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

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

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

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

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

If you have been reading newspapers or websites, listening to the radio or watching TV over the past few weeks, you have probably heard the news: “You CAN judge a person by his shoes.” Beginning in mid-June, word of a psychology article titled “Shoes as a source of first impressions” began circling the globe. Describing an experiment by researchers from the University of Kansas and Wellesley College, many reports declared that shoes alone reveal just everything about the wearer’s personality. “O

The relationship between Tokyo and Seoul is in the news again ― and for all the wrong reasons. Last week, in an apparent sign of bilateral warming, a report from Korea’s Yonhap News Agency indicated that Japan and Korea were on the cusp of formalizing a longstanding commitment to share intelligence and security information on North Korea’s WMD programs. The story claimed that government sources in Seoul were prepared to sign off on a General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) wi

North Korea’s young leader Kim Jong-un, accompanied by an unidentified woman, recently attended a concert that marked an unusual departure for his isolated regime.Footage run on state TV showed performers dressed as Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and other Disney characters dancing against a backdrop of clips from Disney movies including “Snow White” and “Beauty and the Beast.”The concert also played a rendition of the famous “Rocky” theme song, showing scenes of the U.S. film character pounding

A recent debate on multiculturalism in Korean society was disturbed by some people antagonistic toward expatriates here.One of them jumped on the podium and claimed that multicultural policies would destroy the integrity of the nation. He then hurled invective against the organizer of the debate, a female immigrant from the Philippines who was elected to parliament as a proportional representative for the ruling Saenuri Party in the April general elections. While being taken out of the conferenc

Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa says in a new book that we are living in a “culture of entertainment” in which everything ― including literature, journalism, politics and sex ― is becoming increasingly trivial, and that this phenomenon can have disastrous consequences to mankind.So when I interviewed him last week about “La Civilizacion del Espectaculo,” a collection of essays that has not been released in English yet, but whose title loosely translates as “The Show Culture,” I couldn’t