Last Friday South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un met at the truce village of Panmunjeom for their first summit. At this crucial encounter, many things were put on the table as a prelude to the United States-North Korea summit meeting scheduled toward the middle of June possibly in Singapore. Most notably, the two Koreas’ leaders adopted a joint communique in which they promised to pursue official termination of the Korean War within the year followed by a peac

Viewpoints May 1, 2018

As Artificial Intelligence is rippling through every corner of our lives, ethical challenges and philosophical issues are also coming our way. The most important question is: what is the outer limit of the AI technology? Recent incidents involving AI in the military sector offer some silhouette of a possible answer.Now, AI is making an inroad into the defense industry. Autonomous weapons are becoming a reality. Taken to its technical extreme, it will not be too long before we see fully autonomou

Viewpoints April 17, 2018

All of a sudden, last Friday felt different. Not because it was Friday. Something was obviously different: the air became finally breathable after a miserable week. The level of fine dust (or ultrafine dust) had been the talk of the town throughout the week at meetings and gatherings.A 2017 report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development put South Korea’s fine dust level near the bottom of the countries surveyed, which in fact prompted President Moon to include this issue i

Viewpoints April 3, 2018

Is it indeed a ray of hope we are seeing? Or another big scam? There is conflicting information. Experts’ views diverge sharply. Still, memories of betrayal remain vivid: North Korea has reneged on its denuclearization promises many times previously -- eight times according to one count. So, nothing is certain or clear. And yet this is a great stride forward. Just two months ago, during the final stretch to the Winter Olympics, we were dreading post-Olympics military confrontation, to put it in

Viewpoints March 20, 2018

According to experts at think tanks in Seoul, when it comes to raising a family there are three indispensable elements: a stable job, a decent dwelling and a family-friendly or -supportive social system. On all three counts, we are failing, and failing miserably. Getting a job after college graduation requires acrobatic performance with stellar academic record and unbelievable field experience. Housing prices are going through the roof. Child education is extremely costly. Worse yet, the situati

Viewpoints March 6, 2018

Korea in 1987 and Korea in 2018 are like day and night. The sharp difference means the current Constitution adopted in 1987 does not accurately reflect the reality of Korea today and the minds of the people at present. The intervening three decades have seen the emergence of national practices that have outgrown the clothes of the provisions of the Constitution. Some wordings turned out to be inadvertent loopholes. Add recent political developments, most notably the presidential impeachment of 2

Viewpoints Feb. 6, 2018

Many foreign colleagues of mine would ask: How could one deposit such an enormous amount money with a stranger without any tangible guarantee? Their surprise comes again when they hear that there is no monthly payment. One final surprise is that you get the entire deposit back when you vacate. This is the “Jeonse” system in Korea, a unique house renting system only to be seen in Korea (other sporadic examples are found in other countries but not as prevalent as in Korea). Its popularity has been

Viewpoints Jan. 23, 2018

Visit an apartment complex in Seoul at night. Cars are not just parked; they are packed in every corner of the compound. You could see any conceivable way of using space to leave a car for the night. The remainder are lined up on nearby streets until the next morning. Inside the complex, a small lane is left where one car can just barely pass. Passages for fire trucks have been narrowed and hydrants have been blocked. People push cars backward and forward the next morning to “dig out” their cars

Viewpoints Jan. 9, 2018

It was in 2013 that the EU designated Korea as an illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing country along with 11 other states, indicating a possible EU-wide sanction on Korean ships and fisheries products. The alerted government mobilized a yearlong campaign to persuade Brussels to delist Korea, and it was eventually taken off the list. Korea had its own problems of IUU fishing at that time, but so did many other countries. So, it was odd to see Korea on the list, the only industrialized stat

Viewpoints Dec. 26, 2017

A petition was filed with the Blue House with the support of more than 200,000 people, prompting a high ranking Blue House official to appear publicly and issue an official response. This rare national debate relates to courts’ discretionary consideration of intoxication as a mitigating factor in issuing sentences for criminals. The petition aims to amend the Korean Criminal Code to eliminate the intoxication defense from the code entirely and/or amend other special legislations on sex crimes so

Viewpoints Dec. 12, 2017

In traditional Korea, the age 60 marked an important occasion. It is the year when one’s life makes a full circle according to the sexagenary (60-year) cycle of the lunar calendar. It was the point in time when one was considered to have lived a healthy and long life, so it was certainly a time for a big celebration among family members and also a memorable festivity for the entire village. However, 60 years old is now considered young in today’s Korea, as the country’s average life expectancy h

Viewpoints Nov. 14, 2017

Korean schools are notorious for their brutal competition. From elementary school to high school and to college, students and parents are exhausted with a continuous wave of competition. Exams, scores and rankings over and over again. It has almost become our fate. But none of us expected to see the same school-type competition after college, and certainly not in a government training program.Consider this. The brightest students study, day in and day out, for a national exam for two to three ye

Viewpoints Oct. 31, 2017

The same scenes are repeated each fall. Angry faces, shouting matches and group boycotts, and all these in front of national TV cameras. The National Assembly started this year’s plenary national audit on Oct. 12. It will run for 20 days until Oct. 31. The first four days of the audit indicate that we can expect the same this year as well. To governmental agencies and entities with state funding, the annual audit is one of the most critical moments of the year for leaders and organizations alike

Viewpoints Oct. 17, 2017

The beauty of this glass rectangle is its ability to connect us to anyone, anywhere and anytime. It has freed us from the physical confinement of geographical space. The problem with this shining gadget is also its ubiquitous connectivity: it has freed others as well to reach us anytime and anywhere. The past 10 years of the smartphone, its cousin tablet and second cousin wrist band have brought about revolutionary changes in our lives. The connectivity has made virtually everything available at

Viewpoints Sept. 19, 2017

The otherwise blue and crispy Sunday afternoon was juxtaposed against the shocking news from the North. The now familiar veteran lady newsreader appeared on the North’s state television channel to announce the successful blast testing of a hydrogen bomb. The latest test has brought North Korea one step closer to the completion of its nuclear program and military deployment of nuclear arsenal.With the sixth nuclear test, North Korea again thumbed its nose at the international community. This late

Viewpoints Sept. 5, 2017