The Korea Herald

ASEAN integration to require a new mindset

Ironically, even though we can hardly miss the acronym “AEC” when browsing through the newspaper each day, some Thai businessmen confessed to a survey recently that they don’t have a true understanding of how to prepare for the regional integration which is due to come into existence in 2015.In spite of the campaign to promote understanding of the AEC ― ASEAN Economic Community ― both in the public and private sectors, some Thai companies are not sure if they have a proper grasp of what this wil

Viewpoints Jan. 24, 2013

[Shahid Javed Burki] Pakistan near durable order

ISLAMABAD ― Since mid-December, Pakistan has experienced political and economic volatility that is extraordinary even by Pakistani standards. The fragile political structure that began to be erected following the resumption of civilian government in 2008 is now shaking.A key source of this unrest is Tahirul Qadri, a Toronto-based Muslim cleric who arrived in Lahore in early December. Ten days later, he addressed a mammoth public meeting at the city’s Minar-e-Pakistan grounds, where, a year earli

Viewpoints Jan. 24, 2013

[Shahid Javed Burki] Pakistan near durable order

Obama’s four more years in White House

Four years ago, on a bright, cold Jan. 20, Barack Obama took his first oath of office as president and proclaimed a new post-partisan era. “The stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply,” the Obama of 2009 said.The second four years of a two-term president’s tenure are always different from the first, but it’s hard to overstate how different Obama’s second term feels, even before his inauguration. He has most of the same goals and many of the same aides, but in

Viewpoints Jan. 23, 2013

[David Ignatius] A powerful symbol for Saudis

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia ― Recently, Saudi Arabia saw something that people in the kingdom often talk about but rarely witness ― a potentially important political reform. King Abdullah announced Jan. 11 that 30 women would join the kingdom’s Shura Council, a consultative body of 150 persons, and that women henceforth would hold 20 percent of the seats. Skeptics cautioned that it’s a symbolic move, since this is an advisory group that doesn’t actually enact any legislation. But it’s a powerful symbol

Viewpoints Jan. 23, 2013

[David Ignatius] A powerful symbol for Saudis

Good and not-so-good ethics in the Land of the Morning Calm

Having worked and lived in Korea for 12 years now, I have observed many traditions and ethics ― mostly good, some less good.I’ve seen some Korean bus drivers literally greet every person who enters or disembarks his bus. It is extremely courteous, and one can only imagine how much such a person has invested on the “bank of good ethics” at the end of his life. I was wondering, though, whether he could keep it up. Some express-bus drivers courteously stand at the exit of the bus to greet all the p

Viewpoints Jan. 23, 2013

[Editorial] Curbing food waste

Food waste collection facilities in many of Seoul’s 25 wards stink to high heaven as private food waste disposal companies have stopped processing the food waste collected there amid disputes over fee hikes. Residents near these facilities will have to endure the odor of rotting food waste as ward offices and waste disposal companies are unlikely to reach a deal any time soon. The disputes were triggered by the government’s ban on dumping the liquid that leaches out of food waste into the sea, w

Editorial Jan. 22, 2013

[Editorial] A new governing style

If the shape of the new Blue House organization unveiled by the presidential transition team on Monday suggests anything, it is that President-elect Park Geun-hye will likely show a governing style far different from those of her predecessors. Critical of the tradition of “imperial presidencies,” Park said she would scale back the power of the president and presidential staff while increasing the authority and responsibility of the prime minister and Cabinet ministers. Park’s intention to break

Editorial Jan. 22, 2013

[Lee Jae-min] Trade Ministry restructuring?

One of the key features of the Presidential Transition Committee’s governmental organization restructuring blueprint is to carve out the trade function of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and assign it to the new Ministry of Industry, Trade and Energy (currently, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy). The rationale mentioned by a committee member was the synergy effect expected from the combination of industrial policy and trade policy, so that Seoul’s trade agreement negotiations and impl

Viewpoints Jan. 22, 2013

[Lee Jae-min] Trade Ministry restructuring?

[Dominique Moisi] French intervention in Mali

PARIS ― While hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Paris against the right of homosexual couples to marry and adopt children, French troops were arriving in Mali to stop a coalition of Islamist and rebel forces from taking control of its capital, Bamako, and creating in the Sahel a sanctuary for terrorists.These are trying times for French President Franois Hollande. Besieged economically at home, where his popularity is at its lowest since his election last year, can he regain credibility, if

Viewpoints Jan. 21, 2013

[Dominique Moisi] French intervention in Mali

[Joel Brinkley] Food security still a major issue in SE Asia

LUANG PRABANG, Laos ― Travel through Southeast Asia, and wherever you go you’ll find statues of Buddha ― meditating, cogitating, calling for peace or for rain. The multiple poses are varied, and each one has its own meaning.But only one pose shows the Buddha actually grinning. That’s the Buddha who is fat, sitting in a chair, his belly so big it looks like he’ll be unable to stand up.This might seem odd, given that Buddhism is generally an ascetic faith. To reach enlightenment, you’re supposed t

Viewpoints Jan. 21, 2013

[Joel Brinkley] Food security still a major issue in SE Asia

[Robert Reich] Break up Wall Street giants

TARP, the infamous Troubled Assets Relief Program that bailed out Wall Street in 2008, is finally over. The Treasury Department recently announced it will soon be completing the sale of the remaining shares it owns of the banks and of General Motors.But it’s not really over. The biggest Wall Street banks are now far bigger than they were four years ago when they were considered too big to fail. The five largest have almost 44 percent of all U.S. bank deposits. That’s up from 37 percent in 2007,

Viewpoints Jan. 20, 2013

[Robert Reich] Break up Wall Street giants

2013 to be a testing year for Asian economies

The growth rate of emerging Asian economies is expected to increase in 2013. But inflation and gloomy external conditions still pose a challenge for the macroeconomic policies of many of these economies. In the medium term, their growth rate will be higher than other regions but lower than it was before the global financial crisis. This squarely puts the focus on economic reform and restructuring.Though Asia’s economy is likely to bottom out this year, it will find it difficult to overcome the p

Viewpoints Jan. 20, 2013

The global Indian

KOCHI, INDIA ― No other country has anything like it ― an annual jamboree of its diaspora, conducted with great fanfare by its government. India has been doing it, with great success, for a decade, timed to recall the return to India of the most famous Indian expatriate of them all, Mahatma Gandhi, who alighted from his South African ship in Bombay on Jan. 9, 1915. As I write, the southern port city of Kochi is overflowing with expatriate Indians celebrating their connection to their motherland.

Viewpoints Jan. 20, 2013

[Zaki Ladi] Will France have to go it alone on security affairs?

PARIS ― In less than two years, France has carried out three decisive foreign military interventions. In March 2011, its airstrikes in Libya (alongside those of Great Britain) thwarted Colonel Muammar el-Gadhafi’s troops as they prepared to retake the city of Benghazi. A month later, French forces in Cote d’Ivoire arrested President Laurent Gbagbo, who had refused to recognize his rival’s election victory, putting the country at risk of civil war. Now France has intervened in Mali.The latest int

Viewpoints Jan. 20, 2013

[Zaki Ladi] Will France have to go it alone on security affairs?

[David Ignatius] Afghanistan’s changing ways

NEW DELHI ― For Americans weary of nearly a dozen years of war, Afghanistan often seems like a country where nothing ever changes and the same story of ethnic and tribal struggle repeats itself in an endless loop. But Afghanistan’s demographics have changed in significant ways over the past decade. Rather than being mired in a perpetual feudal twilight, it’s actually becoming a modern country. The statistical evidence of change, gathered from USAID data and other sources, is overwhelming. The ur

Viewpoints Jan. 18, 2013

[David Ignatius] Afghanistan’s changing ways

Articles by Yu Kun-ha