{Suh Nam-pyo}(A student in the KAIST campus in Daejeon walks past a hand-written poster protesting the school president’s policies that stir competition, including a unique system under which students pay different amounts of tuition based on their grades. Park Hyun-koo/The Korea Herald)“KAIST is facing the biggest crisis since its opening,” the president of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science

How worrisome are real estate bubbles for the banking system? Based upon the recent subprime and then global financial crisis, they are very worrisome indeed. For households, a house is likely to be the largest single investment for most families. For companies, real estate and fixed assets are often, other than inventory, the most important assets, especially as collateral for loans from banks. F

The fundamental problem with the current international monetary system is that the U.S. dollar is used as the key international reserve currency, which gives the U.S. central bank the “exorbitant privilege” of printing the United States’ way out of its economic difficulties.And that is exactly what it is doing. Its printing presses are running at full speed in a bid to boost the U.S. economy, rega

Biker club cares for safety, fellowship while enjoying majestic countrysideDriving a motorcycle in Seoul is an enthralling real-life trip into the depths of one’s resolution, courage, patience, motor skills and coordination. In a country with one of the highest traffic death rates in the world, the challenge becomes a daunting case of one near miss after the other.Putting all that aside, very few

(Author Shin Kyung-sook at a press conference in New York on Tuesday. Yonhap News)(The cover of Shin Kyung-sook’s “Please Look After Mom,” published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. Yonhap News)Korean novel “Please Look After Mom,” written by Shin Kyung-sook and translated into English by Kim Chi-young, is making an impact internationally, entering the top 40 bestselling books on Amazon.com.The book

Exhibitions“Koo Bohnchang”: One of South Korea’s most renowned photographers, Koo Bohn-chang, is holding a solo exhibition at Kukje Gallery. Not only parts from his different series but also his personal collections of eclectic objects are on display, giving the viewers a hint of Koo’s youth, attitudes towards photography and more. The exhibition runs through April 30 at Kukje Gallery in Sogyeok-d

In Love and the War (Korea)Opening April 28 Drama. Comedy. Directed by Park Geon-yong. Just about two months ahead of the Korean War, a young communist military officer (Kim Joo-hyeok) and his soldiers arrive in a secluded country town in Chungcheong Province. Amid the intense political turmoil, the town, Seokjeong-ri, is peaceful. It is so remote that its people don’t even take the war rumor seri

If you have fond memories of the 1981 comedy “Arthur,” that says a couple of things about you. One, you’ve been around for at least 40 years, and two, you’re probably curious about the remake, which arrives in theaters Friday.Much has changed since Dudley Moore first appeared as Arthur Bach, the merrily alcoholic heir to a family fortune who must agree to an arranged marriage or forfeit his millio

What is the line between being a ghoul and a do-gooder when it comes to visiting a recent disaster area? It’s a question to be asked again when the crisis in Japan finally abates.But what is an appropriate waiting period to visit a country hit by a magnitude 9 earthquake and 20-foot-high tsunami that killed thousands of people in northeastern Japan and created a nuclear radiation crisis?In natural

Insider’s account of city politicsPolitics and PastaBy Vincent “Buddy” Cianci Jr(St. Martin’s Press, $30)In the fall of 1974, a few days after he was elected mayor of Providence, R.I., Buddy Cianci sipped beer with a few reporters and joked about the “Philistines” he had ousted from city hall.The denizens of the Democratic machine that had run the city for 30 years had trashed the place, he said,

Andre Dubus III does not look like a man on a journey. Instead, sitting at an outdoor table at the Standard Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, the 51-year-old author appears, finally, to have arrived. That may seem a stretch, considering his 1999 novel “House of Sand and Fog” was an Oprah Book Club selection and a finalist for the National Book Award, but Dubus has never had an easy road.The son of th

Of all the classic noir writers, perhaps none has been as tarnished by the brush of genre as James M. Cain. That’s because Cain was not just a great hard-boiled novelist but a great novelist, period, whose vision of 1930s Southern California is as acute and resonant as anything ever written about that time and place.His first novel, “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” published when he was 42, is sa

JW Marriott SeoulOn April 22 and 23, DJ e_qnx will throw a “Shaky Night” party at Bar Rouge in the hotel from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. His live DJing will mix trance, progressive house and synthesized 70s and 80s retro from 9 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. A b-boy team performance and lucky draw for restaurant certificates will lead into midnight, and a hip-hop and electronic DJ mix will power the dance floor from 12