[Paek Tae-youl] A view on the end-of-war declaration on Korean Peninsula

President Moon Jae-in of South Korea proposed an end-of-war declaration for the first time in April 2018. Since then he has occasionally mentioned the idea and most recently, raised the issue again in his speech at the 76th session of the UN General Assembly on Sept. 21, 2021. A part of his speech regarding the declaration is as follows: “More than anything, an end-of-war declaration will mark a pivotal point of departure in creating a new order of ‘reconciliation and cooperation&r

Jan. 6, 2022

[Lee Kyong-hee] Musings on 2022 alongside Maitreya images

A concert featuring Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 is an annual rite to usher in a new year. The reflective passages and choral “Ode to Joy” are constants when reviewing time past and listing hopes for the dawning year. The prolonged pandemic, of course, blocked performances of the musical masterpiece. But the National Museum of Korea afforded a wonderful substitute. There, on the second floor, is a new permanent exhibition, “A Room of Quiet Contemplation.” The galler

Jan. 6, 2022

[Arvind Subramanian] Is climate finance the next bubble?

In the last few years, and especially after the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, private investors have seen an opportunity to midwife developing countries’ bumpy transition to net-zero carbon-dioxide emissions. After all, if BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and the climate activist Greta Thunberg can find common cause, then the tantalizing prospect held out by William Blake -- “Great things are done when men and mountains meet” -- comes into view.

Jan. 6, 2022

[Ramesh Ponnuru] Inflation debate will matter in 2022

Prices have been increasing at the fastest rate in decades, but we haven’t been having a debate about inflation. We’ve been having five. We might do a better job of thinking through the issues if we distinguish among them. The first debate concerns the magnitude of the current inflation: How long it will last and how high it will get. It started last spring, when some economists sounded the alarm that we were likely to see the highest inflation in a generation. Others argued first

Jan. 5, 2022

[Kim Seong-kon] South Korea in the Year of the Tiger

 According to the Chinese zodiac, the year 2022 is the Year of the Tiger. Although the younger generation in Korea is perhaps no longer interested in the zodiac, it still counts for the older generation. The zodiac says that those who are born in the Year of the Tiger are bold, courageous, and confident. At the same time, however, they tend to be impetuous, overindulgent, and unpredictable. The shape of the Korean Peninsula has invited some interesting debates. Some people argue that the s

Jan. 5, 2022

[Dan Rodricks] What renders us all vulnerable to COVID-19

A team of four doctors, experts in infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, are sounding a warning about Americans who remain most vulnerable to COVID-19 -- those with existing health conditions or the immunosuppressed. They can harbor what the doctors call “evolving viral swarms” and could produce even more harmful variants of the coronavirus that would undermine the nation’s and the world’s efforts to break out of the 2-year-old pandemic. T

Jan. 4, 2022

[Mark Z. Barabak] Lou Cannon, ‘Hall of Fame’ political writer, hangs it up. Sort of

One of the giants of political journalism has decided to hang it up at age 88. But anyone who knows Lou Cannon doesn’t think for a moment his retirement means more time on the beach or romping on all fours with one of his seven great-grandkids. Cannon has reached Chapter 23 of his memoirs, he said, and plans to write several more ahead of a self-imposed deadline a few months from now. Hence his departure from the professional news biz after more than 60 years of the day-in, day-out grind.

Jan. 3, 2022

[Nicholas Goldberg] Can US strike a balance between isolationism and policing the world?

Americans are tired of war. We just got out of a 20-year fiasco in Afghanistan with little to show for it except the Taliban reinstated, burqa sales up and the country plunged into turmoil. Before that, the seven-year-long war in Iraq didn’t make Americans safer, nor did it make that country a thriving democracy or uncover weapons of mass destruction. Trillions of dollars later and thousands of lives gone, many Americans are feeling skeptical about foreign entanglements and urging a retr

Jan. 3, 2022

[Robert Pearl] Endemic COVID-19 should be cause for celebration, not consternation

Most leading immunologists predict COVID-19 will someday become an endemic, a persistent but manageable threat on par with seasonal flu, conceivably by the end of 2022. That would constitute quite the turnaround from today. All things considered, the possibility of COVID-19 becoming endemic (just another American annoyance) should be cause for great celebration. So, why doesn’t the pending transition from pandemic to endemic feel like great news? Part of the answer involves the news m

Jan. 3, 2022

[Serendipity] Humility, a pandemic lesson

The snow made me do it. After much vacillation over whether to visit the US side of my family over Christmas or to stay in Seoul, I had finally resigned myself to spending the holidays at home. I had booked my flights months in advance, in hopes that the pandemic situation would improve with time. After all, vaccines that can protect against the virus that causes COVID-19, or at least lessen the severity of an infection, were now widely available. We had also learned over more than a year of

Dec. 31, 2021

[Robert J. Fouser] South Korea pulls through, again

The year 2021 began with great hope that vaccines would end the COVID-19 pandemic; it ends in fear as the omicron variant spreads at a torrid pace. As the world welcomes 2022, leaders are running short of political capital to rally weary citizens to cooperate with burdensome public health measures. Amid the dashed hopes of 2021, South Korea pulled through again, much as it did in 2020. The nation did far better than most other advanced democracies in limiting the impact of the pandemic on socie

Dec. 31, 2021

[Kim Myong-sik] Presidential pardon to forgive own political vendetta

If I am asked to design a New Year calendar, I would draw three swans floating on a lake to depict the figures 2-0-2-2. A bright sun rising from the horizon shall be inserted between the first two birds to mark zero. This picture I hope could symbolize peace and stability that we are yearning for in the coming year after the extremely weary time of the coronavirus pandemic. Even before the virus struck this country in early 2020, South Korean politics had remained volatile amid worsening parti

Dec. 30, 2021

[Dave Anderson] Truth is that US citizens are not polarized

There are two problems with the conventional wisdom about polarization in American society. The first is that it mistakes widespread conflict with one master battle between conservatives and liberals. The second is that it overlooks a large percentage of Americans who do not identify with either the Democrats or the Republicans. The result of these two mistakes is the ongoing, misleading narrative that the people of the United States are engaged in a red vs. blue war. Consider the first mistak

Dec. 30, 2021

[Ana Palacio] Failures of 2021 call for honest introspection

The end of a year invites reflection on the events and trends that have shaped it. In 2021, they include the COVID-19 pandemic, recently reinvigorated by the omicron variant; the steady march of climate change, which has intensified pressure to reach net-zero emissions; and geopolitical tensions, especially the great-power rivalry between the US and China. On all of these fronts, 2021 was a year of deterioration.　 As difficult as 2020 was, it concluded with grounds for hope. Effective COVID-19

Dec. 29, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] Looking back on 2021, a year full of turbulence

Unlike any other, the year 2021 was an especially turbulent one worldwide. In fact, together with 2020 it was one of the worst years in memory due to the continuing surge of COVID-19. To make matters worse, variants of the coronavirus, namely delta and omicron, spread rapidly, devastating the slowly recuperating world. Some suffered the loss of family members or a job. Others had to endure the shutdown of a business or bankruptcy. People expected the pandemic would end in 2021. To our disappoi

Dec. 29, 2021

[Takatoshi Ito] Does Japan vindicate Modern Monetary Theory?

Public debt has soared since the 2008 financial crisis, and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the International Monetary Fund, the ratio of public debt to GDP in advanced economies increased from around 70 percent in 2007 to 124 percent in 2020. But the fear that rising public debt will fuel future financial crises has been subdued, partly because government bond yields have been so low for so long. Although yields started falling much earlier, in the 1990s, they were kept l

Dec. 28, 2021

[Tyler Cowen] We can’t get back to normal yet

As omicron cases rise rapidly, there are urgent questions about how aggressively we should respond. At one extreme are reactions like that of the Netherlands, which has moved into full lockdown mode to blunt the variant’s spread. Another possibility is simply to not do very much, whether out of pandemic fatigue or uncertainty over the best approach. But the sudden surge in cases has given fresh impetus to those who believe the time has come to normalize COVID, treating it much as we would

Dec. 28, 2021

[Charles A. Kupchan] A diplomatic way out in Ukraine

During his annual press conference on Dec. 23, Russian President Vladimir Putin railed against NATO enlargement. “How would the US react if we delivered rockets near their borders with Canada or Mexico?” he pointedly asked. Putin’s increasingly combative rhetoric, coupled with Russia’s huge troop buildup on its border with Ukraine, suggests that the Kremlin is readying an invasion to pull the country back into Russia’s sphere of influence and prevent its accession

Dec. 27, 2021

[Lee Kyong-hee] Sending prayer for care from cradle to grave

A conversation with Archbishop Simon Kim Soung-soo of the Anglican Church is heartwarming and inspirational. In the pro-democracy struggle decades ago, he was a courageous advocate. Now, he is a voice for people with developmental disabilities. The nonagenarian archbishop can be found on the Incheon island Ganghwado, which hugs the border separating North and South Korea. There, he assists 50 “friends” at Urimaul, or Our Village, a workplace aimed at ensuring the comfort and secu

Dec. 23, 2021