Recently, a headline captured global attention: another assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for the US presidency. Fortunately, the attempt failed, and Trump remains unharmed. However, the incident raises serious concerns about the state of democracy today. Why is Trump a target again, and who benefits from this chaos? More critically, what does this say about the health of American democracy and its liberal traditions? This event is not an isolated act of violence;

Song Sin-do was 16 and had yet to have her first menstrual period when she was tricked into working for a Japanese military “comfort station.” Over seven hellish years, she was impregnated many times and had to give away two babies. When the troops moved to the frontline, she was ordered to accompany them. Amid the echoes of gunfire, she had sex with dozens of soldiers every day. Song was born in 1922 under Japanese rule, in the present-day Daejeon area in South Chungcheong Province.

One of the most interesting things about visiting a new city is its soundscape. For many people, language defines the way a city sounds, particularly if they do not understand the language or languages spoken around them. The soundscape also includes announcements, digital notifications, music, traffic noise and various sounds of nature. What, then, is the soundscape of major cities in South Korea? The easiest city to start with is Seoul, the largest and most dominant city in the country by far.

In the current digital era, businesses are constantly seeking ways to innovate, grow, and maintain a competitive edge. One increasingly popular strategy is transforming products into platforms. This approach involves expanding existing products and services to also enable interactions among customers or between customers and external third-parties. With some creative thinking and careful implementation, this strategy can generate new revenue streams and enhance competitive advantage via network

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has characterized AI as “the most profound technology humanity is working on. More profound than fire, electricity, or anything that we have done in the past." The hype around “existential risk” in AI follows a similar narrative, analogizing it to Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb. Such grand pronouncements have stirred many a corporate board and government agency to develop AI deployment plans. The problem, though, is that it’s not yet clear i

As the new fall semester begins, I face my new students with both excitement and dread. Excitement because I can find vibrant youth energy and unquenchable academic zeal from their glowing faces. Dread because the world outside our campus is dark and grim, filled with uncertainties. Once they graduate, students will have to grapple with not only the world’s woes, such as wars and climate crisis, but also their personal perils, notably job scarcity. With these mixed feelings, I happened to

As Greece attempts to recover from the recent destructive wildfires around Athens, Southern Californians facing our own heat wave should take note of the pattern that enabled them. It should be well-known by now: sprawl into the urban-wildland interface where development collides with nature, the corresponding replacement of grass, shrubs and other plants native to the area with many more trees for shade, then strain on the land thanks to drought, record high heat and wind, intensified by climat

Traditionally, Koreans have respected polite and considerate speech, but recently, we have seen many people speaking arrogantly and presumptuously. A recent case involves Kim Tae-hyo, the first deputy director of the National Security Office, whose remarks have ignited controversy. He made unusually frank comments on US elections and foreign policy during a seminar at a private research institute in Seoul. Here are a few of his statements: “If former President Trump wins the US election in

The release of ChatGPT in November 2022 has raised great hopes that artificial intelligence (AI) can contribute to solving problems in many fields and lift productivity, but also fears that many jobs may disappear, and that income inequality could rise further. AI is commonly seen as a general-purpose technology, like the internal combustion engine, early electricity-based technologies, and computers. Such technologies have the potential to disrupt large parts of the economy, displacing many w