[Lee Kyong-hee] Patriot returns home in a special memorial

There can be various ways to love one’s country. And there may also be many ways to memorialize heroic deeds of a great individual. Lee Seok-young (1855-1934) gave away his vast wealth to help resurrect his fallen country; and now his adopted hometown of Namyangju is responding with a series of projects to nurture future generations in the name of the legendary activist for Korean independence. On Feb. 16, Namyangju City hosted a ceremony marking the 87th anniversary of Lee’s death.

March 4, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] Blaming Asians for the coronavirus

As the US economy falters and many Americans have lost their jobs due to COVID-19, hostility toward Asians has recently accelerated. According to CNN, there have been approximately 3,000 cases of violence against Asians and Asian Americans in the US in the past year. CBS News reported that, “Nearly 500 Asians in New York were targets of bias incidents or hate crimes in 2020, ranging from verbal to physical assaults, including acid attacks.” NBC News said in a report last week that, &

March 3, 2021

[K. Ward Cummings] Why traumatized people run for office

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, in emotional testimony delivered during a congressional hearing last month, bravely revealed that she was once the victim of a sexual assault. As a historian, her stunning admission reminded me instantly of former presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Woodrow Wilson. Not because they too were once sexually abused (or accused of abuse), but because of how often personal trauma seems to be a part of the histories of prominent politicians. Exploring

March 3, 2021

[Michael R. Bloomberg, Carl Pope] Biden’s strongest climate allies are outside Washington

President Joe Biden’s ability to bring together the two parties in Congress is already being tested. But the good news is that on at least one issue -- climate change -- the fate of the president’s ambitions does not rest primarily with his ability to unite Congress, but with his ability to support and expand ongoing work in the rest of the country. Consider this: The US is actually within striking distance of reaching the goal it set under the Paris climate agreement, a 26 percent

March 2, 2021

[Carl P. Leubsdorf] Biden takes first steps towards return to normalcy abroad

Two years ago, even before launching his presidential bid, Joe Biden told Western European leaders that Donald Trump’s America First foreign policy was a momentary blip in US global leadership. “I promise you; this too will pass,” the then former vice president told the Munich Security Conference, a forum he often attended as a senator. “We will be back.” Last week, President Biden redeemed that promise, telling the annual national security forum that “Ameri

March 2, 2021

[Shang-Jin Wei] Can US escape stimulus trap?

As US President Joe Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package works its way through Congress, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers (a Democrat) and many Republicans argue that the plan is too big. But perhaps a more important question is whether the United States is falling into a “stimulus trap,” and, if so, how to get out of it. The Biden rescue plan is the federal government’s third attempt within a year to help the US economy recover from the pan

March 1, 2021

[Jean Pisani-Ferry] Central bankers keen to take on new responsibilities

Twenty years ago, central bankers were proudly narrow-minded and conservative. They made a virtue of caring more about inflation than about the average citizen, and took great pains to be obsessively repetitive. As future Bank of England Gov. Mervyn King said in 2000, their ambition was to be boring. The 2008 financial crisis abruptly dashed that objective. Ever since, central bankers have been busy developing new policy instruments to fight fires and ward off emerging threats. Nonetheless, ma

March 1, 2021

[Digital Simplicity] Disclosure of odds of getting game items in dispute

Playing a mobile game is supposed to be entertaining. But it’s no longer deemed a plaything. For instance, 0.00029 percent is the official chance that gamers, in theory, could get an extremely rare item in a popular Korean mobile game. Despite the slim chance, some hyper-rich gamers spend over $1 million in real money to get such items, translating into huge profit for developers and publishers. In recent months, game developers here are rushing to announce steep pay raises for their emp

Feb. 27, 2021

[Robert J. Fouser] Going beyond US-China tensions

In the first month of his presidency, Joe Biden has worked hard to reach out to longtime allies of the US that were slighted during the Trump years. The US counts South Korea and Japan as two of its most trusted allies and has signaled to them that it hopes to work with the two nations to develop a trilateral strategy to deal with North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. Biden also hopes for more trilateral cooperation in dealing the with growing power of China on the world stage. For

Feb. 26, 2021

[Doyle McManus] How to end a very long war

On paper, the United States is committed to withdrawing its last 2,500 troops from Afghanistan less than 10 weeks from now, on May 1. That’s under a deal the Trump administration made last year with the Taliban, the Islamic guerrilla group fighting the Kabul government. But it’s far from certain that will happen. Neither the Taliban, the Afghan government nor the United States have kept all their commitments under the year-old agreement. The Taliban promised to reduce attacks on gov

Feb. 25, 2021

[Kim Myong-sik] Pure motivation desired for academic research

Academic freedom is universally recognized and constitutionally protected here like the precious freedom of expression and the freedom of movement. Then what about an academic paper on the World War II “comfort women” written by a Harvard University professor, who defined them as “willing prostitutes who carefully negotiated the terms of their contracts.” Whenever there arises controversy over the past and present plights of those old Korean women who were sexually abuse

Feb. 25, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] Hamlet and Don Quixote tactics in diplomacy

People say that there are two contrasting types of personalities in the world. One is the Hamlet personality type and the other resembles Don Quixote. The Hamlet type is the one who is lost in thought and discreet, and thus gives in to vacillation. The Don Quixote type is foolhardy and indiscreet, and thus brash and unbridled. Both have upsides and downsides, depending on the situation. Indeed, there are times when you should be discreet like Hamlet and there are times when you should act audaci

Feb. 24, 2021

[Trudy Rubin] Biden’s foreign policy success

Earlier this month President Joe Biden went to the State Department to pump up a demoralized foreign service corps, and to tell the world, “America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.” That pledge was echoed Tuesday by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who told NPR, “We’ve reengaged with allies and partners around the world. I think I’ve made myself maybe 50 calls already.” So there’s no doubt the Biden approach is diametri

Feb. 24, 2021

[Ana Palacio] Europe’s misadventure in Moscow

When the European Union’s foreign ministers convene on Feb. 22, they will have to confront the political fallout from the ill-fated visit to Moscow by Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. One hopes that the reckoning catalyzes much-needed progress toward developing a coherent European Russia policy. The timing of Borrell’s visit to Moscow -- the first by an EU official since 2017 – was odd, to say the least. In the weeks be

Feb. 23, 2021

[Josef Joffe] Germany’s empty logic for Nord Stream 2

Nord Stream 2, the almost-finished pipeline running directly from Russia to Germany, is not really about securing cheap natural gas. It is about personal gain and these two countries’ national interest. The pipeline across the Baltic has pitted the United States and the European Union against Germany, and a swelling chorus of domestic critics against Chancellor Angela Merkel. If it were just a matter of gas molecules, the project might never have seen the light of day. So, why did it? Go

Feb. 23, 2021

[Minky Worden] China is escalating human rights abuses in runup to 2022 Olympics. Will IOC look the other way?

Last September, five international labor auditing firms declared they could no longer help companies audit their supply chains in China’s Xinjiang region because the Chinese government’s controls and repression made it too difficult to determine whether factories are using forced labor. The Better Cotton Initiative, a consortium to monitor sustainability -- affiliated with companies such as Adidas, Nike and Gap -- called Xinjiang an “untenable operating environment.” Thi

Feb. 22, 2021

[Doyle McManus] How the pandemic is helping Biden advance his broader economic agenda

When Joe Biden launched his campaign for the presidency in 2019, his economic proposals were relatively modest updates of the middle-class-oriented agenda he championed as vice president under Barack Obama. “It doesn’t require some fundamental shift,” he said, pushing against the sweeping proposals of rivals like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Then came the pandemic. Today, Biden’s economic message, retooled to address current needs, has real urgency. “We c

Feb. 22, 2021

[Serendipity] Keep indie scene alive

Seollal, or Lunar New Year’s Day, typically means staying up until late at night the previous day and waking up at the crack of dawn to prepare the family breakfast. In our family, which does not hold ancestral rites, the big family breakfast has evolved into a brunch with more than 10 dishes topped by the requisite tteokmanduguk, eating of which marks getting a year older. Because of all the cooking involved, the days leading up to Seollal are filled with growing anxiety and dread. I am

Feb. 19, 2021

[James Stavridis] Keeping troops in Afghanistan makes US safer

Over the four years I led the Afghan war effort as supreme allied commander at NATO, I was lucky to have four superb generals working for me as the in-country commanders of the International Security Force, Afghanistan. Generals Stanley McChrystal, Dave Petraeus, John Allen and Joe Dunford all performed superbly during their one-year assignments in Kabul. I relied on their military advice every day as I reported to the senior civilian leaders of the 28 NATO nations, from President Barack Obama

Feb. 18, 2021

[Lee Kyong-hee] Dilkusha – a romantic link to colonial past

After years of delays, the house of Albert Wilder and Mary Linley Taylor by a famous ginkgo tree in central Seoul will finally open to the public next month. The opening of this storied residence of the American gold mining businessman and his British actress wife will commemorate the March 1 Independence Movement of 1919. That is when the lives of the couple intersected with a seminal event in modern Korean history. The Associated Press asked Taylor to cover the funeral of Emperor Gojong, who

Feb. 18, 2021