[Tulsathit Taptim] Thai connections in Panama Papers

It requires financial genius to stash mountains of money in tax havens, as revealed by the Panama Papers, but it probably takes greater intellect to defend the offshore hidey-holes. The Anti-Money Laundering Office all of a sudden has a tightrope to walk following reports of Thai connections in the leak that is rocking the world.The names of 16 Thais have been found listed among the huge trove of documents revealing individuals and entities from countries around the globe who set up secret offsh

April 14, 2016

[Peter Singer] Can artificial intelligence be ethical?

Last month, AlphaGo, a computer program specially designed to play the game Go, caused shockwaves among aficionados when it defeated Lee Se-dol, one of the world’s top-ranked professional players, winning a five-game tournament by a score of 4-1.Why, you may ask, is that news? Twenty years have passed since the IBM computer Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov, and we all know computers have improved since then. But Deep Blue won through sheer computing power, using its ability

April 13, 2016

[Kim Myong-sik] Dealing humbly with our remains after death

Lawyer Kim Chang-kook, an old friend of mine, died of liver cancer last week. His body -- thinned by the long bout of illness -- was cremated, with the remains placed in an earthen jar that was buried under a pine tree. He had caught hepatitis C many years ago and the disease had developed into liver cirrhosis, then to cancer. He had a liver transplant operation five years ago but the cancer had spread to his lung and other organs. Early last year, his doctor told him that he had 12 months to li

April 13, 2016

[Kim Ji-hyun] Aging with grace

A few weeks ago, there was a bit of a row among a couple of Korean ladies living in Tokyo.To cut a long story short, an older lady ended up apologizing to a younger one for trying to force her to see things from her viewpoint. I thought that was the end of that, but after dining with one of them – the older one – last week, I could see she still refused to believe she had done anything wrong. She complained that the younger woman had asked for advice and that she had imparted it, with the expect

April 13, 2016

[Kim Seong-kon] Calling for modern Renaissance men and women

There is a Korean saying: “To find water, concentrate on digging one well at a time.” It means we need to become professionals and specialists, not shallow amateurs. But times have changed. These days, we need people who can dig as many wells as possible in order to benefit many people. Indeed, the present age calls for open-minded men who have a global perspective rather than parochial views, and erudite men who have wide perception rather than men of narrow specialties.We need Renaissance men

April 12, 2016

[Robert J. Fouser] Does Korea need an upper house?

Today marks the 20th time that Koreans have gone to the polls to vote for members of the National Assembly. Since the founding of the Republic of Korea in 1948, elections for the National Assembly have been the most regular of all elections. From 1971 to 1987, presidential elections were suspended and elections for local government offices were held for the first time in 1995. National Assembly elections, by contrast, have been held regularly every three to five years, though voter fraud and int

April 12, 2016

[Ram Garikipati] Warnings on cigarette packs

As expected, South Korean tobacco-makers and retailers have expressed their opposition to the Health Ministry’s new antismoking policies, which require all firms to fix health warning illustrations on their cigarette products. However, the ministry is not being swayed by their arguments and has refused to stand down.The new measures, which will be implemented later this year, require health warnings consisting of text and images to be printed on the top 50 percent of the front panels of all ciga

April 11, 2016

[Stephen Mihm] Shocked by the Panama Papers?

The revelations about offshore accounts contained in the “Panama Papers” are sensational, but they are unlikely to put an end to these tax havens favored by the world’s rich and powerful.Rather, the disclosures are a reminder that these shelters have been around for close to a century, and have proved remarkably resilient even as they periodically aroused public outrage and calls for reform. In fact, an earlier scandal may have laid the foundation for the tax havens that are now under scrutiny.S

April 11, 2016

[Emily S. Chen] Surrender of Japan’s peace constitution

In February, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called on the National Diet to amend Article 9 of the country’s constitution, which renounces war as a means of settling disputes. Drafted by the United States after World War II, the constitution contains “some parts (that) do not fit into the current period,” Abe said. He is particularly concerned with the constitutional provision that prohibits Japan from maintaining “land, sea, and air forces,” arguing that it seems to be in direct contradictio

April 10, 2016

[Gareth Evans] Learning from military intervention in Libya

There are important lessons to be learned from what went wrong with the NATO-led military intervention in Libya in 2011. U.S. President Barack Obama was right about that in his recent wonderfully frank interview in the Atlantic. But if we are not to compound the world’s misery, we have to take away the right lessons from that intervention.We can agree that Libya is now a mess, with Islamic State forces holding significant ground, the United Nations-facilitated peace process faltering, and atroci

April 10, 2016