It is laudable for South Korea and China’s respective private sectors to take the initiative in coordinating on resolving the fine dust problem. A large part of the fine dust that swept over the Seoul metropolitan area and some major cities over the past two months came from ChinaOver the weekend, a group of Korean and Chinese business leaders agreed to work together to try to reduce dust in the air.Ultrafine dust is too small to be seen by the naked eye and is difficult to filter. Trapped in th

Editorial June 20, 2016

The Bank of Korea’s cut in the benchmark rate has lowered commercial banks’ interest rate offering on deposits to a record-low level.Commercial banks say they -- as well as depositors -- are also suffering low profitability as a result of the BOK’s all-time low base rate of 1.25 percent. Over the past two years, the central bank has lowered the rate by 125 basis points from 2.5 percent in July 2014.A savings product offered by a commercial bank provides customers with only a 0.01 percent rate pe

Editorial June 20, 2016

You know we love you over there and we know that you love us and thank you.However, we don’t really like the language in the headlines saying Brexit “looms” -- it sounds so ominous and a bad thing.Brexit is a good thing and nothing to be worried about.Would you be kind enough to use another word apart from “looms.” Something like “coming up” -- the thesaurus probably knows better than me.We so don’t want people to get the wrong impression of us leaving.We are looking forward to working with the

Viewpoints June 20, 2016

Colombo has reneged on its resolution to probe alleged human rights abuses during its 30-year civil war  The ethnic problem in Sri Lanka defies solution as Colombo has gone back on the resolution it cosponsored with the U.S. at the 31st session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.The resolution required Sri Lanka to take a number of measures, including the setting up of a credible justice process with the participation of Commonwealth and other foreign judges and defense lawyers, to inves

Viewpoints June 20, 2016

How can this be normal? Twenty-nine countries with roughly 60 percent of the world’s GDP have monetary policy rates of less than 1 percent per annum. The world is awash with debt, with sovereign, corporate and household debt of over $230 trillion or roughly three times world GDP. To finance their large debt and deal with deflation, both the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan are already experimenting with negative interest rate policies. If these do not work, look out for helicopter money,

Viewpoints June 20, 2016

My mother calls me and says, “We need to figure out what to put on Daddy’s headstone.”“How about beloved husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather?”“No, that’s so ordinary.”She’s right. It doesn’t begin to capture who he truly was.“Can we think about it for a couple of days?”“OK, but keep in mind, the funeral home said that inscriptions cost $15 a letter.”Fifteen dollars a letter. With the meter running, I try to think of as few words as possible to capture my father’s life story.He was

Viewpoints June 20, 2016

The government is leaning toward creating a supplementary budget in the second half of the year to boost the sluggish economy.Finance Minister Yoo Il-ho said Friday that the government would come up with aggressive fiscal measures to cope with growing downside pressures at home and abroad.A day earlier, he had said the government would examine the option of drawing up an extra budget in its search for the right mix of policies to revitalize the economy.The minister’s remarks represent a shift in

Editorial June 19, 2016

Factional strife at the ruling Saenuri Party has been rekindled following the interim leadership’s surprise decision Thursday to reinstate the seven lawmakers who defected from the party after being denied nominations at the April election and were then elected as independents.The decision angered the party’s mainstreamers loyal to President Park Geun-hye, as the seven readmitted lawmakers included Yoo Seong-min, a former floor leader who was forced by the mainstream faction to step down from hi

Editorial June 19, 2016

WASHINGTON -- This is a grim time for America’s Republican Party. While most of the party’s rank-and-file members have embraced Donald Trump as their presidential nominee, Republican members of Congress are finding it hard to accept him as their standard-bearer. Nothing like this has ever happened in American politics.It would be nice to believe that those Republicans who haven’t endorsed Trump, or have expressed misgivings, are acting on principle. And yet, while they may be concerned about his

Viewpoints June 19, 2016

When I was a kid, adults told me that the Roman Empire fell because they used lead plumbing. Lead poisoning made them all go crazy, after which they surrendered the keys to the Visigoth conquerors. It was years before I learned that the grown-ups were pulling my leg. And yet now, in a “truth is stranger than historical fiction” sort of way, I’m discovering that lead pollution is actually an important issue in our modern Rome, the U.S.The basic reason for lead’s importance comes from biology -- w

Viewpoints June 19, 2016

The best way to hijack a person’s capacity for broad thinking, connection to others, creativity -- all of our magnificent qualities -- is to place that person in a state of fear. In this mode we shut down and run our survival circuitry; we’re relegated to fleeing, fighting or freezing. We are no longer our whole selves. Our energy for life is usurped, and we are easily controlled.This is how the Islamic State group pursues both victims and recruits. But it’s not terrorism; it’s cowardice. It’s t

Viewpoints June 19, 2016