“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is not just an official U.S. policy on homosexuals serving in the military. It also refers to the business practice Korean credit card companies are accused of resorting to when issuing cards to applicants with questionable credit standings.Now regulators are out to put an end to these ill-advised card issuances and other business practices. They say they will start weekly

Friday is the 24th anniversary of massive civil disobedience against a military-backed strongman. White-collar workers as well as student activists rose up against President Chun Doo-hwan, a former Army general, demanding that democracy be restored. Chun capitulated three weeks later, on June 29, promising a direct popular vote to elect the next president.Students are set to stage another protest

The Pentagon is developing a new cyberwarfare strategy that calls for the use of military force ― including conventional weapons ― in response to certain kinds of damaging online attacks on U.S. institutions. That’s fine in theory; if foreign agents launch a cyberattack on, say, the nation’s electrical grid, it may be both reasonable and proportionate to fire missiles at, say, the attacker’s energ

The economic recovery is 2 years old this month. Isn’t that reassuring? I didn’t think so. As recoveries go, this one is as blah as it gets. Judging by the most recent indicators, we may be headed for a double dip, or perhaps a period of flatlining that feels just as bad.Job growth is sluggish and unemployment is again on the rise. In the first three months of this year, the economy slowed substan

The editorial in The Korea Herald, June 7, 2011, states that “The spreading of English-only lectures in Korean universities is likely to slow, as presidents and deans have concluded that they have been largely ineffective because of the unpreparedness from both professors and students.” This is not forward thinking in a global society that embraces English as the language of science and business.

Thirty years ago, on June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control published a notice of a strange illness affecting five Los Angeles gay men, two of whom died before the report could be published. The illness soon acquired the designation AIDS, along with a burden of fear and misinformation that it has never quite shaken.The decades of terror and rage and sacrifice and nobility that followed have

On the death penalty...China, India, the U.S., Japan and several other major countries still use the death penalty. Especially when you consider that technically Korea is still in a state of war, and does suffer the threat of attack, assassinations or sabotage from North Korean agents, I believe the death penalty is an appropriate deterrent/punishment to consider. Korea’s death penalty seems quite

Pretend you’re Darmin Nasution, Indonesia’s central bank governor, and inflation is running at about 6 percent. Do you raise interest rates or cut them? This isn’t a trick question, but one facing Asia’s monetary authorities as they brace for a possible third round of U.S. quantitative easing, an effort by the central bank to get more money into the economy. No matter what Federal Reserve official

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has announced his bid for reelection. In a news conference held in New York on Monday, he disclosed that he had asked the 192 member countries of the world body to consider him for a second five-year term. His current term ends Dec. 31.Wire reports say Ban’s reelection is virtually assured, as he faces no opponents and has the backing of the five veto-wielding me

The confrontation between lawmakers and prosecutors over the fate of the Central Investigation Department of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office has taken a new turn following the presidential office’s opposition to the parliamentary bid to scrap the powerful investigation unit.The presidential office advocated on Monday the continued existence of the CID, saying that the prosecution needs a strong in

Despite the remarkable economic and social development it has achieved since reform and opening-up in 1978, China is still a developing nation, as indicated by both its per capita economic indices and its economic and social structure.It is necessary to take into account a country’s economic aggregate and its per capita output to accurately measure its real economic and social development levels.