The Korea Herald

[Glyn Ford] EU’s food aid for North Koreans

The European Union announced on the July 4 that it was to provide 10 million euros ($14.3 million) of emergency food aid to North Korea to be distributed through the World Food Program over the next three months ― until the end of September, just prior to the arrival of this year’s harvest. This aid represents a much delayed response to an initial request for humanitarian assistance sent by Foreig

July 19, 2011

[Glyn Ford] EU’s food aid for North Koreans

[Simon Johnson] Contagion in three forms now has grip on Europe

There are three types of contagion in a financial crisis, when the potential collapse of a firm, bank or country threatens to spiral out of control. The European Union today has all three. The first type is purely psychological ― the panic of herd behavior. The second comes from thinking through the real effects that a collapse would have, as the potential spillovers dawn on people. The third, and

July 19, 2011

[Kim Seong-kon] Unstoppable heart, soft generation

The other day while walking on the campus of Seoul National University, I saw a big poster put up by the College of Humanities Student Association. The poster harshly criticized the incorporation plan of the university scheduled to be effective as of 2012, asserting that students do not want any radical change on campus.Then I found an amusingly contradictory signature at the bottom of the poster:

July 19, 2011

[Kim Seong-kon] Unstoppable heart, soft generation

[Khaled Diab] Arab Spring stops short of gender revolution

JERUSALEM ― In the early days of the Egyptian revolution, Tahrir Square provided a tantalizing glimpse of what the new Egypt might look like if differences of class, religion, gender and age melted into insignificance. Muslims and Christians mingled; the old followed the young’s lead; men and women became comrades.“The social problems that have plagued Egypt for years seem to have dissolved in the

July 19, 2011

[Olivia Hernndez] Let JYJ appear on TV

JYJ became honorary ambassadors for Jeju Island as part of its bid to become one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. JYJ started activities to promote the island and encouraged us, the fans, to vote for Jeju.As we love JYJ so much, and we also like Korea from the bottom of our hearts, we started voting for Jeju Island in order to help Korea and make JYJ happy. We did this believing and trusting

July 19, 2011

[Casey Lartigue, Jr.] Park Chung-hee: Dictator or benevolent autocrat?

Park Chung-heeIt ain’t necessarily so. That’s what New York University economics professor William Easterly essentially says about crediting “benevolent autocrats” like South Korea’s Park Chung-hee for high growth rates.In “Benevolent Autocrats,” a provocative working paper posted in May, Easterly 1) argues that economists should be skeptical of the “benevolent autocrat” theory; (2) questions whet

July 19, 2011

[Casey Lartigue, Jr.] Park Chung-hee: Dictator or benevolent autocrat?

[Fidel V. Ramos] Building Pax Asia-Pacifica

MANILA ― One of the main sources of tension in Asia nowadays are the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, where the Philippines, Vietnam, China, and others have conflicting claims. In Chinese media reports, the heightened “unfriendliness” in the region has allegedly arisen from “bad rumors and speculations” on the part of Filipino commentators. But the reality is starker: the intrusions by Chin

July 18, 2011

[Fidel V. Ramos] Building Pax Asia-Pacifica

Debt-ceiling denial would worsen fiscal problems

Even if the White House and congressional leaders reach a deal to raise the debt limit, they face at least two hurdles to persuading rank-and-file Republicans to go along. Some cling to a disturbing belief that the Treasury Department doesn’t need to borrow more money to keep America’s creditors happy. And many more insist that the deal must include a constitutional amendment to require a balanced

July 18, 2011

[Meghan Daum] Jaycee Dugard and the feel-good imperative

To watch Diane Sawyer’s recent interview with Jaycee Dugard was to wonder at times if that was Dugard herself on screen or an actress hired to play the role of the quintessential survivor. Dugard was so serene and lacking in rancor that it was hard to believe she had been kidnapped at age 11 and held prisoner for 18 years, during which she was repeatedly raped and bore two children, the first when

July 18, 2011

[Meghan Daum] Jaycee Dugard and the feel-good imperative

[Peter Singer] Progress in treatment of animals

PRINCETON ― Mahatma Gandhi acutely observed that “the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” To seek to reduce the suffering of those who are completely under one’s domination, and unable to fight back, is truly a mark of a civilized society.Charting the progress of animal-welfare legislation around the world is therefore an indication of mo

July 18, 2011

[Peter Singer] Progress in treatment of animals

[Jahan Alamzad] 2008 crisis: Black swan or flashing red flamingo?

I was in Korea on a project when the financial meltdown of 2008 started. In a Seoul cab chatting with an American colleague in the early stages of the debacle, he confided that the worst was yet to come. Indeed, it came with a tsunami force. By the end of 2008 when I was back in the U.S., the shambles was evident, and was getting worse.The term “black swan” is now in vogue after Nassim Taleb’s boo

July 18, 2011

[Michael Smerconish] Keyboard not the right replacement for cursive

I didn’t yet know what a font was but I do recall that learning how to write in cursive was a big deal, the sort of thing you anxiously anticipated.I can still picture how each letter was posted in cursive above the blackboard in classrooms, and I remember all the time we spent trying to mimic those letters with our No. 2 pencils on white-lined paper. It was a milestone lesson, akin to learning to

July 18, 2011

[David Ignatius] The world according to Murdoch

WASHINGTON ― Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. is a company with a chip on its shoulder. His defy-the-establishment sensibility has built a print and television empire, to the despair of more traditional (and, Murdoch would say, elitist) rivals. But the phone-hacking scandal that now envelops one of Murdoch’s British publications shows how corrosive this style of anything-goes journalism can be. It’s be

July 17, 2011

[David Ignatius] The world according to Murdoch

TSA can be smarter about passenger patdowns

When you read last week that terrorists have discussed surgically implanting explosives in passengers so they could blow up airliners, did you feel a little less aggrieved about the TSA agents who supposedly patted down a 95-year-old woman in a wheelchair?That patdown was a late-June outrage du jour about the Transportation Security Administration. The story: The elderly woman was patted down and,

July 17, 2011

[Shashi Tharoor] Is Kabul ready to stand alone?

NEW DELHI ― U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement of the start of American troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, and his administration’s increasing emphasis on reconciliation with the Taliban, have been studied attentively in one capital that has a large stake in the outcome ― New Delhi.India has no troops in Afghanistan, but it has invested roughly $1.5 billion to help reconstruct the country

July 17, 2011

[Shashi Tharoor] Is Kabul ready to stand alone?

[Peter Goldmark] Debt threats plague the United States and Europe

The months ahead in 2011 will constitute a summer to remember for a long, long time.The world’s two largest economies ― the United States and Europe ― are drifting toward brutal days of reckoning. Both economies face severe financial and economic challenges.Failure by either or both would send severe shocks through the already limping global economy. In the United States, a fiercely aroused but in

July 17, 2011

[Daniel Akst] Obama rewards GOP stonewalling

Everyone knows you can train a dog by rewarding the behavior you want Rover to repeat. But Barack Obama has always been ambitious, so he trains Republicans. The behavior he rewards is intransigence. Every time congressional Republicans adopt an inflexible position ― such as their current no-tax-hikes stance in negotiations over raising the federal debt ceiling ― the president rewards them with a t

July 17, 2011

[Tim Rutten] News Corp. scandal shows decline of media

The only sort of power a news organization can wield safely is the power to persuade.Every other sort ― no matter how high-minded or expedient the reason for taking it up ― is a kind of slow poison that twists the souls of the journalists involved and, ultimately, makes their enterprise dangerously self-interested and unaccountable. That’s the fundamental lesson to be taken from the spectacle of t

July 17, 2011

[Jonathan Schell] The fall of the house of Murdoch

NEW YORK ― During the four decades since the Watergate affair engulfed U.S. President Richard Nixon, politicians have repeatedly ignored the scandal’s main lesson: the cover-up is worse than the crime. Like Nixon, they have paid a higher price for concealing their misdeeds than they would have for the misdeeds alone.Now, for once, comes a scandal that breaks that rule: the United Kingdom’s phone-h

July 15, 2011

[Jonathan Schell] The fall of the house of Murdoch

[Editorial] International assistance vital for South Sudan

A newly independent country in North Africa has got off to an uncertain start. The country needs support from the international community until it can move ahead on its own.South Sudan, officially the Republic of South Sudan, became the 54th independent nation on the African continent when it officially separated from Sudan on July 9.Over the past half-century, the Sudanese people suffered from ci

July 15, 2011