Among the chaotic and hectic environment at Apple due to the passing of Steve Jobs, people must try to look past their brand loyalty (to Apple) to fully understand that Samsung isn’t copying Apple’s designs. Does the Galaxy Tab 10 inch tablet intentionally resemble the iPad? Probably. Does the Galaxy Tab create confusion in the market place so that buyers are deceived into thinking the Galaxy Tab is the iPad? No. Fortunately for Samsung, international law regarding copyright infringement (of des

Viewpoints July 18, 2012

The U.S. presidential campaign seems to have time-traveled back to 1992, when independent candidate Ross Perot thought he heard the “giant sucking sound” of American jobs moving to Mexico. Perot lost his presidential bid, along with the argument against globalization. The winner, Bill Clinton, went on to sign the North American Free Trade Agreement. The resulting U.S. job losses, primarily in manufacturing, were offset by gains elsewhere, according to numerous studies. Two decades of bipartisan

Viewpoints July 18, 2012

The alarm is sounding for the Korean economy as the continuing eurozone debt crisis has begun to spill over to China, the engine of global economic growth and the largest market for Korean exports.Last week, China announced that its economy grew 7.6 percent in the second quarter of this year, a sharp decline from 9.5 percent a year earlier. The growth figure was the lowest since the world’s second-largest economy grew 6.6 percent in the first quarter of 2009 at the height of the global financial

Editorial July 17, 2012

A serious power struggle appears to be under way in Pyongyang as Ri Young-ho, the North’s top military official, has been removed from all his posts in a most unusual way.Ri was viewed as one of the guardians that the deceased North Korean leader Kim Jong-il picked to ensure a smooth power transfer to his heir and youngest son, Kim Jong-un.But he was stripped of all his posts in the Workers’ Party, according to a brief dispatch of the North’s Korean Central News Agency on Monday. He was a member

Editorial July 17, 2012

Looking ahead to the Olympics this month, Adam Gopnik cleverly writes in The New Yorker that “Americans become passionate about athletes we have never heard of participating in games we do not follow trying to please judges we cannot see according to rules we do not know.”Gopnik sees this fascination bred by nationalism. But within American culture, we should also be attuned to the narratives of individual excellence that dominate coverage of the Olympics. These narratives extol the virtue of si

Viewpoints July 17, 2012

Once, during a meeting at my university, a biologist mentioned that he was the only faculty member present from a science department. When I corrected him, noting that I was from the Department of Psychology, he waved his hand dismissively, as if I were a Little Leaguer telling a member of the New York Yankees that I too played baseball.There has long been snobbery in the sciences, with the “hard” ones (physics, chemistry, biology) considering themselves to be more legitimate than the “soft” one

Viewpoints July 17, 2012

On July 20, the Korea Institute for National Unification and the Korean Political Science Association will hold a joint forum Korean Unification from an International Perspective. The forum is unique in being one of the few efforts to draw in perspectives on Korean unification beyond the participants of the long stalled six-party talks. It may seem logical that the participants in the six-party talks take center stage in any forum on the Korean Peninsula. China, Japan, Russia, and the United Sta

Viewpoints July 17, 2012

President Lee Myung-bak must have been dejected last week when he saw his older brother, Lee Sang-deuk, being sent to jail on television. He must have wondered what had gone wrong. The same question must have been asked by so many Koreans, who have in the past witnessed some of those close to presidents or presidential candidates being sent to prison for taking bribes and breaching the election-funding law. Lee’s brother, accused of taking money from businesses, may have followed in their footst

Editorial July 16, 2012

It is not surprising to see liberal and progressive opposition parties turn their backs on conglomerates. Traditionally, they have supported small businesses and labor unions while criticizing the business practices of large corporations.To their chagrin, however, the ruling Saenuri Party is withdrawing what has long been seen to be their unwavering support for big businesses. The party has joined the opposition forces in demanding greater economic democratization ahead of the December president

Editorial July 16, 2012

Until recently, respectable opinion frowned on all barriers to money flowing across borders. Today, the old thinking has been overturned. Sometimes, it’s agreed, capital controls are necessary. The old consensus was wrong and won’t be missed. The new view, however, lacks clarity and, when it comes to application, effective oversight. Capital controls may sometimes be necessary ― but they are always dangerous and open to abuse. These policies need to be better considered and more carefully superv

Viewpoints July 16, 2012