Articles by Yu Kun-ha
Yu Kun-ha
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[Editorial] Contain Woongjin fallout
The Woongjin Group crisis is roiling financial markets. The second-tier chaebol, which ranked 31st among Korea’s big business groups, sent a shockwave through the business community last week by filing for court protection for two key bankrupt companies ― Woongjin Holdings and Kukdong Engineering & Construction.The group’s aggregate debt was estimated at some 10 trillion won (about $9 billion), including 4.3 trillion won in borrowings from financial companies. A substantial part of it would beco
Editorial Oct. 3, 2012
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[Editorial] Too many ‘polifessors’
As election season enters full swing, a familiar scene is being reenacted ― “polifessors” swarming the campaign offices of presidential candidates. Polifessor is a compound of politics and professor. The term was coined here to refer to professors who are keen to sell their knowledge to their political patrons to get parliamentary seats or government posts. According to reports, the campaign offices of the three presidential runners ― Park Geun-hye of the ruling Saenuri Party, Moon Jae-in of the
Editorial Oct. 3, 2012
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[Ban Ki-moon] A call to ambition to meet today’s challenges
Each year at this time, leaders gather at United Nations Headquarters in New York to assess the state of the world. This year, I used the occasion to sound the alarm about our direction as a human family.We are living through a period of profound turmoil, transition and transformation. Insecurity, inequality and intolerance are spreading. Governments are wasting vast and precious funds on deadly weapons while reducing investments in people. Too many people in power seem willfully blind to the th
Viewpoints Oct. 3, 2012
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[Eli Park Sorensen] The ultimate nightmare of the modern times
A silent film that has lost none of its haunting significance in today’s climate of global economic anxiety and uncertainty, Charlie Chaplin’s classic “Modern Times” captures the nightmare vision par excellence of the middle class ― social demotion. Released in 1936, the film portrays the hapless character Charlie ― or, the Tramp, Chaplin’s alter ego ― comically and, at times, heroically, struggling to carve out an existence during the Great Depression in America. “Modern Times” came out at a ti
Viewpoints Oct. 3, 2012
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The U.S. has good reasons to revive draft
Maybe Charlie Rangel is right in saying that America should bring back the draft, although we get to the same conclusion for different reasons.Rangel believes that reinstatement of the draft is most equitable toward all. He thinks it’s unfair that privileged kids like mine don’t equally share the burden of military service. Actually, I’m starting to think that making them serve is the best way to keep them safe. It sounds counterintuitive, but think about it.Order in Afghanistan is crumbling. So
Viewpoints Oct. 2, 2012
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Japan’s Olympic dreams and economic reality
Tokyo’s mercurial governor, Shintaro Ishihara, gives new meaning to playing the sympathy card. In his dogged pursuit of staging the Olympics, and in his despair at being passed over for the 2016 games, Ishihara got desperate: He tapped into the outpouring of grief after last year’s record earthquake. His pitch for 2020, dubbed the “Olympics for Japan’s Revival,” became an appeal for pity. That gambit may be in vain given Ishihara’s role in bringing Japan and China to the brink of war. The Olympi
Viewpoints Oct. 2, 2012
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If Jesus was married, a lot of guys are in big trouble
The news that a Harvard professor has obtained evidence that Jesus Christ may have had a wife could be a problem for married guys everywhere. Really, how do we measure up?Being the son of God, he’d be perfect. He’d make Ned Flanders look like a slob. The grass would always be cut, the dirty socks always picked up, the toilet seat always down. He would listen. He would not chafe at talks about relationships.(Note: I am fully aware that there were no lawns, socks or toilet seats 2,000 years ago. W
Viewpoints Oct. 2, 2012
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The fans are the victims of NFL owners’ greed
Those who lost the most Monday night in Seattle weren’t the Green Bay Packers. That was bad enough. The ones who lost the most were the fans who love the game and have made it the premier sport that it is.They lost thanks to the ineptitude of replacement referees who don’t understand the rules of the game and can’t see an interception when it’s right in front of their noses. More important, they lost to NFL owners who spout platitudes about the integrity of the game and then trade integrity for
Viewpoints Sept. 28, 2012
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[Editorial] Currency war redux
As major countries of the world competitively ease monetary policies to boost their sagging economies, policymakers in Seoul are required to prepare steps to address their adverse effects on the Korean economy.On Sept. 6, the European Central Bank announced a plan to purchase an unlimited amount of eurozone government bonds to lower eurozone countries’ borrowing costs and bring the region’s dragged-out debt crisis under control. The ECB’s debt purchase scheme is tantamount to financing strugglin
Editorial Sept. 27, 2012
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[Editorial] Don’t covet Ieodo
China has recently reasserted a jurisdictional claim to Ieodo, challenging Korea’s control of the submerged rock in waters southwest of Jeju Island. The Seoul government needs to respond sternly to any Chinese attempt to invalidate Korea’s jurisdiction over the underwater outcropping.According to Chinese media reports, China’s State Oceanic Administration has disclosed a plan to strengthen surveillance of uninhibited islands and islets under Beijing’s jurisdiction using unmanned aerial vehicles.
Editorial Sept. 27, 2012
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[Liah Greenfeld] Roots of China-Japan rivalry
BOSTON ― The anti-Japan protests that continue to roil China are just another indication of the rise of a potent Chinese nationalism. After a century slowly fomenting among Chinese intellectuals, national sentiment has captured and redefined the consciousness of the Chinese people during the last two decades of China’s economic boom. This mass national consciousness launched the Chinese colossus into global competition to achieve an international status commensurate with the country’s vast capac
Viewpoints Sept. 27, 2012
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Revamp the stock market
The battle over the psychologically important threshold of 2,000 points considerably intensified as the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index dipped to a three-and-half-year low of 2,005 points on Monday morning. A mild rebound in the afternoon might have temporarily saved domestic investors from panic selling, but it still looks more than likely that the Chinese stock market is yet to find a bottom given the economic weakness both at home and abroad. Chinese policymakers should listen attentively
Viewpoints Sept. 27, 2012
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[Robert Shiller] Stories about global weakening
NEW HAVEN ― Recent indications of a weakening global economy have led many people to wonder how pervasive poor economic performance will be in the coming years. Are we facing a long global slump, or possibly even a depression?A fundamental problem in forecasting nowadays is that the ultimate causes of the slowdown are really psychological and sociological, and relate to fluctuating confidence and changing “animal spirits,” about which George Akerlof and I have written. We argue that such shifts
Viewpoints Sept. 26, 2012
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Lesson about confronting child abuse allegations
Records coming to light as a result of litigation against Irving-based Boy Scouts of America demonstrate yet again the fundamental lesson about handling child molestation allegations: The interests of institutions can’t override the obligation to protect the most vulnerable.Time and again, it’s been shown that when adults ignored or covered up or denied or simply failed to follow through, abusers were enabled, children got hurt and justice wasn’t served.The Catholic Church, Penn State University
Viewpoints Sept. 25, 2012
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[Daniel Fiedler] Should the mob rule in Korea?
Scenes of angry mobs in the Middle East and China fill the newspapers, internet and television these days. The raw emotion and irrationality that is driven by nationalism and religious fervor oozes out of the pictures. Ochlocracy, or rule by mob, is a dangerous and scary phenomenon. And yet that is exactly what calls for the resumption of the death penalty, or the institution of forced physical castration, in South Korea. Detailed descriptions of the horrors of crime merely add fuel to the fire
Viewpoints Sept. 25, 2012
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