The Korea Herald

[Cynthia M. Allen] Politicians are mean, like us

According to custom, the government and opposition benches in the British House of Commons are separated by a length equivalent to “two swords and one inch.”The practice harks back to a time when members of Parliament regularly carried blades.Presumably, the distance was meant to guard against the possibility that verbal sparring could easily erupt into physical confrontation -- an event that wasn’t unknown on the floor of the U.S. House in past centuries, either.The tradition remains intact tod

May 16, 2016

[Cynthia M. Allen] Politicians are mean, like us

[Andres Oppenheimer] Mexicans are fighting back against Trump

Mexicans have silently begun a campaign to debunk presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s bigotry, xenophobia and economic isolationism in an area where he is most vulnerable: the realm of accurate facts and figures.To confront Trump’s daily Mexico-bashing, the Mexican government will launch a U.S. public-relations campaign in early June. Meantime, a group of Mexican-American businesspeople is launching a lobbying group named American Mexico Public Affairs Committee, modeled a

May 16, 2016

[Albert R. Hunt] Trump’s tax dodge

Donald Trump, who has called one opponent “Lyin’ Ted” and another “Crooked Hillary,” has gotten away with more falsehoods and fabrications than any politician in memory. He’s at it again.The subject is his tax returns. First he said he’d release them, as every Republican and Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominee has done since 1980. Then this week he told the Associated Press he probably wouldn‘t, at least not before an Internal Revenue Service audit was complete (which may or ma

May 15, 2016

[Peter Singer] Insects too have subjective experience

Last summer, a cabbage white butterfly laid its eggs on an arugula I was growing. Before long, the plant was swarming with green caterpillars, well disguised against the green leaves. I had other arugula plants, some distance away, that would give me plenty of leaves for our salads, and I didn’t want to use an insecticide, so I just left the caterpillars alone. Soon, every leaf was eaten down to the stalk. With nothing left to eat, the caterpillars, not ready to begin the next stage of their lif

May 15, 2016

[Peter Singer] Insects too have subjective experience

[Elizabeth Drew] Can Democrats and Republicans heal themselves?

The contests to decide the nominees of America’s two main political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, for the presidential election are all but over. That leaves both parties facing the challenge of reuniting for the fall campaign -- a feat that will be much harder to pull off this year than it was in most other presidential election years.Though it is mathematically impossible for Bernie Sanders to win enough pledged delegates to capture the Democratic nomination, he is staying in the

May 15, 2016

Twitter’s dangerous stand on surveillance

The tension between Silicon Valley and the federal government over digital privacy has taken a bizarre twist: Twitter has reportedly barred the analytics firm Dataminr, which scans the Twitterverse for breaking news and trends, from selling its services to U.S. intelligence agencies. Twitter seems to have no good reason for standing in the way of national security -- beyond advancing its own public relations strategy.　While the details remain hazy, U.S. intelligence agencies and Dataminr are sai

May 15, 2016

[Joseph E. Stiglitz] Monopoly’s new era

For 200 years, there have been two schools of thought about what determines the distribution of income -- and how the economy functions. One, emanating from Adam Smith and nineteenth-century liberal economists, focuses on competitive markets. The other, cognizant of how Smith’s brand of liberalism leads to rapid concentration of wealth and income, takes as its starting point unfettered markets’ tendency toward monopoly. It is important to understand both, because our views about government polic

May 15, 2016

[Mike Gonzalez] The real reason the IS successfully recruits fighters

Which country has the highest percentage of its Muslim population fighting for the Islamic State group as foreign recruits? Algeria? Afghanistan? Indonesia? Nope.Try Finland. No. 2 is Ireland, followed by Belgium, Sweden and Austria.What do these countries have in common, besides being European? They’re wealthy, democratic and have high levels of education, health and income. They also have very low levels of economic inequality.These findings appear in an eyebrow-raising report by the National

May 13, 2016

[David Ignatius] Can Assad keep crossing the ‘red line’?

The Obama administration has another chance to enforce its botched “red line” against the use of chemical weapons in Syria, given new reports that President Bashar Assad’s regime has used nerve gas against extremist fighters and may be planning more such attacks. Obama’s decision not to retaliate against Assad’s use of chemical weapons in 2013 has become an emblem for his larger foreign policy, which critics argue hasn’t been forceful enough in Syria and other places. Obama justified his restrai

May 13, 2016

[David Ignatius] Can Assad keep crossing the ‘red line’?

[Barbara Unmussig] Repression of protesters returns

Governments around the world are taking draconian steps to suppress civil-society organizations, with measures ranging from restrictive laws and bureaucratic burdens to smear campaigns, censorship, and outright repression by intelligence agencies or police. Whatever the means, governments are striving to interfere with the work of political, social, and environmental activists to an extent not seen since before communism collapsed in Europe a quarter-century ago.Of course, governments cite all s

May 12, 2016

[Barbara Unmussig] Repression of protesters returns

[Thepchai Yong] A tourist’s alternative view of North Korea

When Prince Alfred of Liechtenstein, chairman of the advisory board of the Vienna-based International Peace Foundation, decided to make his first trip to Pyongyang last October, his friends and family started worrying that he might not make it back.“They told me not to go because it would be dangerous and I might end up in jail. They were worried because I always speak my mind and that would get me into trouble,” recalled Prince Alfred, who noted that the general perception of North Korea is oft

May 12, 2016

[Thepchai Yong] A tourist’s alternative view of North Korea

[Khurram Husain] The need to maintain offshore companies

One thing the Panama Papers have made very clear is that there is a large system for concealing and moving money into and out of Pakistan, and this system is used more by businesses and high net worth individuals than it is by public figures. Of the 259 Pakistani names revealed thus far in the second release of the data, only a fraction are political figures. The rest are all connected with business.Why do so many people in the world of business feel the need to maintain an offshore company? The

May 12, 2016

Will this election get Philippines out of rut?

Is a vote for presidential frontrunner Rodrigo Duterte a protest vote? No question. As observers have noted, six years of failures and frustrations generated by the incumbent administration have made a large part of the electorate predisposed to a radical prospect: a tough-talking mayor from outside Imperial Manila who appears to have no patience for the usual political niceties, and has vowed to smash the fraying conventions and institutions of the old guard — from shuttering Congress should it

May 12, 2016

[Megan McArdle] The U.S. doesn’t need a CEO in chief

Critiquing Donald Trump’s policy pronouncements for being implausible feels a bit like belittling bathroom graffiti for its weak use of metaphor and inappropriate deployment of the conditional rather than the subjunctive. Sure, you may be technically correct, but you’ve failed to grapple with the essentials of the form. And neither the author nor his audience is likely to take your criticisms to heart.But what can we pundits do? The man is now the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republic

May 12, 2016

[Raghuram Rajan] Building stability for India’s economic growth

In their efforts to stimulate demand by pursuing increasingly aggressive monetary policies, advanced economies have been imposing risks on emerging-market countries such as India. Indeed, one day we face surging capital inflows, as investors go into “risk-on” mode, and outflows the next as they switch risk off.India has responded to this external volatility by trying to create a domestic platform of macroeconomic stability on which to build growth. India’s latest central budget emphasizes fiscal

May 11, 2016

[Raghuram Rajan] Building stability for India’s economic growth

[Kim Myong-sik] Trump sees USFK as mercenaries

Donald Trump wants to turn the 28,500 members of the U.S. Forces in Korea into mercenaries. He demands that the Korean government pay 100 percent of the cost for stationing U.S. troops here because he believes they are here solely to benefit Koreans. What an affront to the young American men and women who are proud to stand for the U.S. commitment to global peace and freedom!Korea and the United States split the USFK bill roughly half and half because Seoul and Washington are aware that their de

May 11, 2016

[Kim Myong-sik] Trump sees USFK as mercenaries

[Shim Jae-hong] Beginning of an activist

Few who read this will have had the experience of living in fear. But the same cannot be said of North Korean defectors in China.“There are many North Korean defectors in China who are living under the fear of arrest. Many women end up being the victims of human trafficking, and their children become vulnerable and deprived of maternal care and basic education. Our job is to help and support these people,” said Tim Peters, a prominent social activist living in Seoul.Mr. Peters was speaking to my

May 11, 2016

[David Ignatius] A spy chief‘s hardened perspective

WASHINGTON -- Early in his tenure as director of national intelligence, James Clapper could sometimes be heard complaining “I’m too old for this (expletive)!” He has now served almost six years as America’s top intelligence official, and when I asked him this week how much longer he would be in harness, he consulted his calendar and answered with relief, “265 days!” Clapper, 75, has worked in intelligence for 53 years, starting when he joined the Air Force in 1963. He’s a crusty, sometimes cra

May 11, 2016

[Kim Ji-hyun] Putting a price on news

An acquaintance I recently made in Tokyo has opened a new business. It’s called the Japan Industry News, and its service is as straightforward as its name. The main idea is to offer an English platform for Japanese newspapers so they can introduce their content to English-speaking consumers. I mention the name outright not because I am wowed by the originality of the idea -- this is not the first such attempt made in a non-English-speaking place like Japan -- but because I want to applaud the au

May 11, 2016

[Stephen Mihm] How your breakfast cereal became ‘100% Natural’

Quaker Oats, a brand that claims to embody “wholesome goodness,” has been hit with a class-action lawsuit challenging its much-trumpeted claims that its products are “100% Natural.” The reason? Trace quantities of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weed killer known as Roundup, have been found in breakfast cereal.　The outcome of this and other, similar lawsuits could depend on the answer to a pesky question: What does it mean for a food to be natural? There is an abundant historical record

May 10, 2016