The Korea Herald

[Ana Palacio] Arab Spring and Europe’s turn

NEW HAVEN ― Until now, and with few exceptions, the West has nurtured two distinct communities of foreign-policy specialists: the development community and the democratic community. More often than not, they have had little or no connection with one another: development specialists dealt comfortably with dictatorships and democracies alike, believing that prosperity can best be created by concentr

Viewpoints June 6, 2011

[Ana Palacio] Arab Spring and Europe’s turn

[Sung Jae-sang] Food aid to North Korea

On June 2, Robert King, the U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights, reportedly told a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that the South Korean government doesn’t want the U.S. providing food aid to North Korea. He also announced that the U.S. would resume humanitarian food assistance to Pyongyang without political considerations. We heartily welcome this policy shift of the U.S. gov

Viewpoints June 6, 2011

[Naomi Wolf] Sex scandals and surveillance

NEW YORK ― It is impossible to hear about sexual or sex-crime scandals nowadays ― whether that involving Dominique Strauss-Kahn or those of former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, or the half-dozen United States congressmen whose careers have ended in the past couple of years ― without considering how they were exposed. What does it mean to live in a socie

Viewpoints June 6, 2011

[Naomi Wolf] Sex scandals and surveillance

[Shahid Javed Burki] Pakistan’s road to China a shift from America

ISLAMABAD ― Large events sometimes have unintended strategic consequences. This is turning out to be the case following the killing of Osama bin Laden in a compound in Abbottabad, a military-dominated town near Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital.The fact that the world’s most wanted man lived for a half-dozen years in a large house within spitting distance of Pakistan Military Academy, where the countr

Viewpoints June 5, 2011

[Jeffrey D. Sachs] A world of regions and the U.S.

NEW YORK ― In almost every part of the world, long-festering problems can be solved through closer cooperation among neighboring countries. The European Union provides the best model for how neighbors that have long fought each other can come together for mutual benefit. Ironically, today’s decline in American global power may lead to more effective regional cooperation.This may seem an odd time t

Viewpoints June 5, 2011

[Jeffrey D. Sachs] A world of regions and the U.S.

[William Pesek] China’s boom threatened by Enron-style tricks

Credit downgrades can elicit fascinating reactions. Take a January move by Standard & Poor’s to cut Japan’s rating to the same level as China’s. I expected the backlash to come from Tokyo. Instead, it was the Chinese who were aghast. Every Chinese official I’ve met since is bewildered that 10 percent growth and $3 trillion of currency reserves don’t buy a better grade than the AA- China shares wit

Viewpoints June 5, 2011

[David Ignatius] Vetting all the way to the top

WASHINGTON ― At the Pentagon, there’s a legal formula for intelligence operations that has come to be known as “Gates practice,” after its proponent, Defense Secretary Bob Gates. It basically argues that if the U.S. conducts a sensitive intelligence mission outside a war zone, the president should make the decision. That may seem like a no-brainer, but it wasn’t always the case. Early in the last

Viewpoints June 5, 2011

[David Ignatius] Vetting all the way to the top

[William Pesek] This $4.3 billion deal confounds CEO president

For a man who billed himself as the CEO president, Lee Myung-bak of South Korea sure seems to lack business sense. In February 2008, voters turned to Lee, the former chief executive officer of several Hyundai Group businesses, to see through the reforms needed to break the economic gridlock. Who better to drive change than a guy famed for bulldozing the competition? Buyer’s remorse is setting in a

Viewpoints June 3, 2011

[Yuriko Koike] Squaring Asia’s nuclear triangle

TOKYO ― Just before the fourth trilateral summit between Japan, China, and South Korea began on May 21, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, and Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan jointly visited the areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake, offering encouragement to the disaster’s victims living in evacuation centers. Since the accident at Fukushima Daiichi Nu

Viewpoints June 3, 2011

[Yuriko Koike] Squaring Asia’s nuclear triangle

[Editorial] Time to raise guard

North Korea disclosed Wednesday that South Korea proposed three inter-Korean summits ― first at Panmunjeom in June, second in Pyongyang in August and third in Seoul in March ― at a secret meeting of officials from the two sides in Beijing on May 9. According to the North’s official media, Pyongyang rejected the offer because Seoul demanded an apology for the atrocities the North committed last yea

Editorial June 2, 2011

[Editorial] Productive Assembly session

The National Assembly opened a month-long extraordinary session Wednesday to discuss major state affairs, review the government’s policies and deliberate on the pending bills. But this session is likely to be dominated by one burning issue ― the savings bank scandal.The floor leaders of the ruling Grand National Party and the main opposition Democratic Party have agreed to start a parliamentary in

Editorial June 2, 2011

Immigration: You can’t rely on E-Verify

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Arizona law that permits local officials to revoke the licenses of businesses that knowingly hire illegal workers. The decision makes sense in principle but not in practice.Under the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act, business owners are required to use the federal E-Verify program to confirm if a person is authorized to work in this country. Employers mu

Viewpoints June 2, 2011

[Michael Spence] The IMF leadership and global governance

MILAN ― The departure of Dominique Strauss-Kahn as head of the International Monetary Fund has presented the G20 group of advanced and emerging economies with an opportunity and a challenge as they vie to select a new leader.It is a critical moment of transition because the emerging economies that have been in the shadows during most of the IMF’s existence will be dominant in the not-too-distant f

Viewpoints June 2, 2011

[Dominique Louis] Japanese nuclear industry: A regrettable exception

PARIS ― Due to its dramatic nature as well as to the worldwide media attention it has generated, the nuclear accident of Fukushima Daiichi has become a catastrophe that, in the minds of many, overshadows one of the most destructive tsunamis of recent centuries. It has shamed an entire industry and has pushed some countries into urgently adopting moratoria and others into demanding the outright dis

Viewpoints June 2, 2011

[Dominique Louis] Japanese nuclear industry: A regrettable exception

[Fan Ying] Slow progress toward FTA

In the just-concluded fourth trilateral meeting of the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea, all three countries agreed to speed up the process toward finalizing a free-trade agreement (FTA).Promoting a trilateral FTA at this time is significant, mainly because major changes occurred in the world economy after the global economic crisis, and Japan and South Korea strongly hoped to “take a free

Viewpoints June 2, 2011

Articles by 류근하