The Korea Herald

[Pankaj Mishra] Asia’s new politics of outrage

Stunning mini-revolutions have erupted in recent months in two of the world’s largest Muslim countries. The first shock came in Indonesia, where a little-known group of activists led a mass protest against the Christian governor of Jakarta. Accused of disrespecting the Prophet, the governor, a close ally of the country’s president Joko Widodo, is now in prison. In Pakistan in late November, another pop-up political outfit besieged the capital city Islamabad, forcing the government to concede to

Dec. 10, 2017

[Pankaj Mishra] Asia’s new politics of outrage

[Doyle McManus] Trump’s weaponized ‘whataboutism’

President Donald Trump thinks lots of people should be investigated for wrongdoing. Just not him.Hillary Clinton above all. More than a year after she lost the presidential election, she’s still Trump’s favorite target -- a rhetorical security blanket he returns to over and over.“Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn’t looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary and the Dems,” the president tweeted last month.But Clinton has plenty of company, beginnin

Dec. 10, 2017

[Park Sang-seek] President Moon’s four-directional foreign policy

Since President Moon Jae-in was inaugurated in May, he has formulated four national security strategies: western diplomacy dealing with China; eastern diplomacy dealing with Japan; northern diplomacy focusing on the Russian Far East and China’s three northeastern provinces, Central Asia and Mongolia; and southern diplomacy focusing on Southeast Asia and India. The South Korea-US alliance plays the role of an axis in the sense that it affects the above four diplomatic strategies.President Moon’s

Dec. 10, 2017

[Park Sang-seek] President Moon’s four-directional foreign policy

[Leonid Bershidsky] Putin wants to win, but not at all costs

As Russia has worked to convince the world that its military power is growing, it has concealed its costs in terms of blood and treasure. But newly revealed statistics show surprisingly low casualties despite engagements in Crimea, eastern Ukraine and Syria. It was the latest evidence that President Vladimir Putin’s military strategy is far more calculated than that of his predecessors. Boris Yeltsin’s losses in Chechnya gutted his public support and the Soviet Union’s costly, failed Afghanistan

Dec. 10, 2017

[J. Bradford DeLong] America’s broken system

The tax bill that US Republicans have doggedly pushed through Congress is not as big a deal as many are portraying it to be. It is medium-size news. The big news -- the much more weighty and ominous news – lies elsewhere.Of course, medium-size is not nothing. If the tax bill does clear its final hurdle -- a conference committee must reconcile the Senate-approved bill with that of the House of Representatives -- and become law, it will complicate the tax system considerably, as it opens many loop

Dec. 10, 2017

[Daniel Gordis] Trump is clear on Jerusalem, even if his motives are not

Calling it a “recognition of reality” and “the right thing to do,” President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that the US was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and that the American Embassy will be moved from Tel Aviv to the contested city.　The announcement leaves many questions, two of which are primary. The first is whether violence will ensue. The Palestinians and Turks are making threats, and Israel’s security establishment is said to be on alert. But many Israelis are dismissing th

Dec. 8, 2017

[Daniel Gordis] Trump is clear on Jerusalem, even if his motives are not

[Heidi Stevens] Time rightly recognizes women who spoke up

Time magazine declared “silence breakers” the Person of the Year for 2017, echoing and amplifying a sense, a hunch, a flickering of a notion that many of us feel but are afraid to utter aloud, lest we curse it:Nothing will ever be the same.A magazine can’t wipe out sexual harassment. Roy Moore may very well get elected to the US Senate despite multiple allegations of preying on teenage girls. Donald “grab ’em” Trump still occupies the highest office in the land.But to paraphrase Dr. Martin Luthe

Dec. 8, 2017

[Dennis M. Kelleher] Why all Americans should want a strong consumer watchdog

If you have — or ever want to have — a bank account, credit card, debit card, car loan, student loan, home loan, payday loan, credit report or any other financial product of any type, or if you were harmed in any way by the 2008 financial crisis, then you have a personal stake in the success of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.At the moment, the watchdog agency is under threat. It’s caught in a power struggle between its Obama-era holdovers and the Trump administration, which is moving t

Dec. 8, 2017

[Joseph E. Stiglitz] The globalization of our discontent

Fifteen years ago, I published Globalization and Its Discontents, a book that sought to explain why there was so much dissatisfaction with globalization within the developing countries. Quite simply, many believed that the system was “rigged” against them, and global trade agreements were singled out for being particularly unfair.Now discontent with globalization has fueled a wave of populism in the United States and other advanced economies, led by politicians who claim that the system is unfai

Dec. 7, 2017

[Joseph E. Stiglitz] The globalization of our discontent

[David Ignatius] Can the US stop North Korea from becoming a nuclear power?

The US-North Korea confrontation is nearing another tense inflection point, with North Korea signaling that it could be ready for negotiations with Washington soon, even as it moves toward becoming a full nuclear-weapons power.When such diplomatic standoffs get resolved, it‘s often by allowing each country to claim it’s entering negotiations on its own terms. In this case, North Korea would assert its status as a nuclear-weapons state, while the US would insist the dialogue is about eventual den

Dec. 7, 2017

[David Ignatius] Can the US stop North Korea from becoming a nuclear power?

[Leonid Bershidsky] Europe’s far right won’t keep winning if it can’t govern

From Liechtenstein and Bulgaria to Norway and the Czech Republic, it was a good year for far-right parties in Europe. While none of the strong election results were sufficient for a full takeover, it was enough to allow most of them to become a full-fledged part of government. So are they leaping at this opportunity? And if not, why not?　It’s not such a crazy thing to expect. Even in Germany, extreme parties have become an accepted part of the political landscape. Die Linke, the successor of the

Dec. 7, 2017

[Stephen L. Carter] What a technophobe doctor shows about future of work

What if your profession has never required much computer literacy -- and then all of a sudden it does. Should you be fired? Should your license be yanked? That’s the question raised by the bizarre case of Anna Konopka, a physician who claims that New Hampshire has barred her from the practice of medicine because she does not know how to use the internet.Konopka, 84, received the bulk of her medical training overseas. She voluntarily surrendered her license this fall after allegations that she wa

Dec. 7, 2017

[Andrew Malcolm] How DC political assassins use media to oust Rex Tillerson

Fans of Robert Ludlum’s thrillers easily recognize his protagonists as calm, canny, determined and worldly fellows quietly fighting sinister forces out to get rid of them in stealthy ways.No one characterizes Rex Tillerson as thrilling. But he could otherwise fit that role. President-elect Donald Trump took the advice of Robert Gates and met with Tillerson, a career oil executive who spent years successfully running one of the globe’s larger corporations in Exxon Mobil and driving it through thr

Dec. 7, 2017

[Yang Sung-jin] Super Mario, gambling and YouTube

The much-awaited video game console Nintendo Switch was released in South Korea on Friday, along with a handful of titles including “Super Mario Odyssey,” the latest installment of the popular Super Mario series.On the launch day, I rushed to a shop nearby to buy the portable console and “Super Mario Odyssey.” I was luckily able to snag one, and as soon as I got home, I turned on the machine and jumped right into the virtual wonderland where I could meet Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach. The stor

Dec. 6, 2017

[Yang Sung-jin] Super Mario, gambling and YouTube

[Kim Myong-sik] Daring defections via JSA, then and now

It was pleasant to see President Moon Jae-in welcoming Korean and US personnel from the Joint Security Area and Lee Kuk-jong to the Blue House last week. The president praised them for their acts in saving the life of a North Korean defector who was shot and critically wounded when he ran across the demarcation line in the truce village of Panmunjeom on Nov. 13.　Lee from the Regional Trauma Center at Ajou University Hospital in Suwon, wearing a black Navy officers’ uniform, impressively introduc

Dec. 6, 2017

[Kim Myong-sik] Daring defections via JSA, then and now

[David Rothkopf] Worry less about nuclear war, more about Trump

Nuclear holocaust is the least likely outcome of North Korea’s latest leap forward in offensive capabilities. And if it were it to occur, it would probably be the result of shoot-from-the-lip bluster from US President Donald Trump rather than a calculated US or North Korean strategy. Our biggest worry isn’t the future toll of a dubious war, but the toll bad leadership is already taking on our standing in the world.South Korean President Moon Jae-in indirectly captured this point when, in respons

Dec. 6, 2017

[David Ignatius] What was Trump afraid of in Russia scandal?

It’s a truism of Washington scandals that it’s not the initial actions that lead to legal disaster, but the attempt to cover them up. It’s possible that is the case with Friday’s indictment of former national security adviser Michael Flynn -- and in the broader investigation of the Trump team’s contacts with Russia. But there is much we still do not know.　This sweater has been unraveling from a thin initial thread. When I reported on Jan. 12 the phone calls between Flynn and Russian Ambassador S

Dec. 6, 2017

[Justin Fendos] Understanding US gun culture in modern days

Given the frequent prevalence of horrifying gun incidents in the United States, I am often asked to explain American gun culture. Especially here in East Asia, the idea that people in an advanced country like the US would be willing to live with the daily risk of being shot is hard for many to understand. So let me try to explain.The first thing to understand is the law. In the US, the constitution contains a specific provision called the Second Amendment that refers to the rights of citizens to

Dec. 6, 2017

[Robert J. Fouser] Dealing with failing private universities

The year 2018 will mark the beginning of a new era in higher education in Korea, as the number of high school graduates falls below the number of available spaces in university for the first time in history. Not all high school graduates go on to university, of course, so universities have recently been scrambling to fill empty places. Many have done so by recruiting international students, mostly from China, but that will become increasingly difficult as the pool of domestic high school graduat

Dec. 5, 2017

[Robert J. Fouser] Dealing with failing private universities

[Dan K. Thomasson] Is there a way out of North Korea dilemma?

With the current administration, there seems to be a new burning question nearly every week. Some linger and others are beyond answering except when they do so themselves. One of these obviously is how to deal with North Korea’s pursuit of atomic weapons parity with other nuclear powers, with a White House itself seemingly in personnel chaos amid increasing reports of changes in top level staff that deal with such questions.If the reports are correct, the crucial foreign policy team would shift

Dec. 5, 2017