[Kim Seong-kon] From Hallyu fans to Korean studies specialists

The other day, I passed by a Books-A-Million store near my house in rural New England. Otherwise known as “BAM!,” this big store is a typical pop culture emporium that sells books, DVDs, movies and toys. Normally I would walk by without a second thought, but I saw something that intrigued me, a big poster hanging on the front window that said, “K-Pop Available Here.” The poster got me so curious that I decided to drop in to see what they had. Inside, I found another large

May 10, 2023

[Antara Haldar] The price of sweatshop development

It has been ten years since an eight-story commercial building housing several textile factories on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed on April 24, 2013. The collapse of Rana Plaza claimed the lives of 1,134 people and severely injured 2,000 more, most of them women. It was the deadliest industrial disaster since the 1984 gas leak that killed more than 3,000 people in Bhopal, India, and the worst accident in the modern history of the textile industry. Thousands of workers were trapped

May 10, 2023

[Faye Flam] AI helps us read minds, but should we?

Since mind reading has only existed in the realms of fantasy and fiction, it seems fair to apply the phrase to a system that uses brain scan data to decipher stories that a person has read, heard, or even just imagined. It’s the latest in a series of spooky linguistic feats fueled by artificial intelligence, and it’s left people wondering what kinds of nefarious uses humanity will find for such advances. Even the lead researcher on the project, computational neuroscientist Alexander

May 9, 2023

[Jonathan Bernstein] Why US elections are more democratic

Colin Allred, a former NFL player now in his third term in the US House, plans to give up a safe Texas seat to take on Ted Cruz for the US Senate in 2024. He is probably Democrats’ best hope to challenge the Republican incumbent. While his bid, announced Wednesday, is a long shot, Allred’s candidacy is proof that the torrent of money involved in political campaigns, and specifically the huge number of small-scale donations, has been a boon for American democracy. A lot of people hav

May 9, 2023

[Nicholas Goldberg] Trump‘s up in the polls. How can that be?

I guess it’s possible that Republicans really don’t care about Donald Trump’s run-ins with the law. Maybe, despite the numerous allegations, investigations and charges against him -- for rape, for defamation, for seeking to subvert the 2020 election, for his role in the Jan. 6 assault, for falsifying records about hush money payments -- he will maintain his position as the front-running GOP candidate and once again persuade his tens of millions of zealous supporters to vote for

May 8, 2023

[Tom Ginsburg] Charles' realm will not disappear

As Britain’s King Charles III is officially coronated, the “empire on which the sun never set” is looking a little shabby. In addition to the United Kingdom, 14 former British colonies still maintain Charles as their monarch and head of state, but many of his subjects around the world are reconsidering the arrangement. Barbados became a republic in 2021, and Jamaica has initiated a similar process of constitutional reform. Others might soon follow. Why should countries from Bel

May 8, 2023

[Robert J. Fouser] Problems with the ‘Pax Americana’ revival

President Yoon Suk-yeol charmed Washington last week on his first state visit to the US. His speech before a joint session of Congress was received warmly and his rendition of “American Pie” was the highlight of a lavish state dinner. He relished the hospitality, much as President Joe Biden did on a visit to Ireland in mid-April. The visit will be remembered, however, as a turning point, not in relations between South Korea and the US but in relations between South Korea and China. P

May 5, 2023

[Wang Son-taek] The secret to success following the Korea-US summit

President Yoon Suk Yeol returned to Seoul after a state visit to the US. As the visit is of national interest, it is natural to see many assessments and debates on whether the summit was successful. However, there are concerning elements in the discussions. The evaluations are sharply divided according to the political camps, becoming the subject of political struggle and causing the whole country to be cut in two. However, applying such tribalism to the outcome of the President's foreign

May 4, 2023

[Noah Feldman] Kids have free speech rights too

The new bipartisan bill to limit kids’ access to social media will no doubt appeal to many parents. The trouble is that, under existing First Amendment doctrine, the proposed law is almost certainly unconstitutional. For the Supreme Court to uphold it would require it to repudiate a 2011 precedent, Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, which struck down a California ban on selling or renting violent video games to minors. The proposed legislation, named the Protecting Kids on Soc

May 4, 2023

[Jean Pisani-Ferry] Economic threat of geopolitical primacy

In recent weeks, there has been no shortage of speeches by prominent leaders discussing their countries’ relationships with China and the potential economic fallout of geopolitical fragmentation. This is a welcome, if much-belated, discussion. But it must address a fundamental question: Can rivalry and economic integration coexist and, if so, under which terms? The answer will determine the fate of the global economy. In February 2020, Jennifer Harris and Jake Sullivan published an article

May 3, 2023

[Faye Flam] Threat from Pacific garbage patch

The infamous Pacific garbage patch is changing the balance of life in the seas. At least 37 species of coastal creatures -- worms, crabs, shellfish and the like -- have colonized the Texas-sized plastic tangle, turning it into an unnatural floating habitat. The findings, reported in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, show life’s tenacity, with a variety of castaway creatures treating our trash as their own Noah’s Ark. But it’s not something to celebrate. It should be a

May 2, 2023

[J. Bradford DeLong] Neoliberalism’s final stronghold

The past decade has not been kind to neoliberalism. With 40 years of deregulation, financialization, and globalization having failed to deliver prosperity for anyone but the rich, the United States and other Western liberal democracies have seemingly moved on from the neoliberal experiment and re-embraced industrial policy. But the economic paradigm that underpinned Thatcherism, Reaganomics and the Washington Consensus is alive and well in at least one place: the pages of the Economist. A re

May 1, 2023

[Joseph E. Stiglitz] How the US Fed undermined its own credibility

The aftershocks of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, while seemingly fading, are still reverberating around the world. Although Federal Reserve officials have taken pains to assure the public that the US banking system is sound, it is unclear why anyone should believe them. After all, Fed Chair Jerome Powell told the US Congress the same thing just days before SVB’s collapse in March. In the weeks since then, it was reported that the vaunted stress tests established by the 2010 Dodd-Fr

May 1, 2023

[Christopher Cokinos] Root for SpaceX’s Starship rocket

Elon Musk is the most morally dubious rocket pioneer since Wernher von Braun. And the most successful. With each, we can critique faults and celebrate achievements. Von Braun, who supervised the V-2 weapon program for the Third Reich and once calculated the number of slave laborers needed for more efficient production of the system, went on to supervise America’s Saturn V moon rocket. The latter was laudable. The former probably would have led to Von Braun’s arrest by the Allies had

April 28, 2023

[Lee Kyong-hee] Take heed of North Korea’s food insecurity

North Korea is no stranger to chronic food shortages. For the past 17 consecutive years the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has placed the North on its list of countries in need of external assistance. The FAO’s latest quarterly review, “Crop Prospects and Food Situation,” issued last month, says, “A large portion of the population suffers from low levels of food consumption and poor dietary diversity. The food security situation is expected to remain fragile, given

April 27, 2023

[Kim Seong-kon] What to expect from the Korea-US summit meeting

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the South Korea-US alliance. To commemorate the invaluable friendship of these two countries, US President Joe Biden will host a state visit of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday. As international crises have loomed here and there and disrupted world peace lately, this upcoming summit in Washington is certainly very timely. In the past, when South Korea was underdeveloped and weak, it was almost the sole beneficiary of the Mutual Defense T

April 26, 2023

[Scott Moore, Derek Scissors] China may be just running in place

Something about China encourages grandiose predictions. Just a few years ago, the US Intelligence Community forecast China would emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic economically and politically stronger than the United States. Now a popular view in Washington is that China will soon pass its economic and military peak, and the US will confront a declining power willing to take desperate measures, especially in the event of a confrontation over Taiwan. Beijing’s military exercises following T

April 26, 2023

[Contribution] From Tesla to Rimac -- a highway to EV mobility

Following its energy transition strategy, the European Union has announced that the production of petrol cars within the EU market will be halted after 2035, as confirmed by the European Parliament last week. Overall adherence to this goal among EU member states has thus far been encouraging. In 2021, 19 percent of all newly registered passenger vehicles in the EU were electric, with more than 1.2 million EV cars sold. In some countries, such as Norway, 75 percent of all newly registered cars we

April 25, 2023

Ukraine hopes for S. Korean arms in fight against Russia

Ukraine is hoping for South Korea's defense support in its fight against Russia, said the Ukrainian Embassy in Seoul on Monday. The comments came after President Yoon Suk Yeol said that South Korea could provide aid beyond humanitarian or financial support if Ukraine comes under large-scale attacks against civilians in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday. Korea can support Ukraine by providing state-of-the-art Korean-made defense equipment, said the embassy. "The continuation of tim

April 25, 2023

[Stephen L. Carter] The costs of pandering to the crowd

I’m not surprised that Fox News settled the Dominion defamation lawsuit, though like everyone else I’m taken aback by the amount. My suspicion is that the decision to drop the defense stemmed less from a fear of the jury verdict -- which might have been much lower -- than from the reputational toll a trial would have caused. And if there’s a lesson here, it’s not so much about Fox News as such but about the growing costs of pandering to your audience. If you’re r

April 25, 2023