Samsung Group’s virtual absence of working trade union gives the 200,000 employees at its 78 subsidiaries both pride and embarrassment. As the nation’s labor movement entered a new phase with the legalizing of multiple unions at a single workplace, some change may be expected at Samsung. But what has so far happened at Korea’s number one conglomerate disappoints many unionists.A labor union at Sam

Editorial July 18, 2011

The world has had other affairs since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in northeast Japan. Media outlets are devoting less and less space and time to the aftermath of the disaster. But employees of the Fukushima No. 1 Power Plant, government officials, the residents of Fukushima prefecture and volunteers are still struggling at the limits of human perseverance to contain the nuclear damage that

Editorial July 18, 2011

I didn’t yet know what a font was but I do recall that learning how to write in cursive was a big deal, the sort of thing you anxiously anticipated.I can still picture how each letter was posted in cursive above the blackboard in classrooms, and I remember all the time we spent trying to mimic those letters with our No. 2 pencils on white-lined paper. It was a milestone lesson, akin to learning to

Viewpoints July 18, 2011

When you read last week that terrorists have discussed surgically implanting explosives in passengers so they could blow up airliners, did you feel a little less aggrieved about the TSA agents who supposedly patted down a 95-year-old woman in a wheelchair?That patdown was a late-June outrage du jour about the Transportation Security Administration. The story: The elderly woman was patted down and,

Viewpoints July 17, 2011

The months ahead in 2011 will constitute a summer to remember for a long, long time.The world’s two largest economies ― the United States and Europe ― are drifting toward brutal days of reckoning. Both economies face severe financial and economic challenges.Failure by either or both would send severe shocks through the already limping global economy. In the United States, a fiercely aroused but in

Viewpoints July 17, 2011

Everyone knows you can train a dog by rewarding the behavior you want Rover to repeat. But Barack Obama has always been ambitious, so he trains Republicans. The behavior he rewards is intransigence. Every time congressional Republicans adopt an inflexible position ― such as their current no-tax-hikes stance in negotiations over raising the federal debt ceiling ― the president rewards them with a t

Viewpoints July 17, 2011

The only sort of power a news organization can wield safely is the power to persuade.Every other sort ― no matter how high-minded or expedient the reason for taking it up ― is a kind of slow poison that twists the souls of the journalists involved and, ultimately, makes their enterprise dangerously self-interested and unaccountable. That’s the fundamental lesson to be taken from the spectacle of t

Viewpoints July 17, 2011

Korea’s economy is led by a handful of large business groups, most of them being family-controlled chaebol. Their influence is growing, as evidenced by an increase in their contribution to the nation’s gross domestic product. The 10 largest business groups, on an asset basis, accounted for 75.6 percent of GDP last year, up 20.6 percentage points from 2008.Another measure of their dominance in the

Editorial July 15, 2011

The bills that are not moving along in the process of legislation number 6312. As the leader of the ruling Grand National Party says, it is shameful for each standing committee of the National Assembly to sit on hundreds of bills.The ruling party has decided to speed up the legislation process when the National Assembly opens an extraordinary session next month. That is a welcome decision. Among t

Editorial July 13, 2011

Lawmakers are jockeying for position ahead of party nominations, though eight long months are left until the next general elections. Some are abandoning their existing constituencies in search of new electoral districts. Others are jumping ship in factional regrouping.But these efforts to enhance their chances of being nominated again should not come as a surprise. All members of the National Asse

Editorial July 13, 2011