[Kim Myong-sik] Foreign minister and rescue operations on Danube

Let me ask our readers a question: Do you think it was appropriate for our minister of foreign affairs to go to Budapest, Hungary, to join rescue operations for Korean tourists missing when their boat sank in the Danube River? I expect a negative answer, but President Moon Jae-in and his aides thought it was necessary. These days, many are concerned that Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa is somewhat off the line of the denuclearization business against North Korea. Yet, she is responsible for the

June 5, 2019

[Kim Seong-kon] Captain Ahab and the white whale

In my class in the English Department at the University of California, Irvine, I had my American students discuss Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” with reference to multicultural issues. Some students read the novel as a story about Ishmael’s initiation from adolescent innocence into adulthood experience. Indeed, through his encounter with Queequeg, Captain Ahab and Moby Dick, Ishmael learns the importance of embracing others -- such as different races, religions and culture

June 4, 2019

[Robert J. Fouser] Trump’s chances for re-election dim

During a short visit to Kyoto, Japan, on my way to Korea, a taxi driver told me that US President Donald Trump made him nervous because he is so unpredictable. I reassured him that many, if not most, Americans feel the same way. We concluded the short conversation by agreeing Trump is not fit to be president.The problem, of course, is that in a democracy, the people have the final say on the fitness of leaders. The problem for Trump is that he won the presidency in 2016 with a solid Electoral Co

June 4, 2019

[Jean Pisani-Ferry] Europe’s citizens say they want a more political EU

The most significant result of the recent European Parliament election is neither that conservatives and social democrats lost seats to Liberals and Greens, nor that far-right nationalists gained less than anticipated. It is that citizens voted in much larger numbers than anyone expected. From the first popular election of the European Parliament, in 1979, to the last one, in 2014, turnout inexorably declined, gradually falling from 63 percent to 43 percent. Five years ago, less than half of

June 3, 2019

[Francis Wilkinson] Democrats must win the war for truth

Poor old Robert Mueller.“Mr. Mueller seemed to expect that the system would work as it had in the past,” noted a news analysis last week in the New York Times. Former special counsel Mueller scrupulously followed legal and institutional rules as well as his own professional and personal code of ethics.As a result, the Times pointed out, a bit wistfully, the way the paper’s travel section might pine for the heyday of Palm Springs or old Havana, the old ways were swept aside, and

June 3, 2019

[David Ignatius] America is at war, in cyberspace

One of the least-discussed but perhaps most consequential comments by special counsel Robert Mueller in his appearance before reporters this week was his blunt counterintelligence assessment: “Russian intelligence officers, who are part of the Russian military, launched a concerted attack on our political system.” Here’s why this judgment is so important: The US military, backed by Mueller’s findings and those of the intelligence community, has responded by developing a t

June 2, 2019

[Hal Brands] Today’s US-China clash began at Tiananmen Square

Tuesday marks the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. It was an event that profoundly shaped not only modern China, but also the US-China relationship.It is the odd anniversary that will pass virtually unobserved in the place where it had the greatest impact. Each year, around the anniversary, the government mobilizes an army of censors and trolls to stamp out any discussion of Tiananmen online.Yet for the world outside China, revisiting the Tiananmen Square massacre is crucial fo

June 2, 2019

[James Stavridis] Abe failed to sway Trump on NK

The essence of sumo wrestling is simple: two enormous men struggle to throw each other out of a ring. On Sunday, Donald Trump attended a major sumo tournament in Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, awkwardly awarding the newly invented “President’s Trophy” to the winner. The metaphor was obvious: Throughout his state visit, Trump was like a sumo wrestler who Abe desperately wanted to move on key policy positions, but the president wasn’t budging. The most impor

May 30, 2019

[James Gibney] Japan’s path to WWII shows risks of Trump’s Huawei ban

The strategic rivalry between China and the US has incited an outbreak of historical analogies -- Athens versus Sparta, the UK versus Wilhelmine Germany, or the US versus the Soviet Union. But the fracas over the US actions against Huawei Technologies recalls another antecedent: the pre-World War II US pressure campaign against Japan.Once again, the US faces an aggrieved Asian power seeking to claim its place in the geopolitical sun, displace the US from Asia, transcend its economic dependency o

May 30, 2019

[Kent Harrington] Kim Jong-un’s ‘Moneyball’ strategy

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe prioritized pomp over policy while hosting US President Donald Trump this week. The one exception was the issue of North Korea, which recently conducted more short-range missile tests off its east coast. Abe is clearly anxious about keeping Japan and the United States on the same page now that Trump’s denuclearization talks with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un have faltered. But at a joint press conference on Monday, Trump dismissed concerns about the l

May 29, 2019

[Kim Kyung-ho] A way out of the historical trap

President Moon Jae-in may feel that he has adhered to a principled approach to historical issues with Japan. Nevertheless, he may also be realizing that it has come round to undermine his position on the diplomatic stage of Northeast Asia.If he has an ulterior motive -- if, as critics charge, he intends to use the inflammatory issues to his domestic political advantage -- he stands to pay substantial costs in practical terms.Since he took office two years ago, the bilateral relationship between

May 29, 2019

[Kim Seong-kon] New world order without the US

In his internationally acclaimed dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-four,” George Orwell portrayed the world as divided into three regions: Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. According to Orwell, Oceania was composed of the United Kingdom and the United States, and Eurasia, which constituted the rest of Europe and Central Asia, was controlled by the Soviet Union. As for Eastasia, Orwell did not mention a specific country that either represented or ruled the region. Yet, at the time he was

May 28, 2019

[Lee Jae-min] Korea caught in the middle again

The intensifying US-China confrontation has just taken a new twist. Reportedly, Washington is asking Seoul to join its anti-Huawei alliance. The reason is security concerns posed by the Chinese IT giant. This latest development puts South Korea in a difficult spot again. Korea is confronted with what it dreads most: choosing sides in a decisive manner.It is one thing to worry about the G2 confrontation and its overall economic impact. It is quite another to be forced to choose sides openly and o

May 28, 2019

[Andrew Sheng] Why are stock markets complacent?

There has been so much bad news lately that the only good news, if you believe it, lies in the stock market. Simply put, despite the trade war and all the political bad news, the US stock markets hover around historical highs. And Asian stock markets are still guided by sentiment in Wall Street.Is that market optimism justified?From its trough on March 9, 2009, to its last peak on April 23, 2019, the S&P500 Index rose 334 percent, so everyone who invested in US stocks has done well. How just

May 27, 2019

[Karl W. Smith] How this trade war will remake the world 　

US President Donald Trump has long said the goal of his trade policy is simply to get better deals for Americans. But as the trade war intensifies, it seems increasingly likely that his policies will lead to something more: a lasting break with China and a new alignment of global power. First, consider the evidence for the break. The current impasse in trade talks was sparked by a sudden change in terms on the part of the Chinese negotiators. This change likely caught the administration off g

May 27, 2019

[J. Bradford DeLong] Robo-apocalypse? Not in your lifetime

Will the imminent “rise of the robots” threaten future human employment? The most thoughtful discussion of that question can be found in MIT economist David H. Autor’s 2015 paper, “Why Are There Still so Many Jobs?” which considers the problem in the context of Polanyi’s Paradox. Given that “we can know more than we can tell,” the 20th-century philosopher Michael Polanyi observed, we shouldn’t assume that technology can replicate the function

May 26, 2019