[Kim Myong-sik] Popular former prosecution chief stirs Korean politics

Watching the worsening turmoil in Myanmar, where the death toll from the brutal police control rises day by day, South Koreans see flashbacks of their own streets four decades ago. Pro-democracy demonstrators were killed by the hundreds in the rebellious city of Gwangju and in the capital, Seoul, until the military finally withdrew from politics in the 1980s. Democratic governance has developed, with rightist and leftist groups exchanging power almost regularly. No blood was spilled on the pav

March 11, 2021

[Noah Smith] COVID-19 economy before Zoom and Amazon

Economists concerned about slowing productivity have spent the past decade hotly debating the value of free digital services such as Google’s web search and Amazon’s online store. But those online services have proven their worth during the pandemic. And COVID-19 may ultimately push our society to learn new ways of using digital technologies that accelerate productivity growth. Over the past year I’ve been occasionally bombarded with tweets casting doubt on the value of softw

March 11, 2021

[Peter Singer] When vaccination is a ‘crime’

On Dec. 29 last year, Hasan Gokal, the medical director of the COVID-19 response team in Harris County, Texas (which includes Houston, the fourth-largest city in the United States by population), was supervising the administration of the Moderna vaccine, mostly to emergency workers. The vaccine comes in vials containing 11 doses. A vial, once opened, expires in six hours and unused vaccine must then be thrown away. On that December day, a patient arrived just before closing time, so a nurse had

March 10, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] Absurdity and irrationality in our society

South Korea is undoubtedly one of the most convenient places to live in today’s world. You can do practically anything electronically, including lock your door, so no one carries jingling metal keys in Korea. Moreover, you can obtain government documents online and even renew your driver’s license in a few minutes. At the same time, however, many bureaucracies make life incredibly inconvenient. According to recent newspaper reports, foreigners cannot buy Korean merchandise online b

March 10, 2021

[Mihir Sharma] US vaccine hoarding out of norm

Those Americans who cheered President Joe Biden’s announcement this week that the US would have enough vaccines to inoculate every citizen by the end of July might want to note the cold silence with which the rest of the world greeted the news. Biden’s triumphalism was more than a little grating, considering that the US, alongside most other rich countries, has essentially chosen to corner the market on shots that are desperately needed elsewhere. Just this Monday, the Mexican presi

March 9, 2021

[J. Bradford DeLong] What are the new inflation hawks thinking?

Back in 1992, Lawrence H. Summers, then the chief economist at the World Bank, and I warned that pushing the US Federal Reserve’s annual inflation target down from 4 percent to 2 percent risked causing big problems. Not only was the 4 percent target not producing any discontent, but a 2 percent target would increase the risk of the Fed’s interest-rate policy hitting the zero lower bound. Our objections went unheeded. Fed Chair Alan Greenspan reduced the inflation target to 2 percent

March 9, 2021

[Sohn Woo-hyun] ROK-US alliance marred at Taegukgi Park

In the former US Army compound at Yongsan in central Seoul, there is a park named after the South Korean flag, Taegukgi. In this park, adorned by Mugunghwa, the national flower of South Korea, 50 Taegukgi are fluttering around the clock.　 According to the information bulletin, the park was created in 1998 to “revive the national spirit and arouse patriotism.” It was a commendable undertaking at a time when core values are often challenged.　 What raises eyebrows, however, is the in

March 8, 2021

[Jwa Sung Hee] Saemaul Undong, a controlled economic development experiment, merits a nobel prize

As Korea has developed into the 10th-largest economy in the world, many in Korea now wonder when the country will win a Nobel Prize in the five scholarly categories. Frustrated, Korea’s basic science community even voices a call for the establishment of a dedicated incubator program to support promising scientists and their research. And yet, few dare to entertain, indeed argue for, the notion that the “Saemaul Undong” (literally translated, “New Village Movement”),

March 8, 2021

[Trudy Rubin] An admiral and a novelist want you to imagine a nuclear war with China

How do nations sleepwalk into war? Often through lack of imagination. That is the thesis that impelled Adm. James Stavridis, a former NATO supreme commander, and Elliot Ackerman, a prominent fiction writer and decorated Marine veteran, to write “2034: A Novel of the Next World War.” The new novel envisions how the United States and China could blunder into a nuclear conflict, propelled by Chinese nationalism, American hubris, and a US failure to grasp the extent of Chinese advances

March 8, 2021

[Serendipity] Grandmothers do more than bake cookies

Watching “Minari,” a largely autobiographical film by Korean American director Lee Isaac Chung, I recalled a young family who one Sunday joined a church service of mostly Korean and Korean American college students in western Massachusetts in the late 1980s. They were an immigrant family, like the Yi family in “Minari,” and the father worked as a chick sexer, like parents Jacob and Monica in the film. It was the first time I had heard of the job, which involves determin

March 5, 2021

[Lionel Laurent] Vaccine comparison shopping lets COVID win

The scientist in charge of France’s vaccine rollout, Alain Fischer, must sometimes feel like Sisyphus forever rolling his boulder up the hill. After months of patiently working to win over a doubting public’s acceptance of the groundbreaking mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, he’s now fighting to convince French doctors to offer AstraZeneca’s more traditional shot to their patients. Resistance runs deep even as doses pile up, more data about efficacy emerges and Pres

March 5, 2021

[Nicholas Goldberg] World of vaccination haves and have-nots

In my house, we have a problem. My wife has been vaccinated; I haven’t. Am I envious? Of course I am. Resentful? Yeah, some of that too. When she came home all cheerful after her second COVID-19 vaccine shot last week, I couldn’t help feel that she had crossed safely to the other side of a giant chasm, while I remained at the edge of the cliff. Later, when she complained of a headache and some chills from the second shot, I was, perhaps, a tad less sympathetic than I could have bee

March 4, 2021

[Lee Kyong-hee] Patriot returns home in a special memorial

There can be various ways to love one’s country. And there may also be many ways to memorialize heroic deeds of a great individual. Lee Seok-young (1855-1934) gave away his vast wealth to help resurrect his fallen country; and now his adopted hometown of Namyangju is responding with a series of projects to nurture future generations in the name of the legendary activist for Korean independence. On Feb. 16, Namyangju City hosted a ceremony marking the 87th anniversary of Lee’s death.

March 4, 2021

[Kim Seong-kon] Blaming Asians for the coronavirus

As the US economy falters and many Americans have lost their jobs due to COVID-19, hostility toward Asians has recently accelerated. According to CNN, there have been approximately 3,000 cases of violence against Asians and Asian Americans in the US in the past year. CBS News reported that, “Nearly 500 Asians in New York were targets of bias incidents or hate crimes in 2020, ranging from verbal to physical assaults, including acid attacks.” NBC News said in a report last week that, &

March 3, 2021

[K. Ward Cummings] Why traumatized people run for office

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, in emotional testimony delivered during a congressional hearing last month, bravely revealed that she was once the victim of a sexual assault. As a historian, her stunning admission reminded me instantly of former presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Woodrow Wilson. Not because they too were once sexually abused (or accused of abuse), but because of how often personal trauma seems to be a part of the histories of prominent politicians. Exploring

March 3, 2021

[Michael R. Bloomberg, Carl Pope] Biden’s strongest climate allies are outside Washington

President Joe Biden’s ability to bring together the two parties in Congress is already being tested. But the good news is that on at least one issue -- climate change -- the fate of the president’s ambitions does not rest primarily with his ability to unite Congress, but with his ability to support and expand ongoing work in the rest of the country. Consider this: The US is actually within striking distance of reaching the goal it set under the Paris climate agreement, a 26 percent

March 2, 2021

[Carl P. Leubsdorf] Biden takes first steps towards return to normalcy abroad

Two years ago, even before launching his presidential bid, Joe Biden told Western European leaders that Donald Trump’s America First foreign policy was a momentary blip in US global leadership. “I promise you; this too will pass,” the then former vice president told the Munich Security Conference, a forum he often attended as a senator. “We will be back.” Last week, President Biden redeemed that promise, telling the annual national security forum that “Ameri

March 2, 2021

[Shang-Jin Wei] Can US escape stimulus trap?

As US President Joe Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package works its way through Congress, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers (a Democrat) and many Republicans argue that the plan is too big. But perhaps a more important question is whether the United States is falling into a “stimulus trap,” and, if so, how to get out of it. The Biden rescue plan is the federal government’s third attempt within a year to help the US economy recover from the pan

March 1, 2021

[Jean Pisani-Ferry] Central bankers keen to take on new responsibilities

Twenty years ago, central bankers were proudly narrow-minded and conservative. They made a virtue of caring more about inflation than about the average citizen, and took great pains to be obsessively repetitive. As future Bank of England Gov. Mervyn King said in 2000, their ambition was to be boring. The 2008 financial crisis abruptly dashed that objective. Ever since, central bankers have been busy developing new policy instruments to fight fires and ward off emerging threats. Nonetheless, ma

March 1, 2021

[Digital Simplicity] Disclosure of odds of getting game items in dispute

Playing a mobile game is supposed to be entertaining. But it’s no longer deemed a plaything. For instance, 0.00029 percent is the official chance that gamers, in theory, could get an extremely rare item in a popular Korean mobile game. Despite the slim chance, some hyper-rich gamers spend over $1 million in real money to get such items, translating into huge profit for developers and publishers. In recent months, game developers here are rushing to announce steep pay raises for their emp

Feb. 27, 2021