[Lee In-hyun] Why Koreans perform well in international music competitions

I heard great news this year in June: Lim Yun-chan got the first prize in the Van Cliburn Piano International Competition. He was the youngest winner since the competition was first established in 1962. The news was sensational in the field of classical music. When the news came out, I saw many people around the world start to get interested in classical music and Korean musicians. Usually, when a person becomes a winner in major competitions, he/she gets famous quickly and tons of scheduled pe

Aug. 8, 2022

[J. Bradford DeLong] Biden’s summer of legislative love

When it comes to the United States Congress, nothing is ever over until it’s over. But as of late July, it looks as though two major pieces of legislation will soon be on President Joe Biden’s desk, awaiting his signature. The first is the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act, which will provide tens of billions of dollars to support domestic semiconductor production and research. The second is the Inflation Reduction Act, a slimmed-down version of the fa

Aug. 4, 2022

[Lee Kyong-hee] Beyond respect for laws and principles

Four individuals weigh heavily on my mind these days. One survived a monthlong, self-tormenting sit-in to change the excruciating conditions of subcontract labor in shipbuilding; the other three lost their lives in the gray zone of confrontation -– and occasional, brittle mood of peace –- between the democratic South Korea and the authoritarian North Korea. Yoo Choi-an, a 41-year-old welder, on June 22, crumpled himself into a small steel structure in the main dock of Daewoo Shipbu

Aug. 4, 2022

[Martin Schram] Veterans become political pawns

It was four in the afternoon on March 10, 1991, when the first planned explosion of Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons went off at the US weapons depot in Khamisiyah, Iraq, and the first gray-white smoke cloud that would come to be called the Plume wafted skyward and drifted over the troops. There would be many blasts that day. Bill Florey, a young and proud-to-serve E4 specialist, had just parked his truck after a day’s work. Francesca Yabraian, who would become his friend and woul

Aug. 3, 2022

[Kim Seong-kon] We all are responsible for healing our country

The defeat of Donald Trump to Joseph Biden in the last US presidential election brought celebration and relief for half of the American people, but frustration and fury for the other half. At that time, America was sharply divided by two groups that were constantly blaming each other. For example, the Democrats blamed Trump for the division of America, but the Republicans asserted that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were responsible. Perhaps both sides had a point. During the Clinton era, campa

Aug. 3, 2022

[Andrew Sheng] Is the falling yen a cause for concern?

It never rains but it pours. Every day this summer we are bombarded by bad news -- raging forest fires, the continuing Ukraine war, random shootings in different cities, a mutating omicron, monkeypox and rising debt distress all over. The good news for some is that the United States dollar is stronger than ever. Or is that bad news for others? In the Bali G-20 Financial Ministers and Central Bank meeting held last week, there was concern that currency volatility could trigger more instability

Aug. 2, 2022

[Robert J. Fouser] K-pop and learning Korean

During my recent visit to South Korea, people often asked me about the popularity of K-pop overseas. Answering the question was always a bit of challenge because I’m not a fan of K-pop and don’t follow it closely. I have a sense of its popularity in the US and, to a lesser extent, Japan, but don’t know much about the rest of the world. I start the answer with these limitations, partly in the hope that the conversation will soon move in another direction, which is usually does.

July 29, 2022

[Nicholas Goldberg] Why do people believe in conspiracy theories?

Watching the Jan. 6 committee hearings, one could be forgiven for believing we’re living in the heyday of conspiracy theories, between the Holocaust denialism of the Oath Keepers, the loony pedophilia fears of the QAnoners and the “Stop the Steal” ravings of Sidney Powell, Rudolph W. Giuliani and former President Donald Trump himself. But don’t be too sure. Conspiracy theories have a long history. They date back to the Emperor Nero and the great fire of Rome, for instanc

July 28, 2022

[Kim Myong-sik] New power needs to depart from past episodes

  In the 2 1/2 months since the inauguration of the Yoon Suk-yeol administration in Seoul, relations between the former and present ruling powers of South Korea have turned from bad to worse, despite the new president’s assurance of “mutual cooperation.” The National Assembly plenary and committee sessions, social media postings and YouTube interviews produce extreme words of criticism from the opposing ranks concerning most government policy announcements, while the new

July 28, 2022

[Doyle McManus] Congress is moving toward fixing the way it counts votes for president, but it won‘t be easy

Last week, a bipartisan group of 16 US senators agreed on a long-awaited proposal to fix the Electoral Count Act, the ramshackle 1887 law that then-President Donald Trump used to try to overturn the 2020 election. Trump claimed the law, which sets the rules under which Congress counts electoral votes, allowed then-Vice President Mike Pence to block votes from states that Joe Biden won. Pence refused, which is why the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, chanted “Hang Mike Pence.&

July 27, 2022

[Kim Seong-kon] We all are a bowl of something

Every day, we use bowls. We fill bowls with something and then empty them later. A bowl‘s identity varies, depending on what it contains. For example, if there is nothing in it, it becomes an empty bowl. If it contains jewelry, it is a jewelry bowl. If it has junk food in it, we call it a junk food bowl. Bowls come in different sizes. There are big bowls and small bowls. When we Koreans say, “He is a big bowl,” it means he is magnanimous and has the capacity of a great man. W

July 27, 2022

[John Ghazvinian] The Iran nuclear deal is dead. Here’s why it would benefit Biden to admit it

It is now clear that the talks aimed at reviving the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action -- commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal -- are going nowhere. After eight rounds of indirect talks, the Biden administration and the government of Iran’s hard-line president, Ebrahim Raisi, have failed to reinstate the deal that the Trump administration renounced in 2018. Iran refuses to return to the Iran nuclear deal unless it receives an ironclad guarantee that it won’t be repealed aga

July 26, 2022

[Eboo Patel] Our world needs social change agents. Here’s how to be an effective activist

In my early years as an activist, I thought social change was about calling out all the ways that people in power were wrecking the world. Finding my voice meant telling other people what they were doing wrong, as loudly and self-righteously as possible. I came of age in the mid-1990s, an era where the activist atmosphere had profound similarities to today. I recognize the “tear it down” energy of our moment, the critique-resist-defund-dismantle worldview. I brought my own version

July 26, 2022

[Mariana Mazzucato, Jayati Ghosh] An effective pandemic response must be truly global

At their recent meeting in Bali on July 15-16, G20 finance ministers reaffirmed their commitment to coordinated action to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control and better prepare for the next global health emergency. A central topic was the creation of a new financial intermediary fund (FIF) to address pandemic preparedness and response (PPR), under the trusteeship of the World Bank and with the World Health Organization playing a central technical and coordinating role. The goal is to clos

July 25, 2022

[Jonathan Zimmerman] Baseball, vaccines and the triumph of selfishness

In April 1909, New York Highlanders‘ first baseman Hal Chase was hospitalized with smallpox near the team’s spring training site in Georgia. The rest of the squad -- which would be renamed the Yankees in 1913 -- took an overnight train to Richmond, Virginia, where they were scheduled to play an exhibition game against a minor league team before the regular season started. But first, the players would need to undergo medical examinations to make sure they were not infected with the d

July 22, 2022

[Lee Kyong-hee] Under foggy skies of northern border island

The island of Baengnyeongdo sits at the entrance to the Korea Bay, the northern extension of the Yellow Sea. “We are 203 kilometers from Seoul City Hall, 180 kilometers from Pyongyang and 177 kilometers from Shandong Peninsula,” my tour guide said. Probably, the island’s location -- and the turbulent waters off its shores -- inspired ancient storytellers to weave the popular tale of filial daughter Sim Cheong. Luck eluded me on a recent Sunday morning when I climbed up a coas

July 21, 2022

[Elizabeth Shackelford] Lessons from Normandy: War is a tool of last resort

I recently visited the beaches of Normandy and was awestruck at the scale of what took place there 78 years ago. The sheer horror it must have been is hard to capture in words, but the scars are still visible. Dozens of massive craters dot the fields. The landscape is interspersed with German fortifications reinforced with concrete two meters thick. Huge tangles of metal debris, part of the harbor constructions used to ferry in half a million troops and cargo, are still casually strewn across t

July 20, 2022

[Kim Seong-kon] Applauding the two awardees‘ comments

Recently, two pieces of international news have pleased and excited the people of Korea. One was about a Korean-American mathematician, June Huh, who received the prestigious Fields Medal, and the other was about a South Korean pianist, Lim Yun-chan, who won the Gold Medal in the famous Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Both winners are young: Huh is 39 and Lim is 18, which made him the youngest gold medalist in the history of the Van Cliburn competition. Huh is the first Korea-born

July 20, 2022

[Ana Palacio] Is China winning Latin America?

Is the West losing Latin America? During the Cold War, this question was feverishly discussed in Washington, and beyond. Now, the return of great-power competition and the potential revival of spheres of influence -- together with the recent wave of left-wing electoral victories in the region -- are giving it renewed salience. For the West, the looming specter of hot conflict with authoritarian regimes, from Russia to China, has again highlighted Latin America’s importance as a partner. A

July 19, 2022

[Nick Robinson] Our incredible shrinking right to protest

After the recent wave of conservative judgments from the Supreme Court on abortion, gun control and environmental regulation, many Americans are looking for alternatives to the courts for ways to enact democratic change. Yet, in the past several years, many state lawmakers -- often Republicans -- have systematically attempted to restrict other traditional paths for political participation. Some of these shifts have received widespread attention, particularly a slew of new state laws that were i

July 18, 2022