[Xuedong Huang] Empowering the Digital Transformation of Education with Artificial Intelligence

During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, I witnessed the ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) could transform the future of education for both teachers and students.  In this video, a young student independently read out loud into a web cam from a teacher-supplied assignment and received feedback on ways to improve their reading fluency. It's the type of remote learning scenario that has become common during the pandemic.  But, what's uncommon in this interaction is how the as

Sept. 15, 2022

[Lee Kyong-hee] Inter-Korean shared roots of gayageum music

Nestled on the southwestern tip of the Korean Peninsula, Yeongam is a rural county in South Jeolla Province with some 53,000 residents. This is where players of the gayageum, a traditional Korean zither with 12 silk strings, gather from around the nation to compete every fall. The backdrop is Wolchulsan, a mountain with exquisite rock peaks that famously anchor a national park. Yeongam also is said to be the birthplace of Wang In, a legendary scholar who introduced Chinese characters and classic

Sept. 15, 2022

[Elizabeth Shackelford] Don’t let China’s rights abuses pay off

The international community should make China a pariah for its crimes against the Uyghur population. Last month’s report from the UN Human Rights Office says China’s actions could constitute crimes against humanity. The United States and others have called it genocide. But China’s massive role in our highly integrated global economy means meaningful action will be costly. A complete economic divorce is impractical, but the United States can and should work with like-minded part

Sept. 14, 2022

[Kim Seong-kon] Missing the great America I used to know

The title may be misleading, but I do not miss the “Great America” that Donald Trump promised in his political campaign motto “Make America Great Again.” I miss the truly great America I used to know and admired in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s when I lived in the US. I miss the great America that heartily pursued and generously embraced cultural and ethnic diversity. I miss the great America that was warmhearted and friendly to foreigners and immigrants. I miss the great Am

Sept. 14, 2022

[Trudy Rubin] Queen Elizabeth’s death deprives Britain and the world of a rock of stability

When it comes to Queen Elizabeth II, it is the marmalade sandwich I will always remember. For those who never saw the video she made with an animated Paddington Bear that was released during her Platinum Jubilee in June, now is the time to watch it on YouTube. Watching Paddington tip his hat and thank the queen “for everything” (after she has just pulled a marmalade sandwich from her purse to show him) was incredibly touching. But, when the two then began to clink their spoons on the

Sept. 13, 2022

[Robert J. Fouser] Problems with country-of-the future analyses

Suddenly, almost overnight, China is now seen as a declining power. Articles and columns discussing how slowing growth, an aging population, and inward-looking nationalism will send China into decline have appeared everywhere. This marks a sea change away from long-held predictions that China would become the pre-eminent economic power in the world. The shift reflects a long tradition in the West of jumping to extremes in discussing Asia. From the late 1970s to the late 1980s, the rise of Japa

Sept. 9, 2022

[Kevin Shird] Reparations would acknowledge injustice

It’s widely understood that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. evolved significantly on the issue of reparations during his short lifetime. Toward the start of his career, he was a moralist in his thinking, rather than the radical economic thinker he later became. In 2018, I befriended Dr. King’s former barber, Nelson Malden, now in his late 80s, and wrote a book with him titled “The Colored Waiting Room” about Nelson’s life and the American civil rights movement

Sept. 8, 2022

[Kim Myong-sik] Migrant workers to sustain Korea’s economic future

Some old Koreans may remember the sight of a group of women from the provinces boarding an airplane bound for Okinawa at Gimpo International Airport to work at a farm in the southern Japanese island -- sometime in the late 1950s. It was an event for celebration because these young women represented the first South Korean migrant workers leaving their homes to earn foreign money on a government-arranged contract. A few years later, the military government that took power in a coup began extra e

Sept. 8, 2022

[Kim Seong-kon] When AI lives among us

As artificial intelligence is becoming more and more a part of our lives and has even begun to replace human beings in some lines of work, people are concerned about the relationship between humans and AI. Is AI just a convenient assistant to humanity or will it pose a potential threat? What could happen if AI outsmarts us and impersonates humans some day? What if, in the future, AI could take human form and live among us, indistinguishable from humans? Recently, the Washington Post carried an i

Sept. 7, 2022

[J. Bradford DeLong] Why can’t we all be rich?

On Sept. 6, Basic Books is publishing “Slouching Towards Utopia,” my economic history of the “long twentieth century” from 1870 to 2010. It is past time, I argue, that we shift our understanding of where the hinge of global economic history lies. Some might put it in 1076, when the European Investiture Controversy cemented the idea that law should constrain even the most powerful, rather than being merely a tool at their disposal. Another big year is 1450, when the arriv

Sept. 7, 2022

[Daniel R. DePetris] US, Russia, China need to communicate

The world, we are often told, is now defined by great power competition, where states like China and Russia are either seeking to overthrow the “rules-based international order” or stealthily working within the system to change it to their benefit. The Biden administration’s foreign policy strategy is prefaced in large measure on the great power paradigm, and senior US officials like Secretary of State Antony Blinken frequently invoke the theme during their remarks. Part of mai

Sept. 6, 2022

[Jane Olson] We can’t risk another Chernobyl

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, lies along the Dnieper River in southeastern Ukraine. After Russian forces brutally invaded Ukraine six months ago, they gained control of the nuclear facility early in the fighting. They based soldiers and heavy equipment there and have been using the plant as a defensive shield, lobbing shells from there and hoping Ukrainians would not risk hitting one of the six power units by counterattacking. But Russian officials say Ukraine has

Sept. 6, 2022

[Martin Schram] A give-and-take with Gorbachev

When Mikhail Gorbachev walked into the room for our interview in Moscow, he brought with him the impressive aura of a man who was still a sitting president, a confident leader who was prepared to devote just a bit of his busy schedule to yet another ho-hum exercise of message deliverance, with yet another Western journalist. This one with a camera crew. I had hoped for something more journalistically promising -- a somewhat spontaneous (and more productive) give-and-take. After all, it had been

Sept. 5, 2022

[Nicholas Goldberg] Was George W. Bush worst president?

Twenty years ago this month, President George W. Bush stood before the United Nations and warned that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a “grave and gathering danger,” setting the stage for an invasion six months later based on false premises about super-destructive weapons and purported connections to the 9/11 attacks. The war ultimately killed 4,500 Americans and more than 100,000 Iraqis, and cost the United States $800 billion, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. I'

Sept. 2, 2022

Vietnam reaffirms commitment to international peace, stability on 77th national day

Vietnam reaffirmed its commitment to international peace, stability and cooperation with Korea celebrating National Day and the 30th anniversary of Vietnam-Korea diplomatic relations on Friday at the Lotte Hotel in Seoul. Vietnam’s Independence Day, which falls on Friday, commemorates Vietnam’s declaration of independence from France and reading of the declarations of independence of Vietnam by Vietnam’s first President Ho Chi Minh at Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi in 1945. Vietnam wa

Sept. 1, 2022

[Lee Kyong-hee] Yellow light on Yoon’s ‘audacious initiative’

Despite skepticism and foreseeable hurdles, President Yoon Suk-yeol’s “audacious initiative” to North Korea deserves attention. But it does so only if the Yoon administration has a workable roadmap to beat the odds stacked by domestic and international concerns. Yoon has embarked on a familiar economic path. In his Liberation Day speech on Aug. 15, he unveiled a slew of aid projects in exchange for nuclear disarmament in the North. He offered food, assistance for power generati

Sept. 1, 2022

[Kim Seong-kon] The shape of Korea resembles a trophy

Korean people commonly say that the image of the Korean Peninsula on a map seems to resemble a rabbit. The comparison is telling: Since a rabbit is a docile animal constantly threatened by ferocious predators, it matches the geopolitical situation of Korea, surrounded by belligerent neighboring countries. On the other hand, some optimists have come up with an opposite theory, that the Korean Peninsula resembles not a rabbit, but a crouching tiger that is ready to jump and fight back. Meanwhi

Aug. 31, 2022

[Andrew Sheng] Is civilization in decline, clashing or rejuvenating?

We have been here before -- catastrophe, carnage, collapse, climate calamities, war. This hottest summer of discontent is prelude to a freezing winter of gas shortage, inflation and more conflicts. As Europe, China and parts of America are facing heat waves and drought, a global food calamity is looming. Without any exit strategy on the Ukraine war, we face a prolonged period of stalemate, devastation and less willingness to negotiate even cease-fires. The rising global uncertainties mean th

Aug. 30, 2022

[Gareth Evans] Australia’s minister of everything

Australia continues to be a source of bemused fascination to students of Western parliamentary democracy. After a pantomime period not so long ago in which the country changed its leader five times in five years, it has now been revealed that our most recently defeated prime minister, Scott Morrison, contrived over the past two years effectively to appoint himself minister to no fewer than five other major government departments. Moreover, Morrison did so without -- except in one case -- the kno

Aug. 30, 2022

[Martin Schram] Putin’s trumped-up war

Every time Vladimir Putin’s obliging generals dispatch a soldier to the front lines of their “special military operation” in Ukraine, they give him a gift from their supreme commander. It is a lengthy and very creative essay rewriting the history of their homeland and the country they’ll be invading. It is titled: “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” And it ends with the proud author, Vladimir Putin, leaving them with four words to inspire th

Aug. 29, 2022