[Lee Kyong-hee] A history war or war on truth, Mr. Abe?

Every February, a memorial service is held in Yamaguchi prefecture, Japan for 183 men who died in a 1942 coal mine disaster. Most of them were Koreans, but the Japanese government does not acknowledge they existed. Likewise, wartime Korean laborers forced to toil in gold and silver mines on the island of Sado are overlooked. On Feb. 1, Japan nominated the Sado mines for a place on the UNESCO World Heritage List, exacerbating already fragile Korea-Japan relations and reminding us that their ong

Feb. 17, 2022

[Doyle McManus] Truckers’ blockade could happen in US

The pictures from Ottawa over the last two weeks have defied every American stereotype of Canadians. We think of our northern neighbors as incorrigibly polite, their politics as moderate and their capital city -- when we consider it at all -- as boring, the Sacramento of the north. Suddenly, however, Ottawa has become the center of a global populist backlash against vaccine mandates and, more broadly, elitist liberal governments. About 500 truckers angry about new border-crossing rules between

Feb. 16, 2022

[Kim Seong-kon] “All of Us Are Dead Now at Our School”

In the early 1980s when I began teaching at Seoul National University, I had my students watch George Romero’s legendary film, “Night of the Living Dead” in one of my graduate classes. At that time, very few Koreans even knew what a zombie was. Accordingly, my students at SNU were shocked and appalled at the bone-chilling horror of the first modern zombie film released in 1968. After we watched the movie, I then taught my students how to read the film. For example, I compared

Feb. 16, 2022

[Elizabeth Shackelford] Coups are happening where democracy is failing

The latest blow to democracy is the explosion of coups around the world. Weak democratic governments that are failing to deliver are being overthrown. This global phenomenon has been most evident in West Africa. In the past 18 months, coups have occurred in Burkina Faso, Guinea and Chad. Mali has had two in that period, and Niger and Guinea-Bissau have narrowly escaped coup attempts. More coups occurred in 2021 alone than in the prior five years combined. Africa has been no stranger to coups si

Feb. 15, 2022

[Kevin Roberts] It’s time to win war against Big Tech

Big Tech is an enemy of the American people. The largest corporations of our information economy wield unparalleled power over Americans’ lives. They enjoy almost unfettered access to our personal information. And they exercise more immediate control over our speech and livelihoods than even the government itself. They’ve had years to prove themselves responsible stewards of this power, by using it transparently and equitably, in the public interest and for the common good. They&rs

Feb. 14, 2022

[Robert J. Fouser] Dealing with labor market turmoil

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought sweeping changes to the labor market that will continue to reverberate. During the shock phase in early 2020, millions lost their jobs and unemployment soared. In developing countries, poverty rates jumped, reversing years of progress. Developed countries recovered many lost jobs by the end of 2020, and some now face labor shortages. The churning has changed how people think about work and their expectations of it. As with the public health side of the pandemic

Feb. 11, 2022

[Andrei Kolesnikov] Not all Russians buy Putin’s warmongering

In May 1993, Estonia’s first post-Soviet leader Lennart Meri -- a wise man with bitter experience of life in the Soviet Union -- told the visiting US deputy secretary of state that Estonia urgently needed to join NATO. It was, he said, the only guarantee that Russia wouldn’t invade the Baltic state once a less Western-friendly and authoritarian Russian leader replaced then-President Boris Yeltsin. Meanwhile, Yeltsin openly warned the US that NATO’s expansion to the east would

Feb. 10, 2022

[Kim Myong-sik] China remains Third World in South Korean minds

  The 2022 Winter Olympics are underway in Beijing, among the nation’s closest foreign capitals at just some 950 kilometers from Seoul, four years after South Korea hosted the PyeongChang Games in Gangwon Province. Sixty-four Korean athletes are competing on snow and ice with the modest goal of ranking 15th or 16th in the medal standing. Famous movie director Zhang Yimou used a lot of his genius and high technology to add a landmark in the ongoing rise of China, but the opening cere

Feb. 10, 2022

[Peter Singer] Is it time for plant liberation?

“Every day, thousands of innocent plants are killed by vegetarians. Help end the violence. Eat meat.” These words, written last month by an Edinburgh butcher on a blackboard outside his shop and shared on a vegan Facebook group, led to a heated online discussion. Some condemned the butcher for seeking to blur an important line between beings capable of suffering and those that are not. Others took it as a joke, as the butcher said he had intended it. But jokes can make serious poin

Feb. 9, 2022

[Kim Seong-kon] Understanding South Korea’s Generation MZ

Lately, the foreign press has featured some intriguing articles on South Korea’s “Generation MZ,” a term that encompasses millennials and Generation Z, or roughly those born from the 1980s into the 2010s. For example, Bloomberg reported on young people in Korea in their 20s and 30s standing in a long line at 5 a.m. to buy famous brands at a department store. The New York Times, too, in an article called “The New Political Cry in South Korea: ‘Out With Men Haters,&rs

Feb. 9, 2022

[Peter Jensen] How to save democracy - elect fewer jerks

Having recently completed my 40th year as a card-carrying journalist, I feel compelled to share the one small nugget of wisdom I have gleaned from all those misspent hours hanging out with mayors, governors, legislators and other ne’er-do-wells of elected office. They are not all the same. This will shock some of you, I know, but like other human beings, they range from truly nice people to miserable jerks. This is not a matter of political viewpoint, age or gender. Awful people come in al

Feb. 8, 2022

[Slawomir Sierakowski] The view from Kyiv

For international observers, Russian President Vladimir Putin either will start a new war in Ukraine or he will not. But for Ukrainians, the war started when Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, and it has continued ever since. Thousands of Ukrainians already have experienced armed struggle against Russian forces. That is why politicians in Kyiv are not preoccupied with guessing what Putin will do next; they are focused on what they must do today. The Ukrainian mindset reflects a sober assessment of t

Feb. 7, 2022

[Mark Buchanan] How to win global warming lawsuits

The fight against global warming is rapidly moving into the courtrooms. In the past few years, in landmark cases in the Netherlands, Germany and France, courts have agreed that state and corporate entities have a duty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and demanded they adopt more aggressive policies. A Dutch court, for example, ordered the government to reduce emissions to 25 percent below 1990s levels, forcing it to go beyond its proposed goal of 17 percent. These rulings mark an encouraging

Feb. 4, 2022

[Jean Pisani-Ferry] European inflation is not American inflation

Eurozone consumer prices increased by 5 percent year on year in December, while the number of Google searches for “inflation” has recently risen threefold in Germany and tenfold in France. So, at first glance, it is difficult to avoid the impression that Europe -- like the United States, where annual price growth has hit 7 percent -- will have a tough time taming the inflation dragon. Having dismissed concerns about rising prices for too long on the grounds that the main risk was de

Feb. 3, 2022

[Lee Kyong-hee] Anguish of defectors continues unattended

From time to time, we hear about North Korean defectors. Then they quickly recede from the public conscience, as if their plight has been fully understood and cared for. But is it? A young North Korean defector recently risked his life to return to a poor, authoritarian environment 14 months after he crossed the border in the reverse direction. How horrible was trying to adjust to the South that the North looked like a better place? News of the “double defection” overlapped with a

Feb. 3, 2022

[Robert J. Fouser] The 386 Generation’s first president

The presidential election is coming up fast. The leading candidates, Lee Jae-myung and Yoon Suk-yeol, are locked in a close race as each candidate looks for a breakthrough to gain a decisive advantage. Third-placed Ahn Cheol-soo has seen a slight uptick in support, but he may have peaked as conservative voters shift back to Yoon. Regardless of who wins, the election marks an important generational change in South Korean politics. The top three candidates in polls are all members of the 386 Gene

Jan. 28, 2022

[Jonathan Bernstein] Don’t panic, Joe Biden. Be like Reagan

The New York Times reports that US President Joe Biden “will retreat from the tangle of day-to-day negotiations with members of his own party that have made him seem powerless to advance key priorities, according to senior White House advisers. The change is part of an intentional reset in how he spends his time, aimed at emphasizing his power to govern as president, rather than getting trapped in a series of congressional battles.” With any luck, it’s just harmless spin. Pres

Jan. 27, 2022

[Kim Myong-sik] Outlook for March election is getting clearer

Politicians make speeches far more than ordinary people do, even more than salespeople, perhaps. They speak of the policies they are pushing for the interests of the people, present their opinions about domestic and international issues, and expose their own personal matters or their political opponents’. In particular, they are capable of mixing truths with half-truths and outright lies when necessary for achieving their goals. During election campaigns, they try their best to collect vo

Jan. 27, 2022

[Martin Schram] A tale of presidential press conference secrets

It had been months since the president’s last East Room press conference. And his team’s best and brightest understood that, just like sports stars, all-star political communicators can get rusty riding the bench, away from the game’s give-and-take. This time they were determined to leave nothing to chance. Their president was sitting in the center of the Cabinet Room, awaiting his advisers’ tough rehearsal questions. They realized his last full-fledged press conference

Jan. 26, 2022