[Voice] How important is national image?

Korea cares what you think of it. That was ostensibly the message conveyed to the world in the announcement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs last month that it would survey 50 countries’ citizens on their impressions of the country. The poll, to be carried out over three years, will include Brazil, India, South Africa and Vietnam, among other countries with less-established relationships with Korea than the likes of the U.S. and Japan. Gauging how people outside the country “feel about Korea”

Aug. 12, 2013

[Voice] Are international sports meets worth it?

A quarter of a century later, the 1988 Seoul Olympics are still remembered as a defining moment of modern Korea’s arrival to the international stage. The Games offered the country a chance to show off its achievements of industrialization and democratization after the successive hardships of war, extreme poverty and decades-long military dictatorship. Since then, Korea has continued to bid for international sporting events with zeal ― often successfully. Having already hosted the Asian Indoor an

Aug. 5, 2013

[Voice] How early should kids learn English?

Korea’s English fever is well known. Despite a free public education system ranked among the best in the world, Korean parents spend some 20 trillion won ($18 billion) on private education each year, much of it on English education. For many parents, the younger their children can start learning, the better. In one survey carried out by Korea Institute of Child Care and Education in 2011, more than 90 percent of respondents with children in the first or second grade had begun their child’s Engli

July 29, 2013

[Voice] Does Korea have an obesity problem?

The figure sounds alarming: Almost 1 in 4 Seoul citizens are not just overweight, but obese. So reported Seoul Metropolitan Government last month with the release of a survey of more than 23,000 residents aged 19 and older. The figure represented the fourth straight rise since 2008, when 20.6 percent of the city’s population were classified as obese. The report may have come as a surprise to many Koreans who have traveled to Western countries, not to mention the city’s foreign residents: Seoul w

July 22, 2013

[Voice] Are international students adapting to Korea?

The number of students from abroad choosing to study in Korea has risen considerably in recent years as the country has become increasingly internationalized. There were almost 90,000 foreign exchange students in the country in 2011, according to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. The ministry has sought to encourage the trend, setting a target of 200,000 students in the country by 2020 as part of efforts to transform Korea into an “educational hub” of Asia. The interest in Korea

July 15, 2013

[Voice] Is the system for choosing textbooks working?

Who controls the past controls the future; so read the immortal lines of George Orwell’s “1984.” No wonder, then, that the interpretation of complex historical events rarely fails to generate controversy. Not for the first time, the teaching of Korea’s turbulent modern history to the nation’s young has become the subject of bitter division. At issue is the alleged distortion of history by a textbook preliminarily approved for use in high schools by the National Institute of Korean History. Like

July 8, 2013

[Voice] How can Korea recover lost artifacts?

Korea’s long cultural history is an often invoked source of pride for its citizens. But such pride often comes tinged with a sense of regret: Much of what the nation identifies as its cultural heritage now rests far beyond its borders. Like so many countries with a colonial past, Korea lays claim to a vast number of artifacts looted or otherwise removed from the Korean Peninsula throughout its tumultuous history. Almost 140,000 cultural properties were confirmed to be in foreign hands as of 2011

June 24, 2013

[Voice] Are small suppliers treated fairly?

If all is fair in love and war, business can hardly be far behind in the ranks of unforgiving human endeavor. Increasingly, however, the public discourse has been less accepting of perceived unfairness in a market dominated by a few big fish ― the sales of the 10 largest companies account for almost 80 percent of the country’s GDP. An example of this market injustice in the eyes of the government and many citizens is an imbalance of power in the relationships between large firms and their smalle

June 17, 2013

[Voice] How restricted should personal info be?

Koreans often proudly proclaim that theirs is one of the most Internet-savvy societies in the world. While testament to the country’s prowess in information technology, such interconnectedness nevertheless poses challenges to privacy and respectful public discourse.Every society must balance the right to know with the right to not be known about. But it is unlikely that many countries feature such starkly diametric forces at work as Korea. An IT infrastructure arguably unmatched for disseminatin

June 3, 2013

[Voice] How can Korea be made cycle friendly?

From the right vantage point, it might be tempting to imagine there is a national love affair with the bicycle. Lycra-clad cyclists descend on the Hangang River in droves on any given weekend, while more adventurous riders pedal hundreds of kilometers on cross-country bike trails.Seven in 10 Koreans own a bicycle and more half of the population cycled at least once a month last year, according to the Ministry of Security and Public Administration. But despite the obvious popularity of the bicycl

May 20, 2013

[Voice] Should adultery be a crime?

Sixty years since it was enacted, the country’s law banning adultery is facing yet another constitutional challenge. For the sixth time since 1990, the Constitutional Court will next month begin deliberating whether the criminalization of adultery constitutes an unacceptable interference by the state into the private lives of citizens or a justifiable bulwark against family breakdown. Following the conviction of a 48-year-old woman for affairs with two married men in 2011, Uijeongbu District Cou

May 13, 2013

[Voice] How can Korea end plagiarism?

Korea’s education system, ranked second in the world in some assessments, has been feted far and wide. But its impressive ranking internationally obscures a less glorious reality at the country’s centers of learning: rampant plagiarism. Cases of academic fraud at the university level emerge with alarming frequency, often implicating those at the highest levels of power. In February, Presidential Chief of Staff Huh Tae-yeol was forced to apologize for copying sections of his doctoral dissertation

May 6, 2013

[Voice] How far should antidiscrimination law go?

Liberty and equality are two of the values most paid lip service to by governments worldwide. But as self-evidently right as these principles may seem, they also exist in tension: Greater freedom allows for greater inequality. Striking the right balance is the challenge for the Korean government, which has committed to implementing an antidiscrimination law based on the recommendations of the United Nations Human Rights Council.Previous attempts to pass such a law in the 17th and 18th National A

April 29, 2013

[Voice] Can Seoul better convey N.K.’s threat?

“North Korea’s war plan”; “Warning to South Korea: You’ll get 45 seconds’ notice of artillery strike”; “Pondering unthinkable: Korean war.” These were just some of the headlines foreign media used in the midst of North Korea’s latest barrage of belligerent rhetoric directed at Seoul and the United States. Such was the nature of much of the coverage for which foreign observers with only a cursory knowledge of inter-Korean relations could have been forgiven, in assuming the peninsula was on the br

April 22, 2013

[Voice] How can government be more transparent?

The authority of the state emanates from the people ― so proclaims the Korean Constitution. A corollary, then, is that citizens have the right to know what their government does on their behalf. But as with state power everywhere, government transparency in Korea is tempered by numerous competing interests, from concerns over national security and privacy to public officials’ reluctance to open themselves up to public scrutiny. Government transparency can be defined in numerous ways, from the pu

April 15, 2013

[Voice] How should small business be supported?

“Economic democratization” has summed up the political zeitgeist like no other single phrase. President Park Geun-hye latched on to the concept not long into her presidential campaign and subsequently declared it a priority of her administration. While vaguely defined, the idea, when applied to the business realm, implies support for small business in an environment dominated by the colossal chaebol. In a country where a single chaebol, Samsung, generates close to 20 percent of GDP, small and me

April 8, 2013

[Voice] How can government reduce waste?

Some 343 trillion won ($307 billion) of taxpayers’ money has been allocated for the government to spend this year. Reflecting President Park Geun-hye’s vision of an expanded welfare state, the figure is an increase of more than 5 percent from 2012. If modern Korean history is any guide, however, not all of this money will be prudently spent.From lavish overseas junkets for lawmakers to mammoth infrastructure projects built on the basis of overestimated demand, examples of government waste have d

April 1, 2013

[Voice] Is immigration at sustainable levels?

Immigration implies change. The question for policymakers and citizens alike is what and how fast this change should be. The arrival of immigrants in large numbers to Korea since the 1990s has brought previously unseen diversity to the country’s racial and cultural makeup. The number of foreign residents has risen sharply, from about 300,000 in 2002 to about 1.2 million last year. Foreigners now comprise an unprecedented ― yet modest by developed country standards ― 3 percent of the population.

March 25, 2013

[Voice] Should SOFA be revised?

Crimes by U.S. soldiers stationed here have long been a sore spot in U.S.-Korea relations. The question of who maintains criminal jurisdiction over personnel accused of crimes in particular has often been the subject of controversy. The U.S.-South Korea Status of Forces Agreement, which deals with the investigation and punishment of United States Forces Korea personnel, has typically faced calls for revision after high-profile crimes by American personnel. The debate was reignited once again thi

March 18, 2013

[Voice] Is defamation law too strict?

Where does one person’s right to free expression interfere with another’s right to their good name? In any legal system, defamation law has to answer this question. Korea attempts to reconcile these principals through broad-based laws that apply the concept of defamation more loosely than many other democracies. Unlike in most U.S. states or the U.K., but like much of the wider world, defamation is a both a civil and criminal offense, carrying the threat of up to 7 years’ imprisonment. Truth doe

March 11, 2013