The Korea Herald

[Michael Smerconish] Reading the judges on U.S. health care

I fear that Roy Cohn had a better understanding of American justice than John Adams.It was Adams who in 1780 sought to instill a sense of separate yet balanced power in the Massachusetts Constitution ― “a government of laws and not of men,” he wrote.Cohn had other ideas. During his life, legend has it, the famed lawyer (who was ultimately disbarred before his death), was fond of saying, “I don’t c

Viewpoints Feb. 20, 2011

[Daniel Korski and Ben Judah] The West’s Middle East pillars of sand

LONDON ― Two centuries ago, Napoleon’s arrival in Egypt heralded the advent of the modern Middle East. Now, almost 90 years after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, 50 years after the end of colonialism, and eight years after the Iraq War began, the revolutionary protests in Cairo suggest that another shift may well be under way.The three pillars upon which Western influence in the Middle East was

Viewpoints Feb. 20, 2011

[Daniel Korski and Ben Judah] The West’s Middle East pillars of sand

[Doug Gurian-Sherman] GM crop giants block independent research

Soybeans, corn, cotton and canola ― most of the acres planted in these crops in the United States are genetically altered. “Transgenic” seeds can save farmers time and reduce the use of some insecticides, but herbicide use is higher, and respected experts argue that some genetically engineered crops may also pose serious health and environmental risks. Also, the benefits of genetically engineered

Viewpoints Feb. 20, 2011

[David Ignatius] Islamic radicals pose threat in Egypt

CAIRO ― For much of the past 30 years, the shadowy Muslim Brotherhood was almost a raison d’etre for the regime of President Hosni Mubarak: Egypt needed a strong authoritarian regime, the argument went, or it would be hijacked by Islamic radicals. That bugaboo went out the window with Mubarak’s ouster just over a week ago. It’s easy now, in the afterglow of the revolution that toppled Mubarak, to

Viewpoints Feb. 18, 2011

[David Ignatius] Islamic radicals pose threat in Egypt

[Editorial] Safer burials

Belatedly, the National Assembly is opening an extraordinary session on Friday. With so many bills and agenda items sitting on its calendar, the legislature will have to close the session on March 2 only to open another 10-day session the next day, as agreed by rival parties.The National Assembly has remained closed since the ruling Grand National Party rammed the administration’s 2011 budget requ

Editorial Feb. 17, 2011

[Editorial] State as an enigma

North Korea is a country of so many contradictions that it defies ordinary people’s attempt to understand it. Even outside foreign policy experts closely watching North Korea often feel baffled by presumably unexplainable events happening in the communist state. In short, it is a perpetual enigma to the outside world.The latest series of events concerning North Korea is a case in point. North Kore

Editorial Feb. 17, 2011

No breaktrough in inter-Korean dialogue

Low-level, preliminary military talks between North and South Korea at the Panmunjom truce village collapsed on Feb. 9 when the North Korean delegation abruptly stormed out. It had been hoped that the talks, intended as a preparatory step for high-level inter-Korea military talks, would lay a foundation for lowering the tension on the Korean Peninsula. But the collapse of the talks has underlined

Viewpoints Feb. 17, 2011

Obama’s 2012 budget has been tamed too much

President Obama’s budget for fiscal year 2012 landed with a thud Monday, laying out short- and long-term tax and spending plans that disappointed lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The proposal was a remarkably tame response to Washington’s fiscal problems, not the bold statement about belt-tightening that the White House had suggested was coming. Yet the biggest shortcoming is that it all but

Viewpoints Feb. 17, 2011

[Doyle McManus] Mission not yet accomplished

“Mission Accomplished” read the hauntingly familiar phrase from Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim when the first word came that President Hosni Mubarak might step down. Ghonim delivered the words by Twitter, unlike George W. Bush, who had them printed on a banner. But in both cases, they were premature.As Richard Haas, a former top State Department official who now heads the private Council on Foreign

Viewpoints Feb. 17, 2011

[Joel Brinkley] Revisionist history doesn’t hold up

As the saying goes, success has many fathers. George W. Bush is not one of them.The former president’s aides and other neocons are mounting a furious effort right now to make the case that Bush’s pro-democracy campaign during his second term led inexorably to the uprising that drove Hosni Mubarak out of office last week.Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s a canard. I know. I was there. I

Viewpoints Feb. 17, 2011

[Joel Brinkley] Revisionist history doesn’t hold up

[Dick Polman] GOP cutting Obama slack over Egypt

Hey, check out some of the nice things that people have said lately about Barack Obama:“The president, I think, is handling this (Egypt) situation well, under the most difficult kind of circumstances.”“I really have no fault with the president, Obama, the way he’s handled this process.”“I think the administration, our administration, has handled this tense situation pretty well.”“We ought to speak

Viewpoints Feb. 17, 2011

[Ann Mettler] Europe’s competitiveness shell game

BRUSSELS ― For seasoned observers of Europe’s economy, the most recent European Union summit delivered a bizarre sense of dj vu. Little more than a decade ago, European leaders announced to great fanfare the “Lisbon Agenda,” a policy blueprint to make Europe “the most competitive, knowledge-based economy in the world.” The new “Competitiveness Pact,” proposed at the EU summit by France and Germany

Viewpoints Feb. 17, 2011

[Ann Mettler] Europe’s competitiveness shell game

[Joel Brinkley] Keeping up the pressure on dictators

In Russia two weeks ago, President Dmitry Medvedev unveiled a 33-foot-tall marble statute of Boris Yeltsin, who, as Russia’s first president, helped bring democracy to the former communist state.In Tunisia right now, I would like to see the interim government erect a marble statue, at least 33 feet tall, of Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old Tunisian vendor who immolated himself outside a governmen

Viewpoints Feb. 16, 2011

[Joel Brinkley] Keeping up the pressure on dictators

[Robert B. Reich] U.S. corporate recovery is more fragile than you think

At a time when corporate profits are through the roof, the Dow has reached 12,000, Wall Street paychecks are fat again, and big corporations are sitting on more than $1 trillion in cash, you’d expect jobs to be coming back. But you’d be wrong.The U.S. economy added just 36,000 jobs in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unusually bad weather may have accounted for some of the rel

Viewpoints Feb. 16, 2011

[Robert B. Reich] U.S. corporate recovery is more fragile than you think

[Editoriral] Pyongyang’s ruler

North Korean ruler Kim Jong-il turns 70 today. He officially becomes 69 but chronologists know that he celebrated his 40th birthday twice in 1981 and 1982 as Pyongyang’s legend writers for the Kim family were asked to cut a year from his real age to create a precise 30-year age difference from his father (born 1912) upon his designation as the heir to the power.Kim enters his 70s at a sensitive ti

Editorial Feb. 15, 2011

Articles by 최남현