President Park Geun-hye is rolling up her sleeves to boost corporate investment. On Wednesday, she is hosting a lunch for the heads of the top 10 conglomerates. The next day, she is meeting with the chiefs of 30 midsized companies. The Presidential Office said Park arranged the meetings to listen to the captains of Korean industry air their views on corporate investment, job creation and her vision of an economy driven by creativity and technological fusion.Increasing corporate investment is one

Editorial Aug. 26, 2013

The Korean economy’s job creation capacity continues to weaken, aggravating the sad phenomenon of jobless growth.According to the Bank of Korea, the job creation effect of exports ― Korea’s primary engine of growth ― fell more than 30 percent between 2005 and 2011. The employment inducement coefficient of exports stood at 7.3 in 2011, which means that a 1 billion won increase in overseas demand for Korean goods added 7.3 jobs to the economy two years ago. The figure was 10.8 in 2005. It is not j

Editorial Aug. 26, 2013

Like the hundreds of tons of radioactive water now streaming daily into the Pacific Ocean off the Japanese coast, the bad news from Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi plant just keeps coming. Stanching the flow and getting the Fukushima cleanup on track are critical not only to health and safety, but also to the future of nuclear energy in Japan and elsewhere, and to the credibility of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government. The latest scare came last week, with the announcem

Viewpoints Aug. 26, 2013

Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of such popular science books as “The Blank Slate,” recently wrote an essay for the New Republic in defense of science. From left and right, he notes, from intellectuals as well as from anti-intellectuals, science is under attack for its arrogance, vulgarity and narrowness of vision. Why is this happening? Pinker asks. Because, he says, science is intruding on the humanities, disciplines lacking in vitality or any real purpo

Viewpoints Aug. 26, 2013

Patent trolls are a widely reported problem for big business and technology makers. They are companies that exist primarily to buy up patents and then collect money, in the form of licenses or lawsuit settlements, from alleged infringers of those patents. Trolls take advantage of a patent system with serious flaws, and their abuse of the system is creating, as a White House fact sheet recently put it, a “drain on the American economy.”And, as it turns out, a drain on you, the ordinary consumer.L

Viewpoints Aug. 26, 2013

Like many others who read Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers” when it came out five years ago, I was impressed by the 10,000-hour rule of expertise. I wrote a column (for a different publication) espousing the rule, which holds that to become a world-class competitor at anything from chess to tennis to baseball, all that’s required is 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. David Epstein has convinced me I was wrong. His thoroughly researched new book, “The Sports Gene,” pretty much demolishes the 1

Viewpoints Aug. 25, 2013

President Obama has demonstrated leadership qualities ranging from poor to nonexistent. But is a president who lacks visible leadership qualities really such a bad thing? Or is he lazy like a fox? A lack of leadership ― whether deliberate or accidental ― can have a surprising upside, as none other than the French have historically exemplified. (And no, I’m not being facetious.)As a conservative whose heart leans firmly right, I would have thought the idea crazy until I moved to France four years

Viewpoints Aug. 25, 2013

Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of such popular science books as “The Blank Slate,” recently wrote an essay for the New Republic in defense of science. From left and right, he notes, from intellectuals as well as from anti-intellectuals, science is under attack for its arrogance, vulgarity and narrowness of vision. Why is this happening? Pinker asks. Because, he says, science is intruding on the humanities, disciplines lacking in vitality or any real purpo

Viewpoints Aug. 25, 2013

It is becoming increasingly clear that the universal welfare programs introduced in recent years under political motivations are unsustainable.Last week, Kim Moon-soo, governor of Gyeonggi Province, declared that the provincial government would drastically cut its financial support for the free school lunch program next year.The provincial government had originally planned to provide 86 billion won ($76 million) for the scheme next year. But it decided to cut the budget to 18.7 billion won and u

Editorial Aug. 23, 2013

Six months have passed since President Park Geun-hye was sworn in as the nation’s first female chief executive on Feb. 25. Six months is not a short time for Park ― it accounts for a 10th of her five-year term. Yet it is still too early to evaluate her performance, especially on the economic front, as many of her key policies still wait to be put in place. In the fields of diplomacy and national security, however, she has already cut a brilliant figure.Park’s approval ratings are currently above

Editorial Aug. 23, 2013

It may take awhile to determine whether, as the opposition claims, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons to slaughter more than 1,000 of his citizens. If he has, this brazen atrocity not only changes the U.S. calculus in the region but also requires a clear response from the civilized world. Words and resolutions would not do for a massacre of this scale. Ideally the United Nations Security Council would sanction limited international military action to punish and deter Assad. I

Viewpoints Aug. 23, 2013