Beginning Nov. 30, dozens of foreign aid donors and recipients will meet in Busan for several days to review the implementation of their 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. The declaration purports to structure donor-recipient partnerships based on five principles: ownership (recipient countries, not donors, should create and “own” their development plans); alignment (donors should align their aid with those plans); “mutual accountability” between donors and recipients; “managing the ai

Viewpoints Nov. 29, 2011

Nowadays there are many international marriages not only in Korea, but also around the world. Since 1990 the number of men has increased more than women. So the number of international marriages has also increased and most international marriages are arranged marriages with people who live in poorer countries. Because of this, arranged marriages with people who live in other countries are looked down on. However, this is not good for Korea in this age of globalization. Eight years ago, my brothe

Viewpoints Nov. 29, 2011

Investors sent Europe’s politicians a painful message last week when Germany had a seriously disappointing government bond auction. It was unable to sell more than a third of the benchmark 10-year bonds it had sought to auction off on Nov. 23, and interest rates on 30-year German debt rose from 2.61 percent to 2.83 percent. The message? Germany is no longer a safe haven. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, investors have focused on credit risk and rewarded Germany with low interest rates

Viewpoints Nov. 29, 2011

President Lee signs into law today the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement which was ratified a week ago. The regular session of the National Assembly stays idle as opposition parties are boycotting it in protest of the government party’s unilateral passage of the FTA bill, claiming it as “null and void.”If opposition lawmakers do not turn up in the Assembly hall by Friday, the deliberation of the national budget will pass the legal deadline again this year. This legislative abnormality has been rep

Editorial Nov. 28, 2011

An opposition lawmaker detonates a tear gas bomb at the rostrum of the National Assembly’s main chamber. Mobs in a nighttime rally beat up the Jongno police chief responsible for the public order of the heart of the capital. These two incidents related to protests against the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement demonstrate the state of lawlessness in the Republic of Korea.The National Assembly makes law and police execute it. When some individuals use violence to deny these institutions’ authority w

Editorial Nov. 28, 2011

LOS ANGELES ― The failure of the U.S. Congressional Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction to reach agreement on budget cuts now sets the stage for $1.2 trillion in automatic reductions to begin in January 2013. Should these cuts go into effect, the U.S. Defense Department, which already must implement $450 billion in reductions over 10 years, will take half the hit. But pushback has already begun, with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta arguing that further reductions will impose “substantial risk

Viewpoints Nov. 28, 2011

Whenever U.S. soldiers in Korea misbehave egregiously, Koreans naturally soul-search on whether USFK should withdraw. This is proper; soldiers sexually assaulting teenagers is horrific. The debate also usefully signals to the U.S. that Korea not be taken for granted. But in the end, Koreans have always hewn to the U.S., even after George W Bush famously alienated South Korea by placing N.K. on the ‘axis of evil.’ South Korea is the overwhelming beneficiary of a very one-sided relationship and te

Viewpoints Nov. 28, 2011

A story ran in the British newspaper The Guardian recently with the following headline: South Korean parents told: Pre-school English ‘harmful.’ The sub-headline was: “Pressure group argues that money spent on early year classes is wasted and urges starting at age 10.” The operative word here is “pressure group,” but I’ll come back to that in a moment. For now, I will content myself with dissecting the arguments in the article, and dissection they need.The very first line in the article attribut

Viewpoints Nov. 28, 2011

Korea the younger, smarter brother of China? The clich cumulates too many “no-nos” to be sustainable. First, nations are not anthropomorphic entities you can compare on moral grounds. Second, Northeast Asian relations can be as touchy as minefields, and the epicenter of Confucianism is not the ideal playground for audacious familial metaphors. Ask a Chinese nationalist, and he’d rather consider South Korea and its actual sibling, North Korea, as mere provinces bound to get back to their Motherla

Viewpoints Nov. 27, 2011

The government and the public will have to work together to rehabilitate the nation after the flood crisis, to ensure that we emerge stronger. Beneath the lower growth-rate forecasts recently announced by some economic institutes, there are a number of issues that the government will have to tackle to ensure the nation rebounds in the long run.Instead of focusing on bolstering short-term growth, Thailand should have a comprehensive platform to address future natural disasters, to win back the co

Viewpoints Nov. 25, 2011

Scanning the public arena, some might be hard-pressed to find cause for thanks. Unemployment remains stubbornly high, inflicting pain on millions of Americans and undermining the futures of millions more. The economy at large is skittish, bracing for the sound of other shoes dropping in Europe. The national debt just surpassed $15 trillion. What’s more, the U.S. is sharply divided along ideological lines, with the opposing sides sorting themselves with dispiriting consistency by race, age and so

Viewpoints Nov. 24, 2011