The Korea Herald

Did you graduate in four years? Congratulations

For the U.S. college students who will be paying for a four-year bachelor’s degree long after graduation day, here’s some consolation: At least it didn’t take you six or eight years. College is expensive, yet unpredictably so. Some students pay little for degrees from elite private institutions, after tuition discounts and financial aid. Many of their peers, however, will pay far more than they expected for lower-cost universities. A big reason for this is the increasing number of years it takes

Viewpoints May 22, 2013

3-D printing: Ultimate intellectual-property threat?

Spend a few minutes on Shapeways.com, an online marketplace, and you get a glimpse of a very odd future. You can buy mustache cuff links, a pencil topper shaped like a Roman halberd, a pixelated bust of a glowering Steve Jobs, or a set of dice modeled on the Deathly Hallows of “Harry Potter” fame. All the items are designed by the site’s users and can be manufactured by Shapeways using 3-D printing technology. And they’re all for sale. The Internet is now alive with creative physical objects lik

Viewpoints May 22, 2013

Apple’s taxes expose the rotten U.S. code

When Apple Inc.’s chief executive officer, Tim Cook, bragged to a U.S. Senate subcommittee this week about his company’s culture of innovation, he probably hoped people would think of Apple’s gadgets, not its tax strategies. That seems unlikely, at least for now. Apple has opened a new front in the battle between corporations that aggressively avoid U.S. taxes and lawmakers who want to collect more of them. In so doing, Apple has made the case for why Congress must update the tax code. The compa

Viewpoints May 22, 2013

[Park Sang-seek] President Park’s approach to North Korea

In her address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on May 9, President Park Geun-hye outlined her North Korea policy. Dubbed trustpolitik, the policy consists of a trust-building process on the Korean peninsula, a trust-building process in Northeast Asia, and an international peace park in the Demilitarized Zone.There can be two contrasting views of her plan. Some might think that her plan is the rehash of the old strategies that her predecessors have already tried but to no avail. Others mi

Viewpoints May 22, 2013

[Park Sang-seek] President Park’s approach to North Korea

[Daniel Fiedler] Keeping adultery criminal

For the sixth time in the last 25 years a lower court in South Korea has requested that the Constitutional Court review the constitutionality of the adultery law. Adultery is still a criminal offense in South Korea, and has been so for over 60 years. However, it is only in the last couple of decades that the criminality of what many see as a private matter has been questioned in the context of a modern democracy. The most public debate occurred five years ago when a famous actress challenged the

Viewpoints May 21, 2013

[Daniel Fiedler] Keeping adultery criminal

Japan Inc. should take a look in the mirror

Sony Corp.’s curt dismissal of a foreigner’s advice last week didn’t shock Michael Woodford, the former chief executive officer of Olympus Corp. “The club, meaning corporate Japan, will do everything it can to mask and hide what’s wrong. That’s what’s most important,” said Woodford, a Briton who was fired in late 2011 after he exposed a $1.7 billion accounting fraud in his own company. Woodford’s tale is worth revisiting as Sony rebuffs a proposal from hedge-fund investor Daniel Loeb for the com

Viewpoints May 21, 2013

How 3-D printing could disrupt future economy

In its next generation of jet engines, General Electric Co. plans to use a new, and possibly revolutionary, technology. In each engine, 19 nozzles will shoot fuel into a combustion chamber, where it mixes with compressed air. Because the fuel must be distributed precisely, the interior of a nozzle is very sophisticated: Elaborate chambers and passageways help curtail emissions, control nitrous-oxide levels and prevent temperature surges. Previously, making each nozzle required welding 20 dispara

Viewpoints May 21, 2013

[Kim Seong-kon] The declaration of retirement and ‘the r word’

We all retire some day. Some people retire voluntarily long before they reach their retirement age, and others involuntarily due to age limits and retirement rules. Whichever your case is and whoever you are, the day will surely come when you have to pack your stuff and leave permanently. Cleaning up your vestiges at your workplace where you have spent your entire life, you are bound to feel a little lonely and empty, no matter how splendid your past achievements are. Elvis Presley once sang: “T

Viewpoints May 21, 2013

[Kim Seong-kon] The declaration of retirement and ‘the r word’

[Editorial] Workplace nurseries

The most effective way to address working moms’ concerns about child care is to have their companies operate an on-site nursery school, given that parents prefer day care facilities to be in the workplace.But companies are reluctant to set up nurseries for employees because of the financial costs involved. It takes about 1 billion won on average to build a day care center. On top of that, wages have to be paid to staff the centers.Furthermore, the current regulations on the operation of nursery

Editorial May 20, 2013

[Editorial] Job inheritance

The district court in the industrial city of Ulsan has put the brakes on job inheritance practices at Hyundai Motor.On Thursday, the court nullified a clause in the automaker’s collective bargaining agreement that requires management to hire a relative of an employee who dies or retires due to an industrial accident, regardless of whether they have the required job skills.The court said the provision not only “intrudes on the employer’s intrinsic right to hire employees” but “defines something t

Editorial May 20, 2013

[David Ignatius] Washington’s ways on display

WASHINGTON ― The hundred pages of Benghazi emails released last week tell us almost nothing about how four Americans came to die so tragically in that Libyan city. But they are a case study in why nothing works in Washington. Rather than reading these messages for their substance on Benghazi (on which officials were still basically clueless three days after the attack), try perusing them as an illustration of how the bureaucracy responds to crisis ― especially when officials know they will be un

Viewpoints May 20, 2013

[David Ignatius] Washington’s ways on display

Wal-Mart, Gap refuse to face the real issue

If the horrific garment factory collapse last month in Bangladesh has any silver lining, it is the response from more than 30 of the world’s leading apparel companies ― including Benetton, PVH, Abercrombie & Fitch, H&M, Inditex (Zara), Marks & Spencer and Tesco ― to sign an agreement to protect the safety and lives of that nation’s workers, who make the companies’ products.The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh is a historic advance over the voluntary private factory monitoring tha

Viewpoints May 20, 2013

[Eli Park Sorensen] The theme of preemptive logic in sci-fi films

The sentiment of a population never seems more vulnerable than in the days following a terrorist attack. By definition, terrorism strikes at the heart of people’s sense of security. The recent Boston Marathon bombings once again created a fierce public debate on what could have been done ― and what must be done ― to prevent such incidents. “In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing,” the conservative critic Rachel Marsden writes in a recent column, “it’s only natural to ask why some terrorists

Viewpoints May 20, 2013

[Eli Park Sorensen] The theme of preemptive logic in sci-fi films

[Robert Reich] Danger to American family

My mother went into paid work soon after my father’s clothing store was flooded out in a hurricane, almost wiping him out. She had no choice. We needed the money.This was some two decades before a tidal wave of wives and mothers went into paid work.For the relatively few women with four-year college degrees, this change was the consequence of wider educational opportunity and new laws against gender discrimination that opened professions to well-educated women.But the vast majority of women ente

Viewpoints May 19, 2013

[Robert Reich] Danger to American family

IRS scandal rooted in money and power

Addressing the scandal exposed at the Internal Revenue Service last week, President Barack Obama announced the resignation of the agency’s acting commissioner, adding: “I’ll do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this happens again.” Ideally, the scandal will lead to reform of the vague rules that govern political groups. It will also lead Congress to end the practice of anonymous donations to political causes, which is at the heart of the controversy. Are you sufficiently naive to

Viewpoints May 19, 2013

Articles by Yu Kun-ha