[Robert J. Fouser] Korea’s ‘culture of caregiving’

In response to the surging delta variant of COVID-19 around the world, more countries are requiring proof of vaccination for employment and access to public places. A range of institutions in the US is now requiring employees to get vaccinated. France and Italy require proof of vaccination to enter businesses and public places. These measures have produced vocal resistance, but a strong social consensus has emerged to support them. Amid the flurry of news about vaccination requirements, I thoug

Aug. 13, 2021

[Kim Myong-sik] Ruling force seeks ‘North Wind’ for next election

In South Korean political terminology, the “North Wind” means the North Korean factor in major political events in the South, such as general elections. Just as northwesterly winds thrash the Korean Peninsula and make its winters harsher, North Korea can influence the South’s social climate by affecting people’s sense of security, hence the North Wind. Past military-backed administrations used to play up signs of North Korea’s aggressiveness, like shootings along

Aug. 12, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] Out of the past and into the future

The past is something from which we should learn valuable lessons, not something to have a grudge about or to misuse for the sake of personal vendettas. Regrettably, however, our left-wing politicians are hopelessly obsessed with past resentments, thereby preventing South Korea from soaring into the future. Consequently, they have dragged the nation’s people into the labyrinth of the past for the last few years. In today’s South Korea, therefore, the future is nebulous and history

Aug. 11, 2021

[Ana Palacio] The EU’s post-Merkel void

The European project has always had its fault lines, but they have rarely caused earthquakes. That is thanks largely to Germany, which has proved to be a skilled arbitrator of disputes among European Union member states, especially during Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 16-year tenure. With Merkel’s final term ending in September, is the EU in for a tremor -- or worse? When Europe was focused exclusively on consolidating the single market, its fault lines were primarily economic. During

Aug. 10, 2021

[Jan-Werner Mueller] The far right’s new-old war on women

A grim 10-year anniversary last month did not go unmarked. On July 22, commentators around the world duly commemorated the 77 victims of a Norwegian far-right terrorist who detonated a bomb outside the prime minister’s office in downtown Oslo and then massacred teenagers attending a Labour Party summer camp on the island of Utoya. Most of these analyses aimed to understand the horror by way of the perpetrator’s “closely intertwined anti-Muslim and anti-social democratic sentim

Aug. 10, 2021

[Serendipity] Indomitable human spirit soars at Tokyo Olympic

Can the safety and health of the athletes be guaranteed? What is the point of having world-class athletes perform to an empty stadium? In a city where COVID-19 is raging out of control, would not the thousands who will descend upon it exacerbate the situation?　 These questions and more bothered me as countries debated whether to send their national teams to the once-delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics. For someone who has never played competitive sports and is not a great sports fan, participating in t

Aug. 6, 2021

[Tyler Cowen] The future will be weirder than we think

How weird is the future going to be? Just a little bit -- or plain flat-out radically unthinkably weird? And is this future 1,000 years from now -- or 100? The notion that the future will be weirder than we think, and come sooner, is a possibility raised by Holden Karnofsky, the co-chief executive officer of Open Philanthropy. It’s an intriguing and provocative idea. One complicating factor will be different forms of genetic engineering. As genomics progresses, we will be able to alter t

Aug. 6, 2021

[Lee Kyong-hee] Reconcile with the past and walk together

On a day of deepening COVID blues, I came across a heartwarming essay. Recalling our tumultuous days in middle and high school, the leader of my class wrote that she regretted not perceiving the undisclosed emotional pains of her cohorts. “Friends, forgive me!” she implored in an alumni newsletter. My friend and classmate recounted two episodes. The first was from April 19, 1960, when thousands of students marched to the presidential residence, claiming the election of President Syn

Aug. 5, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] In the era of artificial intelligence

Experts argue that artificial intelligence will bring a revolutionary change to our future lives. Of course, AI has its upsides and downsides: The good news is that AI will make our lives incredibly convenient, but the bad news is that it will replace humans in many jobs, such as cashiers, bank tellers, and even factory workers. Indeed, it is happening already. For example, if you go to a self-checkout lane at a store, AI will greet you and instruct you to complete the checkout process. If you

Aug. 4, 2021

[Kay C. James] Why Americans should be concerned about communist China’s outsize influence in Africa

For decades, communist China has been wielding its influence in African countries, establishing strong financial interests and working to convince growing nations that its authoritarian communism is a better form of government than democratic models of individual liberty and economic freedom. While not a typical kitchen-table issue for Americans, China’s stronghold on Africa poses serious national security and economic problems for the American people and human rights issues for many Afri

Aug. 3, 2021

[Karl W. Smith] No good from shrinking population

America’s population may be shrinking. That’s mostly because of COVID, but it’s also part of longer-term trends in fertility that show no signs of abating. These trends, which are worldwide, have already caused major economic dislocation and are likely to continue to do so. First, some data. From 1936 to 1956, the US fertility rate rose from 1.8 to 3.2. At the peak of the baby boom, the average woman in the US was having at least three children who survived until adulthood. (A

Aug. 2, 2021

[Digital Simplicity] Why I ended up on a self-hosted blog platform

Last week, I was struggling to fix the nagging security upgrade problem of my blog. To find a way to update an encryption security protocol, I studied dozens of online documents, but I felt clueless as they were filled with too much jargon and complex code-related instructions. I had no other choice but to take up the technical problem myself and somehow manage to stop the warning message popping up, since it’s a self-hosted blog. In other words, there is no kind technical assistant to r

July 31, 2021

[Robert J. Fouser] Focusing on ‘Global Common Good’

July began with tentative hopes that the world was finally turning the corner on the COVID-19 pandemic. After peaking in late April, new cases around the world fell steadily until the end of June. They ticked up a bit in early July and began to rise quickly as the delta variant spread rapidly around the world. The speed of delta’s spread has caught public health authorities around the world off guard and changed calculations about how to bring the pandemic under control. In South Korea,

July 30, 2021

[Kim Myong-sik] Wishing success of delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics

A successful Olympics first of all means the absence of major accidents or incidents during the two-week period in the host city. Then the International Olympic Committee, the national Olympic committee and the official sponsors would regard substantial income from the games as a success -- a lost dream this time in the state of emergency due to the coronavirus. Another measure of success for the quadrennial event is the number of participants and countries they represent. A total of 11,326 men

July 29, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] It happened while we fell asleep

In the late 1980s, when I visited big electronic stores in the US, such as Circuit City or Best Buy, I saw Japanese electronics such as Sony, Panasonic, and Hitachi television sets occupy the display floor like a conquering army. Far behind the Japanese products were two or three Samsung TV sets, sadly left out in the cold. Sanyo stereos, Toshiba laptops and Sony Walkman, too, joined the parade in those US electronics stores. At the time, Japanese electronic devices were Americans’ favorit

July 28, 2021

[Shang-Jin Wei] What if US delists Chinese firms?

Chinese firms are more enthusiastic than most about listing on US stock exchanges. Currently, 250 of them, including companies that are registered in Hong Kong or offshore centers but derive most of their revenue and profits from mainland China, trade on US equity markets. But a recent flurry of official measures in both China and the United States suggests that the two governments are not keen on Chinese firms retaining their US listings. If push comes to shove, how would delisting hurt either

July 27, 2021

[Hal Brands] Proxy warfare is baffling the US

What do rocket strikes by Shiite militias in Iraq, ransomware attacks on targets in the US, and Russia’s use of mercenaries on battlefields in the Middle East have in common? They are part of a trend in which America’s rivals are using nonstate actors and quasi-deniable means to put pressure on its interests. Washington is frequently finding itself on the business end of a classic strategy -- proxy warfare -- for which it has yet to devise an effective answer. Proxy warfare has bee

July 25, 2021

[Juan Manuel Santos] Peacemaking after the pandemic

In Paradise Lost, the English poet John Milton encapsulates a fundamental truth about the struggle to end a violent conflict and establish a sustainable peace: “Who overcomes by force,  Hath overcome but half his foe.” This insight was crucial to my own understanding of how to chart a way to end Colombia’s long and costly civil war, and it is acutely relevant to our shared global challenges today. To build peace, leaders need to foster hope and anchor policies in empath

July 22, 2021

[Lee Kyong-hee] Tripitaka tours for the pandemic-weary public

In 1398, the most complete collection of Buddhist texts went into Haein Temple, never to be seen in its entirety by the general public. This year, amid the global pandemic, the temple in Hapcheon, South Gyeongsang Province finally offered access, saying, “We hope to help people find the hope and strength to overcome the crisis, just as our forebears did in the face of foreign invasion.” Free tours began on June 19, the first of many scheduled on weekends, but now they are suspended

July 22, 2021

[Martin Schram] A life-saving name game

From voting rights to vaccinations, ever since we Americans have been forced to stare at the split-screen evolution of our political schizophrenia, we have always known that our new reality leads us to just one core question. Our problem is that we not only know The Question, but we also know The Answer. Today we will be looking at ways we can convert our new split-screen reality into a power-tool of manipulation. Then perhaps we can use it to save thousands of lives by finally getting America

July 21, 2021