Hillary Clinton has shot through the glass ceiling to become the first woman presidential nominee -- changing the American political narrative.  There is a degree of pregnant symbolism in the victory. The often misused adjective, “historic,” was seldom so apt as on Tuesday when Hillary Rodham Clinton used the expression twice to celebrate her triumph over Bernie Sanders in the California primary. And she has celebrated her achievement without sounding overly euphoric. Well and truly has the form

Viewpoints June 12, 2016

Financial Technology Partners is a San Francisco-based investment-banking firm focused, appropriately enough, on the financial-technology industry. I managed to get my hands on its new report of how fintech is altering the landscape for money management. The report looks at industry trends, interviews numerous fintech executives and sizes up all of the usual big picture Silicon Valley stuff.For those of you who may not have thought much about how technology might affect Wall Street, the work you

Viewpoints June 12, 2016

It is apparent that North Korea does not intend to give in to the international sanctions against its nuclear and missile provocations. The latest evidence of this is the intelligence reports that it is producing more weapons-grade plutonium. The latest report came from the U.S. State Department, in which officials were quoted by the news agency Reuters as saying that North Koreans were producing plutonium by reprocessing fuel spent at the 5-megawatt reactor in Yongbyon. It came one day after si

Editorial June 9, 2016

Nexon Corp., South Korea’s biggest online game developer, is an up-and-coming information technology firm whose online and mobile games are highly popular worldwide. It is a workplace coveted by many young Korean job seekers. But a high-profile scandal involving its founder and a senior prosecutor -- the two went to the same university in the same year -- is threatening to inflict severe damage to the reputation of the company which has grown into one of the most successful and revered IT ventur

Editorial June 9, 2016

Tech start-ups in Southeast Asia and India are drawing venture capitalists from Silicon Valley in California who are heading there for a new round of investment in tech start-ups that are mushrooming thanks to the region’s youthful population and fast-growing number of Internet users.　According to venture forum AVCJ of Hong Kong, the first quarter of this year saw a jump in start-up funds flowing into Singapore, the region’s start-up hub, to $199 million, compared with just $53 million in the sa

Viewpoints June 9, 2016

Coup options have reduced but resistance to them has grown.Islam and democracy are forever in danger in Pakistan. The danger to Islam is overblown by clerics, it being ensconced safely in millions of highly devoted hearts. Clerics may really be the main threat to it. The danger to democracy is real given past breaks. The Panama leaks suddenly threatened a democracy which was looking secure, though not delivering much. Critics say the real threat to it is from poorly performing politicians and po

Viewpoints June 9, 2016

For once, the headlines about the latest health scare are not hyperbole: The end of the Antibiotics Era may be nigh. Staving it off will require fast and creative thinking not only in medical science, but also in public policy.Public-health officials were horrified but not surprised to find a Pennsylvania woman who had an infection with the same kind of drug resistance first identified last fall on farms in China. The E. coli found in the woman carried the same genetic mechanism of resistance to

Viewpoints June 9, 2016

The widening wage gap between conglomerates and small and medium enterprises is hampering the latter from securing competitive human resources, leading to polarization of workers.According to a recent survey, 1 in 4 new employees with a bachelor’s degree or higher quits within a year. And such early exits were three times more common at companies with less than 300 employees than at larger businesses.These were the results of a recent survey conducted on 306 businesses nationwide by the Korea Em

Editorial June 8, 2016

It seems that South Korea’s stock market has become more frequently swayed by external factors. The situation is quite different from past years, when many local and foreign analysts didn’t hesitate to praise the fundamentals of major companies traded on the Korea Exchange, despite some negative external factors.These days, the benchmark KOSPI has become extremely sensitive to remarks by foreign officials or analysts, even if the remarks suggest just a possible option among a variety of scenario

Editorial June 8, 2016