[Kim Seong-kon] “Your Republic Is Calling You”

Kim Young-ha’s celebrated novel, “Your Republic Is Calling You,” is an account of a North Korean spy named Ki-yong who has lived in South Korea since the mid-1980s with no contact from the North. Cut off from the North for such a long time, he assumes that the North Korean government has completely forgotten him in the vortex of its shifts of power. Meanwhile, Ki-yong has become so accustomed to South Korean society and a lifestyle marked by capitalism and liberalism that he ca

Nov. 26, 2019

[Ann McFeatters] A rare bipartisan show of support for 5G technology

Amazingly, the US Senate just sent a bipartisan request to the White House.　In a hopeful if small sign that there are matters of state that Republicans and Democrats can still agree on, a coalition of senators is arguing that the United States is at serious risk of losing the international race to get 5G wireless technology.　This could constitute a major national security threat, the senators argued in a letter to Peter O’Brien, national security adviser to President Trump.　China is by all

Nov. 26, 2019

[Martin Schram] Trump Ukraine probe wins one new vote -- Putin’s

As the House Intelligence Committee has ended its hearings and is racing at a most un-congressional top-speed toward an apparent impeachment of President Donald Trump for crimes including bribery, we need to rewind and cover a late-breaking impeachment witness who almost everyone missed.Testimony came from a definitely knowledgeable first-hand eyewitness who addressed the same topic that was testified to so memorably and powerfully on Thursday by Trump’s former National Security Council st

Nov. 25, 2019

[Trudy Rubin] Hong Kong crisis has become crucial test of future US-China relations

Impeachment proceedings have overshadowed another riveting drama half a world away: ongoing pro-democracy protests in the iconic city Hong Kong.Peaceful marches of millions of Hong Kong citizens have given way to violent student protests as Beijing continues to curb the city’s freedoms. In the meantime, an almost unanimous vote in Congress passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act last week to support the protesters, as Beijing fumes and a reluctant President Trump prepares to si

Nov. 25, 2019

[Therese Raphael] How Jeremy Corbyn plans to end market capitalism

Boris Johnson is running a People versus Parliament campaign for the UK’s Dec. 12 election. Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is also running a “people versus” campaign. Only in Corbyn’s narrative, the other corner of the ring isn’t occupied by obstreperous lawmakers, but rather that muscled colossus he sums up as “billionaires and bankers.”Corbyn’s strategy for defeating the titan was laid out in an election manifesto and accompanying funding

Nov. 24, 2019

[Anders Fogh Rasmussen] Building Euro-Japanese alliance of hope for world

Geography aside, Japan and the European Union have never been so close. With Europe’s long-standing transatlantic ties under strain, and China presenting a challenge as well as an opportunity, the EU has sought like-minded allies in the Pacific. And there is none better than Japan.The EU-Japan bond transcends mere interests: It is a relationship based on shared values of freedom, democracy and open markets. Today, these values are under threat. The United States has decided to transact wit

Nov. 21, 2019

[Daniel Moss] Malaysia’s disappearing opportunity

When a nonagenarian political veteran runs a campaign promising change, it’s only a matter of time before that message comes full circle. For Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, that means succession planning can’t be delayed any longer.In May 2018, Mahathir pulled off a stunning election victory to lead Malaysia for a second time. In defeating Najib Razak, who denies allegations of siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars from a state investment fund, the new prim

Nov. 21, 2019

[Kim Myong-sik] Suggesting plebiscite on energy denuclearization

Passing the halfway point in his five-year tenure, President Moon Jae-in’s approval rate hovers just above the 40 percent mark, half the level immediately after his election in May 2017. Woes grow among manufacturers, traders and consumers, security threats loom large and political groups are sharpening hostility. Amid rising discontent, the energy denuclearization policy has emerged as a top destabilizing issue.University students at nuclear science departments see no future in their chos

Nov. 20, 2019

[Arvind Subramanian] Is Sri Lanka the next Argentina?

As Sri Lanka makes another crucial political transition, it faces a major risk of macroeconomic instability. Minimizing that risk will depend, above all, on whether the country’s newly elected President Gotabaya Rajapaksa can defy his reputation and embrace inclusive politics.This idyllic island in the Indian Ocean was once a star performer. In the years following independence in 1948, progress on leading social indicators such as poverty, infant mortality, and primary education put Sri La

Nov. 20, 2019

[Kim Seong-kon] From liberator to tyrant in ‘Game of Thrones’

Movies and television dramas are excellent social documents in that they faithfully reflect societal change and the alteration of consciousness throughout history. Sometimes they illuminate us with profound insights into and powerful criticisms of contemporary society. Since films and TV shows enjoy enormous popularity, their impact is huge, more widespread and more powerful than traditional literature. The celebrated HBO series “Game of Thrones” is a good example. In the eighth and

Nov. 19, 2019

[Daniel Moss] A bigger threat than NK nukes

You know times are hard in provincial South Korea when the guy selling walkers and hearing aids can only make ends meet by day trading. Lee Ho-cheol, 52, keeps his eyes on flashing stock quotes while his shop, crammed with wheelchairs, canes and other equipment for seniors, sits empty. Lee has run the store for roughly two decades, and his plight shows just how dire things have become. Few of his neighbors make enough money sticking to their day jobs, he says, and many have turned to selling bea

Nov. 19, 2019

[Andy Mukherjee] India’s growth needs consumers

A long-held belief of analysts in India is that the economy is supply-constrained. Demand isn’t even worth a footnote, while a temporary squeeze in the onion market deserves obsession because it could be inflationary. It’s increasingly obvious that this view is outdated. In October, inflation quickened more than expected to 4.62 percent because of, yes, an onion shortage. Yet core inflation, which strips out volatile commodity prices, slumped to 3.4 percent, the lowest since the

Nov. 18, 2019

[Elizabeth Drew] Trump's wrong-headed views put him in trouble

The most dismaying thing about the impeachment proceedings against US President Donald Trump is that they are falling so short of the constitutional gravamen of the issue. True, some Democrats in the House of Representatives, particularly Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, do appear to understand the seriousness of the question before them. But most Republicans -- egged on by Trump, who often complains that they are not doing enough for him -- are o

Nov. 18, 2019

[Shuli Ren] China’s No. 1 university has a big debt problem

A crown jewel of President Xi Jinping’s Made in China 2025 plan is faltering.Tsinghua Unigroup is the business arm of the prestigious Tsinghua University, Xi’s alma mater. The company has been trying to establish itself as a leader in China’s nascent memory-chip industry since 2015, when it famously tried to acquire stakes in US rivals Micron Technology and Western Digital. Both advances were rejected amid concerns that US regulators wouldn’t approve the deals on national

Nov. 17, 2019

[Trudy Rubin] Talk of a ‘new Cold War’ between US and China is misleading

Thirty years ago this week I was on my way to Prague to watch Czechoslovak communism end with the Velvet Revolution. The Berlin Wall had just fallen, the Soviet communist party was headed for collapse, and the Cold War would soon end.Five months earlier, Chinese leaders had cracked down on student admirers of Western democracy in Tiananmen Square. That tragedy didn’t stir the same geopolitical shock waves as the events in Europe, because China was still a poor, developing country.Yet 30 ye

Nov. 17, 2019

[Aryeh Neier] Popular protests carry serious risks

People all over the world are resorting to mass demonstrations to express grievances and press unmet demands. While, in some ways, popular protests are a triumph of democratic principles and civic activism, they also carry serious risks, including violence by and against protesters. Their pervasiveness today points to a failure of governments, democratic and authoritarian alike, to hear, let alone meet, the needs of their people.The issues at stake are wide-ranging. In Catalonia, demonstrators a

Nov. 13, 2019

[Trudy Rubin] University program teaches ‘rule of law’ amid Sino-US tensions

On every visit I’ve made to China, I’ve looked at issues connected with rule of law, a concept interpreted very differently here and in the US.On this trip, I decided to check out a joint program between Temple University and the law school at Tsinghua University, one of China’s finest, a program that is celebrating its 20th anniversary.Temple’s “Rule of Law” master’s degree program, taught on the sprawling, leafy Tsinghua campus, draws Chinese professio

Nov. 13, 2019

[Kim Seong-kon] Between ‘take-off’ and ‘crash-landing’

In the 1970’s when the South Korean economy bypassed North Korea, the foreign press reported that it was finally in the stage of taking-off after a long taxi on the runway. Indeed, the whole world was watching South Korea’s successful take-off at the time. The South Koreans were very excited because they finally made their way out of the long, dark tunnel of postwar poverty.Recently, however, I came across a rather depressing newspaper article by professor Kim Young-min entitled, &ld

Nov. 12, 2019

[Daniel Moss] Trade war frontlines are friendlier than you think

The island of Tsushima, halfway between Japan and South Korea, is about as close as you can get to the frontline of their trade war. Now part of Nagasaki prefecture, waves of Korean cultural, commercial and military influence have crested and receded over the hills of this verdant island since the Middle Ages.Here it’s apparent that centuries-old ties between the nations can’t be unwound by political rhetoric spewing from capital cities hundreds of miles away. Economic life crawls al

Nov. 12, 2019