policy shift on Cuba from President Donald Trump? The optics -- and the timing of a yet unscheduled visit b

June 12, 2017

[Dick Meyer] The constitution has an HR problem

There is no doubt that our system of constitutional government is in a period of distress, but there is considerable doubt about the causes.All attention is now on President Donald Trump -- his ignorance of and disrespect for the Constitution and the basics of American civics. But gridlock, broken trust and rancid partisanship, the main symptoms of constitutional dysfunction, predated Trump’s election. Trump may have turned a serious illness into a lethal disease, but he is not the original sinn

June 12, 2017

[Dick Meyer] The constitution has an HR problem

[Pankaj Mishra] India’s illiberal democracy

Remorselessly attacking the media, President Donald Trump advances a worldwide culture of impunity. Demagogues and despots flourish in his long shadow: Elected ones, Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Vladimir Putin of Russia, as well as the house of Saud, use the opportunity to expand their power and crush their critics. But nowhere is the ongoing global assault on democratic norms as multi-pronged, devastating and poorly scrutinized as in India, ruled by a Hindu supremacist party, t

June 12, 2017

[Mac Margolis] Rio’s fight against crime enters the 21st century

Whenever violent crime gets out of hand in Rio de Janeiro, as it frequently has, the public glare has fallen on the harried police force. The overtaxed lawmen’s familiar refrain: “Police are not omnipresent,” a disclaimer that doubled as a labor grievance. The only way to keep up with the city’s busy criminals, so the argument went, was for authorities to put more boots on the ground and allow cops to power up to keep pace with the bandits’ increasingly sophisticated arsenal.Now, thanks to long

June 12, 2017

[Therese Raphael] Theresa May’s biggest mistake

It’s happened again: The leader of a mainstream party was given favorable election odds, ran a poor campaign, got trounced on social media and was taught a painful lesson by voters. It’s tempting to ask if they’ll ever learn.Theresa May, the UK prime minister, is known as a careful plodder, more technocrat and master-of-the-brief than glad-hander. But she took the biggest gamble possible in politics: She called an election she didn’t have to call in a bid to increase her governing majority. Davi

June 11, 2017

[Therese Raphael] Theresa May’s biggest mistake

[Steven Bucci] Missile defense test shows America’s body armor is getting stronger

In late May, the Missile Defense Agency shot down a mock intercontinental ballistic missile with another missile. It was the equivalent of hitting a bullet with a bullet -- in space.The successful test confirmed that our country is making good progress in developing an effective missile defense system. And effective missile defense is needed now more than ever.The Obama administration allowed the US ballistic missile defense enterprise -- in reality, several systems tied together -- to pretty mu

June 11, 2017

[Steven Bucci] Missile defense test shows America’s body armor is getting stronger

[David Ignatius] The moralist versus the dealmaker

What does the FBI director do when he suspects the president is a manipulative liar? The answer in James Comey‘s case is that he writes memos, tries to evade demands for loyalty -- and anguishes about protecting himself and the FBI.But by Comey’s own admission, perhaps he should have done more.The big news had already surfaced before Comey’s appearance Thursday at the Senate Intelligence Committee, with the release of his prepared testimony. What we got at the hearing was the raw morality play,

June 11, 2017

[Barry Ritholtz] Trump’s economic agenda is almost dead

Today’s column veers dangerously into “I told you so” territory. I take neither pleasure nor credit for recognizing that a once-in-a-generation opportunity is slipping away.In February, I warned that President Donald Trump was repeating his predecessor’s rookie mistakes. In March, I noted that the odds of passing important economic legislation had fallen meaningfully. This missive offers the direst warning of all, with significant ramifications for equity markets.Let’s begin with the observation

June 11, 2017

[Virginia Heffernan] Stop playing the climate blame game

We don’t know if President Trump believes in climate change. He just won’t say. And although we desperately want him to admit (while weeping for mercy, ideally) that he was wrong in 2012 to tweet that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese,” that’s not going to happen. The president will never say he was wrong. Reporters who continue to interrogate him and his spokespeople about the climate must give this catechism a rest.That said, it’s well worth confronting the broa

June 11, 2017

[Other view] Comey testifies, long process begins

During the Watergate hearings, Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee asked, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” At the outset of Senate hearings and an investigation by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III into the Trump campaign’s connection to Russian operatives and Russian interference in the 2016 president campaign, the question is: “What did the president mean when he said what he said to FBI Director James Comey?”That question was not conclusively answered by Comey in his test

June 11, 2017

[Martin Schram] Comey’s smoldering account burns Trump but is no smoking gun

Yet another Oval Office conversation was delving into yet another president’s determined wish to shut down yet another FBI investigation that had gotten way too close.But this was 2017, not 1972. And the art of this deal was cutting out middle men entirely. This time, the artful deal-master, President Donald Trump, chose to do all the deal-making himself.And that is one big difference between the stunning, detailed revelations fired FBI Director James Comey made this week regarding his one-on-on

June 9, 2017

[Martin Schram] Comey’s smoldering account burns Trump but is no smoking gun