The Korea Herald

[Chicago Tribune] Korean unity at Olympics: Is there any there?

Have the PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games turned into the Pyongyang Games? Hardly.But North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has seized the Olympic spotlight, with the agreement that athletes from both sides of the demilitarized zone will march under a unified flag during opening ceremonies at the Winter Olympics next month in PyeongChang, South Korea.The International Olympic Committee signed off on the deal Saturday. North Korea will send 22 athletes, including a group of women’s hockey players who w

Jan. 23, 2018

[David Ignatius] Preparing our Middle East partners to fight their own battles

In training exercises in a mock Afghan village constructed here on a base amid swampland, the US Army is applying the military lesson of the war against the Islamic State group: Help your partners beat the enemy, but don’t try to do the fighting yourself.　Letting others fight the battle hasn’t been the American way in modern times, to our immense national frustration. The US military became bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, much as it had a generation earlier in Vietnam, by trying to reshape

Jan. 22, 2018

[Andrew Sheng] Why are we blind to inequality?

The concept that human beings should be equal is very old. It was the fight against injustice and inequality between the French royalty and citizens that drove 18th-century intellectual Jean-Jacques Rousseau to write “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.”　These words sparked the French Revolution. Across the Atlantic in 1776, the newly independent United States of America wrote into its constitution, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Reality

Jan. 22, 2018

[Andrew Sheng] Why are we blind to inequality?

[Cynthia M. Allen] Show the world you have hope in tomorrow -- have more kids

In P.D. James’ dystopian novel “The Children of Men,” the unthinkable has happened -- people have stopped having children.　Science cannot pinpoint the reason why human reproduction is no longer possible, and it’s at a loss how to fix it. Without hope for the future, society descends into moral darkness.　The elderly, now a burden, are involuntarily euthanized. “Criminals” are exported to an island prison from which none return. Roving bands of hedonic young men terrorize and murder.　The governmen

Jan. 22, 2018

[Noah Smith] Yup, rent control does more harm than good

Rent control is one of the first policies that students traditionally learn about in undergraduate economics classes. The idea is to get young people thinking about how policies intended to help the poor can backfire and hurt them instead. According to the basic theory of supply and demand, rent control causes housing shortages that reduce the number of low-income people who can live in a city. Even worse, rent control will tend to raise demand for housing -- and therefore, rents -- in other are

Jan. 22, 2018

[Brandy X. Lee] Why we cannot be silent about Trump’s mental health

Questions about Donald Trump’s mental fitness to serve as president keep mounting. A historically unprecedented number of mental health professionals have mobilized to express concern about the dangers of the mental instability we see in Trump, coupled with the power of the presidency. Through the National Coalition of Concerned Mental Health Experts, we called for a full neuropsychiatric examination and a capacity to serve evaluation.　When Trump presented for his annual physical exam last week,

Jan. 22, 2018

[James Gibney] Korea’s Olympic compromise is fool’s gold

For anyone who thinks it’s a major diplomatic breakthrough to have the two Koreas march under one flag at the Winter Olympics and field a joint women’s’ ice hockey team … well, I have a DMZ to sell you.　Yes, next month’s opening ceremony will mark the first sporting event in a decade where the two sides have entered under one banner. But they’ve done it eight times before. And they’ve fielded joint teams twice before.The last time was in 1991: That brief shining moment was followed by, among oth

Jan. 21, 2018

[James Gibney] Korea’s Olympic compromise is fool’s gold

[Jerry Large] US should take small steps toward peace with North Korea

Conflict between the United States and North Korea seems to defy solution, but that needn’t be the case.　Linda Lewis, who has studied the Korean Peninsula for decades and works with North Koreans regularly, believes that sometimes the path to peace starts with small things -- interactions that help people get to know each other and build trust, opportunities to solve everyday problems and discover that it’s possible to work together.　The long enmity between the two countries has devolved into nu

Jan. 21, 2018

[Jerry Large] US should take small steps toward peace with North Korea

[Adam Minter] Oil spill isn’t China’s real offshore disaster

Last Sunday’s sinking of an Iranian oil tanker 180 miles off the coast of Shanghai certainly looks like an environmental disaster. Depending on how many of the ship’s 1 million barrels of condensate were released into the ocean and not burned off, the accident could end up being one of the biggest oil spills in half a century. The irony? Even that wouldn’t represent the biggest disaster to befall the area.　The fact is, thanks to massive overfishing in China’s territorial waters, there isn’t much

Jan. 21, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] The US no longer owns the future of freedom

The many critics of Freedom House can finally gloat: The think tank has turned its well-calibrated guns on the US in its 2018 report on “Freedom in the World”:　“The past year brought further, faster erosion of America’s own democratic standards than at any other time in memory, damaging its international credibility as a champion of good governance and human rights.”　America’s “core institutions,” the think tank continues, “were attacked by an administration that rejects established norms of eth

Jan. 21, 2018

[Jeffrey D. Sachs] The West’s broken promises on education aid

The Global Partnership for Education, a worthy and capable initiative to promote education in 65 low-income countries, is having what the jargon of development assistance calls a “replenishment round,” meaning that it is asking donor governments to refill its coffers. Yet the fact that the GPE is begging for mere crumbs -- a mere $1 billion per year -- exposes the charade of Western governments’ commitment to the global Education for All agenda.The United States and the European Union have never

Jan. 21, 2018

[Noah Feldman] Even a final, irreversible, absolutely done deal can be broken

Can an international deal ever really be final? President Donald Trump seems to think the answer is no, given his penchant for withdrawing from agreements made under President Barack Obama -- the Paris climate change accords, the Trans-Pacific Partnership on trade and (maybe) the Iranian nuclear deal.　But what about international agreements that actually declare themselves to be irreversible? That’s the case with the 2015 Japan-South Korea deal that was aimed at ending once and for all the confl

Jan. 19, 2018

[Eli Lake] Don’t be fooled by North Korea’s Olympic ploy

For those vulnerable to displays of pageantry and pacifism, the news from the Koreas this week must have been alluring. At a moment when North Korea’s dictator is threatening the world with hydrogen bombs and long-range missiles, the North and the South agreed to march together in the Olympic ceremonies next month under a common flag.　Well, I have some bad news for the dreamers. Now is not the time to give peace a chance.　The gambit from North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, is transparent to anyon

Jan. 19, 2018

[Eli Lake] Don’t be fooled by North Korea’s Olympic ploy

[Adam Minter] China’s real offshore disaster

Last Sunday’s sinking of an Iranian oil tanker 180 miles off the coast of Shanghai certainly looks like an environmental disaster. Depending on how many of the ship’s 1 million barrels of condensate were released into the ocean and not burned off, the accident could end up being one of the biggest oil spills in half a century. The irony? Even that wouldn’t represent the biggest disaster to befall the area.　The fact is, thanks to massive overfishing in China’s territorial waters, there isn’t much

Jan. 19, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] New US tax rules are a good gift to Europe

The effects of the Trump administration corporate tax reform on US multinationals that were, as of the end of last year, holding some $1.4 trillion in cash overseas, are largely beneficial: Now these companies finally know how much of that money the US wants -- and there’s also some long-awaited clarity on how foreign profits will be taxed going forward. What’s less clear is how the changes will affect European plans to tax US companies’ profits where they’re made. So far, it looks as though the

Jan. 18, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] New US tax rules are a good gift to Europe

[David Ignatius] Russia investigation is far from a ‘witch hunt’

“Does this concern you at all?” asks a tart email message from a Trump supporter who wonders why the mainstream media doesn’t take a closer look at allegations that the Justice Department’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election has been tainted by bias.　It’s a fair question. President Trump has made very serious charges, tweeting in December that the FBI’s “reputation is in Tatters -- worst in History!” And Republicans in Congress have claimed that the bureau was manipulated by

Jan. 18, 2018

[Michael Schuman] The wrong way to pressure China

Is the US finally taking a tougher stand on China? Last week, AT&T Inc. walked away from a partnership with Huawei Technologies, possibly due to Washington’s worries about espionage. A week earlier, Ant Financial dropped its long-delayed acquisition of MoneyGram International Inc. after failing to win approval from a crucial US government committee.　Such a stand was probably inevitable, whoever occupied the White House. By showing almost no willingness to open its markets more widely or to scale

Jan. 18, 2018

[Michael Schuman] The wrong way to pressure China

[Helmut K. Anheier] While Germany slept

Few people outside Germany are familiar with the caricature of themselves that many Germans hold in their minds. Far from the aggressive bully of 20th-century war propaganda, the perfectionist engineer of Madison Avenue car advertisements, or the rule-following know-it-all of the silver screen, the German many picture today is a sleepy-headed character clad in nightgown and cap. Sometimes clutching a candle, this German cuts a naive, forlorn figure, bewildered by the surrounding world.This figur

Jan. 18, 2018

[Los Angeles Times] Too many plastic straws are used and discarded

Every day Americans use -- and almost immediately discard -- up to half a billion plastic beverage straws. At least, that’s the figure widely used by environmental activists to explain why people should embrace going straw-less.　It’s not clear where that number came from, but it seems credible considering how many takeout sodas, frappuccinos, smoothies, cold-press juices, boba teas and other beverages Americans buy every day, most of which are accompanied by a complimentary plastic straw. Lately

Jan. 18, 2018

[Kim Myong-sik] Ghost of Roh Moo-hyun lurks in 2018 Korea

Political revenge or establishment of justice? If the ongoing investigation of those people in power a decade ago is to be determined an act of political revenge, the natural question is what they had done to call for it.　Former President Roh Moo-hyun was under investigation in connection with bribery charges involving family members in 2009 when he took his own life. He was questioned for 10 hours on April 30 in the Seoul Prosecutors’ Office, traveling 1,000 kilometers from his country home. He

Jan. 17, 2018

[Kim Myong-sik] Ghost of Roh Moo-hyun lurks in 2018 Korea