[Kim Myong-sik] 72 years from Rhee Syng-man to Moon Jae-in

Confusion in the US presidential election passed two weeks since the Nov. 3 voting with Donald Trump still refusing to accept Joe Biden’s victory despite the final electoral votes of 232 and 306. Korean President Moon Jae-in called President-elect Biden for 14 minutes last week to congratulate him on his win. The New York Times summed up: Trump falsely maintains he would have won without widespread voter irregularities. In fact, top election officials across the country have said that th

Nov. 19, 2020

[David Fickling] The might-is-right trade era

If you wanted a demonstration of how the world’s largest free trade area is likely to fall short of expectations, you could do worse than look at the customs sheds at Shanghai’s Pudong airport. As final preparations for signing the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership pact, or RCEP, were being made earlier this month, several metric tons of Australian lobster were being delayed at the Chinese border for several days — far longer than the six-hour time frame for perishab

Nov. 18, 2020

[Kim Seong-kon] What lies ahead us in the Biden era?

Recently, US President-elect Joseph Biden announced, “I’m telling world leaders that America is back.” In response, world leaders applauded his message, saying, “Welcome back, America.” As America is back, we might as well ponder, “What can we expect from America and what lies ahead of us in the Biden era?” At his memorable victory speech in Wilmington, Delaware, President-elect Biden promised several things in response to the complex problems America

Nov. 18, 2020

[Andreas Kluth] Inevitable legacy of COVID pandemic

“So when our Sickness, and our Poverty Had greater wants than we could well supply; Strict Orders did but more enrage our grief, And hinder in accomplishing relief.” That’s how the British poet George Wither explained a spreading rebellion against social-distancing rules. Seeing quarantines and lockdowns as unfair and tyrannical punishments, people were taking to the streets. The year was 1625, the place was London, the disease was plague. The same psychology brought some 20

Nov. 17, 2020

[Slawomir Sierakowski] Trump’s departure puts mini-Trumps in the wilderness

Joe Biden’s election as president of the United States has seriously weakened authoritarian and populist governments around the world. For independent global powers like Russia, Brazil and Turkey, Donald Trump’s departure need not amount to a complete tragedy. But for the current governments of Poland, Hungary and Serbia -- and perhaps Boris Johnson’s United Kingdom, too -- it is a veritable disaster. Not surprisingly, each of these smaller players has greeted Biden’s el

Nov. 17, 2020

[Kent Harrington] America’s alliances after Trump

America’s allies should be forgiven if they are confused about where American foreign policy is headed. Who isn’t, given the go-it-alone recklessness of Donald Trump’s presidency? Over the past three years, Trump has sowed strategic chaos, and his foreign policy, if one can call it that, brought new meaning to incoherence. President-elect Joe Biden will be better almost by default. But has Trump changed America so much that the world cannot count on it ever being normal again?

Nov. 16, 2020

[Daniel Moss] North-South split shows there’s no Asian model

The grinding recovery from the epic global recession has generated a deep divide within Asia: Economies in the north are ascendant and their once faster-growing southern neighbors are mired in a deep funk. The chasm can be seen in recent gross domestic product numbers. China’s recovery hastened, and Taiwan returned to growth last quarter. South Korea’s better-than-forecast results suggest it’s not far behind. The contrast with once flashy emerging markets is stark. Far from f

Nov. 13, 2020

[Lee Kyong-hee] A brief tribute to Korea’s precious friends

The first time I met Kevin L. O’Rourke the Columban priest had just won a prize for his translation of “The Poetry of John” by Chang Yong-hak, a short story depicting postwar existentialism in South Korean society. That was in November 1971, the second year of the Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards given by the Korea Times, the only such honors at that time. By then, awareness had ripened that exemplary translations of Korean literary works should be recognized. Yasu

Nov. 12, 2020

[David Fickling] Biden, like Trump, will deepen integration with China

To look at the politics of it, you might think that four years of President Donald Trump’s trade war on China were just starting to bear fruit as he prepares to leave office. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga used his first foreign tour since taking office to visit Vietnam and Indonesia, notably China-skeptical allies, and push for a strengthening of bilateral supply chains that would avoid the region’s 800-pound gorilla. Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, who has been purs

Nov. 12, 2020

[Noah Smith] Biden will need to get creative to save the economy

Joe Biden has been elected to be the next president of the United States. Now he’ll have to get creative. When the president-elect takes office, he’ll confront the country’s two most acute challenges: an ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the economic damage it’s wrought. But he’ll have an uphill battle to enact the sort of bold policy agenda that many supporters were hoping for. Barring a January surprise in Georgia’s runoff election, Republicans are likely to r

Nov. 11, 2020

[Kim Seong-kon] When “shinbaram” blows in Korea

One of the distinctive characteristics of Korean culture is “sinbaram.” In Korean, “sin” (pronounced “shin”) means God or spirits and “baram” means wind. When someone is excited, Koreans say, “sinbaram blows to him,” or “He is sinnada,” meaning “He is in high spirits” or “He is elated.” When sinbaram blows collectively, Koreans easily become ecstatic and accomplish astonishing things together. The w

Nov. 11, 2020

[Andreas Kluth] Populist politics in Poland serves as warning to US

In 2015, the year before Donald Trump became president of the US, a similar power shift occurred in Eastern Europe, albeit on a smaller scale. Like America soon after, Poland veered hard-right toward an anti-elitist populism built on the politics of grievance and resentment. What’s Poland like today? Bitterly divided. “This is war,” read some of the banners carried by hundreds of thousands of Poles, mainly women, who took to the streets in recent days. They’re marching

Nov. 10, 2020

[Jan-Werner Mueller] Truth and de-Trumpification under a Biden presidency

Among Democrats and many Republicans, there is a great temptation to dismiss US President Donald Trump’s administration as a bizarre aberration. Just as Republicans may try to blame the many transgressions of the past four years on Trump, hoping that their enabling role is quickly forgotten, Democrats might want to make a show of observing democratic norms, by graciously refraining from litigating the past. If so, upon the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, Trump and his administr

Nov. 9, 2020

[Eric Posne] Joe Biden’s precarious victory

Joe Biden has survived a grueling election campaign and a cliff-hanger election. Next, he must fend off legal challenges from US President Donald Trump’s campaign. While he will most likely enter the White House on Jan. 20, 2021, he will wonder when he gets there whether the prize he sought for so long is a poisoned chalice. A President Biden will enter office confronting widespread economic distress, the seasonal escalation of a deadly pandemic, and a brutal international environment. T

Nov. 9, 2020

[Serendipity] Beautiful country: Living up to its name

As I write this, Thursday afternoon in Seoul, more than a full day after the 2020 United States presidential election came to a close, it remains unclear who is the winner. The Democrats, who had largely expected a “Blue Wave” and even a landslide victory, are expressing dismay while political pundits pronounce a nation deeply divided. When President Donald Trump won the election in 2016, despite having lost the popular vote to his rival Hillary Clinton, many were ready to see it

Nov. 6, 2020

[Robert J. Fouser] Why Koreans wear face masks

More than anything else, the face mask has come to symbolize the COVID-19 pandemic. It stirs strong emotions and deep prejudices. It has been at the center of public health debates and the turbulent US presidential election campaign. Since COVID-19 first began its spread from China, much has been written about differences in face mask use in the “East” and “West.” Examples from the “East” come primarily from South Korea, Japan and China, while the “West

Nov. 6, 2020

[Noah Feldman] Trump’s Supreme Court threat will backfire in a legal battle

Regardless of what happens in the vote counting, President Donald Trump has said he is going to the Supreme Court to ask for … something or other. When he does, he will have to overcome a hurdle of his own making: his claim to have “already” won the election, made during his rambling speech at 2:30 a.m. The justices -- including the crucial conservatives like Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett -- will not like the speech, which puts them in the position of being as

Nov. 6, 2020

[Kim Myong-sik] Legal justice in doubt on ex-president’s prison term

Former president Lee Myung-bak was back in the Dongbu Prison on the eastern outskirts of Seoul last Monday with the Supreme Court’s final sentence of 17 years. He was ordered to pay 18.78 billion won ($16.5 million) to the state in “fines” and “forfeiture,” though I don’t know exactly how they are different from each other. By the time he finishes his prison term in 2036, Lee will be 95 years old, if he is blessed with a life that long. He was arrested in Ma

Nov. 5, 2020

[Cass R. Sunstein] Don’t invoke Bush versus Gore

It’s Election Day, and there are already lawsuits challenging votes and voting procedures. Some of them are invoking the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore, which effectively handed that year’s presidential election to George W. Bush. We should expect a lot more to come. Bush v. Gore is widely misunderstood. It rested on exceedingly narrow grounds. As the court put it, the key issue was “whether the use of standardless manual recounts violates the Equal Protec

Nov. 5, 2020

[Shin Yeol-woo] Korea’s fire service has no nationality and border

Defining the modern society as a risk society, risk management scholars insist one of the visible characteristics of the risk society is unidentified risk factors increasing while borders between countries disappear. The COVID-19 crisis is a disaster explicitly showing such features. Since the virus is invisible, it is difficult to contain it. Having started from somewhere, it has put the entire globe into a pandemic. It goes also the same to traditional disasters. The enormous amount of smo

Nov. 5, 2020