The current extraordinary session is virtually the final time the 18th National Assembly will sit. When its plenary session is over next Thursday, all members, except for those planning to leave the parliament, will start to prepare themselves in earnest for the April 11 general elections.The immediate concern of incumbent lawmakers is whether or not they will be nominated again. It may be too much to demand they focus on lawmaking at a time when the nomination processes are under way in their p

Not a day goes by without Pyongyang vilifying South Korea’s unification minister, Yu Woo-ik, one of the few doves in President Lee Myung-bak’s administration. It continues to excoriate Yu, calling him a jackass, a traitor and a confrontational fanatic ― a development that has broad implications for inter-Korean relations.Pyongyang began to hurl epithets against Yu on Jan. 11, almost four months after South Korea’s former ambassador to Beijing was appointed as unification minister. On that day, P

There are two lessons to be gleaned from the revelation that Philip Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners LLC lost 47 percent in its main hedge fund last year. The first is that Falcone took a mighty gamble in investing $3 billion in LightSquared, a Virginia-based broadband-service supplier. The second, more important point is to shed light on how poorly the U.S. government manages the domestic broadcast spectrum. LightSquared controls 59 megahertz on the U.S. spectrum that it hopes to lease to w

President Barack Obama is headed for political turbulence. That prediction isn’t based on any private polling data or inside information. It’s just common sense: National political campaigns are cyclical, and after an especially good cycle, the Democratic president is due for some downtime. On re-election prospects, the Obamaites are confident when they look at the state of the race, especially the Republicans. They’re showing signs of cockiness. Like many politicians, Obama courts trouble when

For most policy problems, there is usually a simple answer and a correct answer; they are rarely the same thing. That dilemma is evident in the debate about what the U.S. can do to boost its manufacturing sector. One side was staked out by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address. Building on the success of his rescue of the auto industry, the president set forth a multipronged approach toward a broader reinvigoration of manufacturing. His proposal includes closing tax loopholes

The Fitch Ratings agency has downgraded the credit of another five European countries ― Belgium, Cyprus, Italy, Slovenia, and Spain ― citing “the financing risks faced by eurozone sovereign governments in the absence of a credible financial firewall against contagion and self-fulfilling liquidity crises.”In other words, these self-styled fiscal medics plunged headfirst into deadly disease without making sure they had all their shots. Is every European country that tries to find a clean end by wh

After two months, it may still be too early to make a correct assessment, but again we are obliged to ask if it was the right decision for the government to license four new “general programming” cable channels and a news-only network at the same time last December. As of last week, all the four new cable broadcasters providing news and entertainment programs were struggling with average viewer shares below 0.4 percent.According to the AGB Nielson Media Research report, MBN came top with 0.385 p

France can’t seem to decide how quickly it will withdraw its troops from Afghanistan after a rogue Afghan soldier opened fire on unarmed French soldiers, killing four and wounding 15.Over the last week, French officials have offered conflicting reports of their intentions. But the truth is, it doesn’t really matter whether they stay or they go. Despite the gung-ho statements we are now hearing from the NATO training program, most Afghan soldiers are simply unfit for duty.In every nation, the arm

If the election of Park Won-soon as Seoul’s mayor last October is any indication, the upcoming April parliamentary elections will turn on matters of social welfare, inequality and the degree to which Koreans are willing to accept the vagaries of a market economy which, while it may increase the latter, is necessary in order to finance the former. This debate could scarcely come at a more important time for Korea, as it faces an aging and declining population, a slowing economic growth rate and r

Monday was a bad day for Park Geun-hye, head of the Saenuri Party’s emergency governing body and the front-runner in its presidential race. In a survey result released on Monday, Park allowed Moon Jae-in of the main opposition Democratic United Party to overtake her for the first time. On top of that, the main edition of the Chosun Ilbo carried perhaps the most scathing criticism of Park’s personality in an interview story with a former close aide.Up until the middle of last year, Park had enjoy

The great absurdity of the U.N., the veto power given to the five permanent members of the Security Council, was again exposed when China and Russia used it against a resolution to stop a bloodbath in Syria. The joint action by the two early Cold War allies turned the clock of history back several decades.The draft resolution proposed by the Arab League had been considerably toned down to elicit support from the two countries. It called for the formation of a coalition government in Damascus, a