Nowadays, if you’re a smart college graduate, Silicon Valley and its tech-startup scene is the hot place to be. But 10 years ago, it seemed like everyone with a brain and big ambitions wanted to go to Wall Street. The worlds of investment banking and trading were a golden ladder to the good life.Why did so many smart kids go into finance -- and why do so many still do so? One fairly obvious reason is that finance pays a lot of money. Maybe that‘s both cause and effect -- talent could be drawn to

Viewpoints Aug. 19, 2016

The Korean business community is abuzz with talk of corporate restructuring, as a special law took effect last week to help companies suffering from an oversupply in their industrial sectors reorganize their businesses.The Special Act on Corporate Revitalization, commonly called the “one-shot act,” is designed to encourage companies to make voluntary and pre-emptive restructuring efforts before their businesses go from bad to worse.It provides a wide range of benefits to companies whose restruct

Editorial Aug. 18, 2016

North Korea’s deputy ambassador in London has defected to South Korea with his family, suggesting the growing instability of the North’s regime under a ruthless and reckless young leader.The Unification Ministry on Wednesday confirmed domestic and British media reports that Thae Yong-ho, a minister at the North’s embassy in London, has defected. The ministry said Thae and his family arrived in Seoul, denying media reports that they were seeking asylum in a third country. Thae is one of the highe

Editorial Aug. 18, 2016

Playing with numbers will never end the Thai crisis. While most critics of the draft charter, which sailed through the referendum on Aug. 7, are accepting the outcome gracefully, a few have zeroed in on the relatively low voter turnout. Red Shirt leader Jatuporn Prompan suggested that heads must roll among election commissioners because the turnout of just over 50 percent was a far cry from the pre-referendum “boasting” that targeted 80 percent.The undertone of the criticism from the never-say-d

Viewpoints Aug. 18, 2016

The devastating impact of forest and peatland fires on humans last year went beyond our tolerance. Dozens were killed, more than 500,000 others suffered from respiratory infections and 43 million people across Indonesia and neighboring states had to brave smog, according to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB).With the fires recurring in Riau and Aceh, two of the regular hotspots in the country, last week, it is very much understandable that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo immediately c

Viewpoints Aug. 18, 2016

If only those First Amendment people could do something about Donald Trump. His latest attack on their sacred cow is the assertion that “It is not ‘freedom of the press’ when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!”That’s wrong as a matter of constitutional law. But it’s not crazy. In fact, the US Supreme Court has recently accorded a high degree of protection to falsehoods. And the kinds of justices that the Republican presidential n

Viewpoints Aug. 18, 2016

There is no doubt that the judiciary should have the highest ethical standards. The corruption scandal involving the founder of the Nature Republic cosmetics firm shows that it is not the case in Korea. Prosecutors are investigating a senior judge who allegedly kept suspicious ties with Jung Woon-ho, the central figure in the scandal that has already sent a former senior prosecutor and a former senior judge into custody. Prosecutors said the senior judge, with the help of a plastic surgeon who a

Editorial Aug. 17, 2016

Two recent events gave clues as to what is on President Park Geun-hye’s mind. The first one is her latest Cabinet appointments and the second one is her Liberation Day address. On Tuesday, Park replaced three Cabinet ministers and four vice minister-level officials, which, as opposition parties pointed out, fell far short of public expectations. It is true that unlike most of her predecessors, Park refrained from using appointments of senior officials for political purposes -- like defusing a cr

Editorial Aug. 17, 2016

China watchers in the West have been fruitlessly searching for signs of democracy for more than 25 years. But there has not been a sustained democracy movement in China since the tragic end of protests in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere in 1989. Most outside observers agree that the People’s Republic remains what it has been since its founding in 1949: a one-party authoritarian regime.Most Chinese citizens do not see it that way, however. In a nationwide survey in 2014, more than 4,000 urban Chin

Viewpoints Aug. 17, 2016

In the early hours of D-Day 1944, the Allies landed 156,000 troops on the beaches of France, spelling doom for the Third Reich. In Berlin, 1,000 kilometers away, night-owl Adolf Hitler slept peacefully through the largest invasion in history. No aide dared awaken the boss with such bad news.Being a messenger can indeed be unpopular, even dangerous. Ask any member of the modern-day political media covering a most bizarre presidential race. Neither side, nor much of the audience, likes or helps th

Viewpoints Aug. 17, 2016

Democrats are bracing for another wave of embarrassing disclosures unleashed by what the US intelligence community asserts is a Russian-engineered hacking attack. Guccifer 2.0, the hacker (hackers?) believed to be tied to Russian intelligence, posted on Aug. 12 internal Democratic Party documents with email addresses and cellphone numbers for nearly 200 lawmakers. Guccifer also talked of plans to turn over to WikiLeaks another trove of sensitive material hacked from Democratic Party computers. “

Viewpoints Aug. 17, 2016