Most Popular
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[Exclusive] Korean adoptee sisters meet for the first time in 39 years
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Yoon calls for measures to protect Koreans amid escalating Iran-Israel conflicts
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Signs point to N. Korean troops in Russia-Ukraine combat zone
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Rose's 'Apt.' redefines K-pop's global appeal
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Civil servant’s death linked to workplace bullying
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Two years on, thousands mourn Itaewon tragedy, calling for accountability
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[Weekender] Walk around Korea to really get to know the country
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N. Korea slams Seoul-Washington joint air exercise
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[Herald Interview] K-pop’s 'best years are ahead of us': Spotify’s general manager for Asia Pacific
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[Herald Interview] Love for K-drama, food defines 'Secret Ingredient'
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[Charles T. Clark] The trouble with living in denial
I’m a big believer in self-reflection on a personal level, a professional level and a societal level. I firmly believe that if we as individuals and collectively are able to critically think about our failures and shortcomings, we can use them as motivation and as a road map for how to improve. Now I wanted to begin there because it informs how I view this ongoing debate around critical race theory, which seems to have become the latest partisan flashpoint in the “culture wars.&rdq
June 14, 2021
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[Allison Schrager] Biden’s trickle-up economics is bound to fail
President Joe Biden’s recently unveiled budget marks a new era in US economic policymaking. Decades of trickle-down tax cuts are out the window; Biden is betting that trickle-up economics will deliver the kind of sustained and equitable growth we all want. But that’s a dangerously shortsighted strategy that in the long term will create far more stagnation than a Reaganomics agenda. Biden is proposing a very large expansion of government spending, to 25 percent of GDP from 20 percent
June 14, 2021
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[Digital Simplicity] ‘Project Hail Mary’ and the meaning of ‘cultural things’
Andy Weir’s much-awaited “Project Hail Mary” is certainly a page-turning interstellar tale that sends sci-fi fans on a thrilling space journey. Kirkus Reviews, a US-based book review magazine, hails it as an “unforgettable story of survival and the power of friendship.” But when I was reading the novel, switching between text and audiobook on my commute, instead of the matters of survival and friendship, something else kept me thinking about my own experiences.
June 12, 2021
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[Nicholas Stern] The investment imperative for the G-7
At the upcoming G-7 summit in Cornwall, the major economies’ leaders have a critical opportunity to agree on a plan that not only drives a strong recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic for their own countries, but also speeds the transition to a more sustainable, inclusive and resilient global economy. A key lesson that I trust G-7 governments have learned from COVID-19 is how exposed and vulnerable every country is to global threats, including infectious diseases, climate change and biodive
June 11, 2021
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Seizing an opportunity with nudges
Experts say that the coronavirus pandemic has devastated humankind to a level no one had imagined. However, as there is a saying that “every cloud has a silver lining,” we can still learn the lesson that crisis can lead to opportunity. I am so glad to share that my school took this difficult time as an opportunity for the school to grow in a very special way. That’s because my school community was open to changes and approached all the hurdles with an optimistic attitude. Th
June 10, 2021
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[Faye Flam] Social media erred in censoring misinformation
Labeling misinformation online is doing more harm than good. The possibility that COVID-19 came from a lab accident is just the latest example. Social media companies tried to suppress any discussion of it for months. But why? There’s no strong evidence against it, and evidence for other theories is still inconclusive. Pathogens have escaped from labs many times, and people have died as a result. Social media fact-checkers don’t have any special knowledge or ability to sort fact fr
June 10, 2021
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[Lee Kyong-hee] Park Soo-keun and his message of simplicity
Artists are no strangers to poverty. Great artists died in dire situations –- and despair about their own art. Vincent Van Gogh famously sold a single painting during his entire career. He died penniless and destitute, saying, “The sadness will last forever.” When Paul Gauguin died alone in poverty, he had no idea of the impact that his work would have on the art world. I couldn’t but recall these stories of poignant irony on my recent visit to the Park Soo Keun Museum
June 10, 2021
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[Elizabeth Shackelford] Foster a free press everywhere
Catching up with a friend over Zoom, I wondered recently what might have happened if China had come clean about the presence and origins of COVID-19 before it spread beyond Wuhan. But, my friend asked, wouldn’t the United States have done the same and tried to hide it too? No, I replied. Even if our government had tried, it would have come to light. That’s the beauty of an open society and a free press. Imagine if COVID-19 had first emerged in a country with a free press. Governmen
June 9, 2021
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[Kim Seong-kon] We owe BTS and Korean enterprises
It seems that our left-wing politicians today tend to think that corporations only exist to exploit their workers. Perhaps that is why they so frequently discourage our enterprises and give them such a hard time. Yet, corporations create jobs, often pay high salaries and instill a good impression of South Korea around the world. They even contribute to our diplomacy by investing in foreign countries. At a recent press conference after the summit between Korea and the United States, US Presiden
June 9, 2021
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[Contribution] Toward carbon neutrality in Korea
Korean President Moon Jae-in did make some strong commitments at the P4G Summit, repeating the country’s Net Zero 2050 pledge, an end to financing coal projects internationally, and a significant increase in the green share of Korea’s Official Development Assistance. At the summit, President Moon did not yet commit to a stronger Nationally Determined Contributions’ target for 2030, but he promised it will be announced before COP26 in November. The Global Green Growth Institut
June 8, 2021
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[Andrew Sheng] Cities, countries getting to Net Zero Olympics
As rich countries get their vaccination numbers up while poorer countries are still struggling, there is some hope that we are getting to grips with the pandemic. On the climate change front, there have been some remarkable achievements in the last two months. First, US President Biden’s Climate Summit in April got 40 top leaders to commit toward working together on climate change. Even though several countries did not commit to anything new, just getting the US back to the Paris Agreemen
June 8, 2021
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[J. Bradford DeLong] Xi Jinping’s historic mistake
Late last month, the American actor John Cena issued a groveling public apology after having referred to Taiwan as a “country” in an interview to promote his latest film. Though he was using the term to refer to a linguistic media market with a discrete distribution channel, not to the status of the island of Taiwan in international law, the Chinese government would make no allowance for such distinctions. What are we to make of this episode? Clearly, globalization has gone terribl
June 7, 2021
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[Faye Flam] Virology labs deserve more oversight
Even if we never learn whether COVID-19 escaped from a lab or jumped to humans from animals, the public is entitled to a closer look at what‘s going on in virology labs. Some scientists worry that laboratory scientists are getting too little oversight on projects that could potentially start pandemics. Others worry about the global proliferation of labs that work with dangerous viruses and other pathogens. The journal Nature accused politicians and the press of stirring up a “divis
June 7, 2021
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[Serendipity] Get ready to roar back to life
I won a trip to Tahiti. In my dream, that is. I was ecstatic at having won the lottery, but within a few seconds, my heart sank at the fact that I had not been vaccinated. Even in my dream. I don’t know what deeply seated unconscious desire to visit Tahiti may have led to the dream. Tahiti has never been on my bucket list. I suspect the dream had more to do with a pent-up desire to travel. To anywhere, really. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in January 2020, travels around the world cam
June 4, 2021
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[Robert J. Fouser] The pull of ‘normalcy’
As the COVID-19 pandemic fades, countries around the world are returning to in-person life. Families are gathering, schools are opening, and city streets are coming back to life. The pandemic is not over, and much suffering remains, but the trajectory is moving toward an end. As the world returns to normal, speculation abounds about the lasting influence of the pandemic on society and institutions. Which changes will remain and which will disappear? In the early days of the pandemic, the 1918-1
June 4, 2021
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[Doyle McManus] New look at COVID-19’s origins
Last week, President Joe Biden set an example that all of us -- Democrat and Republican alike -- should embrace. It wasn’t so much what he did -- ordering US intelligence agencies to take a new look at the origins of COVID-19, including whether the coronavirus that causes the disease escaped accidentally from a laboratory in China -- as it was the mindset that prompted his action. For more than a year, debate about the origins of the virus has been deeply political, with former President
June 3, 2021
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[Kim Myong-sik] Let Olympics prove mankind's triumph over pandemic
Historically, the Japanese love the Olympics, but they haven’t had the best luck with them. In the 1930s, Japan successfully made a bid to host the Summer Olympics in 1940, four years after Nazi Germany’s Berlin Olympics, but they had to give up the great enterprise because of World War II. In 1964, two decades after the war ended, they finally realized the ambition. Since then, Japan twice played host for Winter Olympics in Sapporo and Nagano. And, no one had thought of a pandemic
June 3, 2021
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[Kim Seong-kon] Korean women’s discontent with men
These days, young Korean men and women criticize each other and clash over controversial issues such as feminism and women’s mandatory military duty. Korean men argue that if women want to “earn” equal treatment, they should serve in the Army, just as men are obligated to do. Korean women find such a notion unmanly and repulsive. As a result, Korean young men and women find each other “extremely abominating,” as they well put it. Recently, a historian revealed tha
June 2, 2021
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[Jean Pisani-Ferry] Is Bidenomics more than catch-up?
“Let us think big,” exhorted US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen in May. “Let’s build something that lasts for generations.” Such is the transformative rhetoric behind President Joe Biden’s economic-policy agenda. But what, exactly, will be built, and how will America be transformed? The answer is bound to be as much political as economic, because Biden has set out to respond to the anger that led many workers to vote for his predecessor, Donald Trump.
June 2, 2021
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[Trudy Rubin] ‘Don’t give up on us’
“Don’t abandon us!” That’s the message I’m getting from brave, educated Afghan women -- as the Pentagon advances the date for the final troop withdrawal from Afghanistan to mid-July. There is a last minute Pentagon scramble to plan for evacuating 18,000 translators who worked with the US military, but it’s still unclear whether this will happen. But little thought seems to have been given to the fate of thousands of Afghan women who have been educated and ta
June 1, 2021