President Lee Myung-bak has until Friday to make a decision on whether to sign into law or veto a bill on the appointment of an independent counsel empowered to look into a land-purchase scandal involving him, his son and one of his top security service officers. The bill, passed by the National Assembly earlier in the month, will be made into law automatically if no action is taken by Friday.In the past, lawmakers close to the president and the minister of justice have hinted at a presidential

The massive admission fraud case involving some foreign schools here shows how morally degraded and legally insensitive the affluent in Korean society have become. Such moral laxity and disregard of the law permeating the upper class are to blame for exacerbating social disintegration at least as much as economic polarization is.The prosecution is investigating parents of about 60 students who have been admitted to three foreign schools in Seoul and its vicinity through illicit means. Among them

In the coming weeks, the focus of presidential election politics is set to be put on who will emerge as the unified candidate of the liberal opposition camp. Discourse is heating up on how to establish the single candidacy between Rep. Moon Jae-in of the main opposition Democratic United Party and software mogul-turned-professor Ahn Cheol-soo.Moon, a human rights lawyer and former chief of staff for late President Roh Moo-hyun, was nominated as DUP presidential candidate Sunday as he secured mor

Senior citizens are defined by the government as those aged 65 or older. Now the government is moving to raise the threshold to 70 or 75. In other words, it is saying you have to be older to be old.This proposal may sound innocuous to many old people that do not feel as old as they really are because they are healthy. Moreover, they have many more years to live than those at their age would have had decades ago. The life expectancy in Korea soared from 65.9 years in 1980 to 80.7 years in 2010 be

Sejong is starting its role as a new center of public administration, as the prime minister’s office is moving from Seoul to the new special self-governing city over the weekend. Also scheduled to move into the city this year are five ministries and six sub-ministry-level offices.As the nation’s capital, Seoul will continue to be the home for the presidential office, the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, some key non-economic ministries and other state institutions. But Sejong, 120 kilometer

North Korea’s flip-flopping on the flood aid proposal from South Korea appears to have revealed its intention to use it to further embarrass President Lee Myung-bak’s administration and aggravate internal discord in the South.On Wednesday, it rejected Seoul’s relief aid package of 10,000 tons of flour, 3 million packs of instant noodles and medicine, describing it as a “meager amount of materials.” It further accused the South of “ridiculing the humanitarian spirit of the Red Cross.”A day earlie

High-ranking officials, politicians and scholars from several Southeast Asian nations recently gathered in Hanoi to attend a workshop on economic partnership between Korea and the region. Some of them proposed that cooperation with Korea go beyond industrial and financial sectors to cover climate change, population aging and the environment.The workshop, hosted by the Korea Development Institute, a state-funded think tank in Seoul, was part of a series of consultations with a group of developing

Economic democratization is one of the three campaign keywords for Park Geun-hye, the presidential candidate of the ruling Saenuri Party. But the party still remains sharply divided over how to implement the elusive concept.Thus far, the party’s task force on economic democratization has put forward four bills to curb chaebol’s abuse of their economic power.The first proposal zeroes in on the court practice of granting suspended sentences to chaebol chairmen who have committed crimes, while the

Korea is widely recognized as a powerhouse in many high-tech manufacturing fields, including IT, automobiles and shipbuilding. Each year, Korea posts a large surplus in manufacturing trade. Yet a recent OECD report has given Korea a painful reality check about its technological competitiveness. In 2010, Korea earned $3.35 billion through technology exports. But its technology import bill was three times larger than that ― $10.2 billion. As a result, Korea posted a deficit of $6.9 billion in tech

The administration has come up with cosmetic tax cuts and other supposedly stimulus measures to prop up the sagging economy. By taking these measures, it apparently hopes to show the ruling party that it has done what little it can.Under pressure from the Saenuri Party to give the listless economy a shot in the arm, the administration has decided to halve tax rates on the acquisition of homes until year-end ― to 1 percent on homes priced 900 million won or less and 2 percent on the amount in exc

Korean presidential elections have basically been races between the ruling and main opposition parties in the past. Third-party candidates, if they have made it to the finish line, have been little better than spoilers. Yet, the routes to a two-way competition have often been convoluted, as witnessed during the run-up to the 1997 and 2002 elections.In his fight against a formidable conservative rival, the liberal candidate Kim Dae-jung won the support of a lesser conservative candidate, Kim Jong

The World Health Organization said in a recent report that approximately 1 million people worldwide die by their own hand each year, corresponding to one death by suicide every 40 seconds. The report, released ahead of the World Suicide Prevention Day that fell on Monday, called for urgent action to tackle the problem, noting “suicide is largely preventable.”This call should be seriously heard by officials in Korea, which has the highest suicide rate among industrialized countries.According to s

The talks between South Korean and Russian leaders last week showed that the two countries have much room to enhance economic partnership and share critical interests in securing stability in Northeast Asia.During their meeting in Vladivostok on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, President Lee Myung-bak and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agreed to work together to resolve the North Korean nuclear standoff and accelerate collaboration on a gas pipeline project.

When Moody’s Investors Service elevated Korea to the “double-A” category two weeks ago by raising its sovereign credit rating by one notch to “Aa3” from “A1,” some analysts were not sure whether Korea really deserved it. As if to assure them that Korea fully deserved it, Fitch Ratings also made Korea a double-A country last week by upgrading its credit level to “AA-” from “A+.” Fitch’s “AA-” is equivalent to Moody’s “Aa3.” The successive upgrades can be seen as a strong vote of confidence in the

The splitting of the strife-torn United Progressive Party has begun as the party’s reform-minded faction expelled four proportional representatives Friday so that they could retain their parliamentary seats and join a soon-to-be created new progressive party.Under the law, a lawmaker elected through the proportional representation system loses his seat if he voluntarily quits his party. However, he can maintain his lawmaker status if the party expels him. The four expelled lawmakers all belong t