The Grand National Party has been urged to dissolve itself for the creation of a new party. The demand is coming not from outside but from members of the ruling party ― a party that is in disarray though it has the National Assembly under its control.Creative dissolution may be one of the most viable choices open to the party, which, as one leading member puts it, is plummeting into a bottomless pit. He says “one bottom after another is collapsing” under the feet of the ruling party, which is ca

External trade since the outset of this year recorded $1 trillion on a customs-clearance basis around 3:30 p.m. on Monday ― no small achievement for Korea, which was the first former colony to reach the milestone. Moreover, no more than eight countries had broken through the $1 trillion mark ― the United States, Germany, Japan, China, France, Britain, the Netherlands and Italy.It is expanding trade, or more accurately growth in exports, that has made it possible for Korea to write a rags-to-rich

President Lee Myung-bak ordered yet another reorganization of the Blue House staff this week. His aides explained the measure was focused on improving “communication” between the core of administration and various sectors of society. It is dismaying that Lee, after four years in office, still feels insufficient public communication is the biggest weakness in his governance.Changes included installing new secretaries in charge of publicity of state policies and communication with the people and a

A steep rise in the sale of lottery tickets is alerting government overseers. The National Gaming Control Commission under the Prime Minister’s Office is reported to be considering issuing a “stoppage order” for the online Lotto as the total lottery sales this year have nearly hit the year’s ceiling of 2.8 trillion won. From Jan. 1 to Nov. 30, Lotto and other ticket sales totaled 2,794.8 billion won. As sales in December will easily exceed 300 billion won, the year’s total will pass the authorit

Out of curiosity, television viewers are channel surfing between the four “general programming” pay-TV channels that went on air simultaneously last week. All of a sudden, they now have seven channels to choose from instead of three for prime time news as well as dramas and documentaries. It is fun, if a little cumbersome, but many viewers also feel uncomfortable hearing the political noise concerning this so-called “big bang” in the media industry.Opposition lawmakers declined invitation to a j

This week, we have news reports revealing two significant statistics. One has it that Korea is to achieve $1 trillion in annual two-way trade volume this week. The other is not so encouraging: the nation’s total household debt is expected to hit 1,000 trillion won by 2013 ― roughly equivalent to $1 trillion.These two figures are of course not directly related to each other in economics. Yet, they are related to the general perception among Koreans regarding how far they have come through the pas

An aide to a lawmaker of the ruling party is suspected of being behind cyber attacks that crashed the computer systems of the National Election Commission and the liberal candidate for Seoul mayor on the day of the Oct. 26 by-election. The lawmaker, who denies involvement, says he would resign from his post if proven otherwise.As he claims, Rep. Choi Koo-sik of the ruling Grand National Party may not be involved in the distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attacks, which shut down the websites

Burma is one of the few countries to which Pyongyang exports its arms and military technology. But the Southeast Asian country is most likely to downgrade its military ties with North Korea, though perhaps not sever them outright, to improve relations with the United States. During her visit to the Southeast Asian nation last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reportedly called on the Burmese leaders to discontinue military cooperation with North Korea, which is suspected of pr

Many important bills are gathering dust at the National Assembly as rival parties are still locked in a stand-off following the unilateral passage by the ruling Grand National Party of the Korea-U.S. free trade bill on Nov. 22. The emissions trade bill submitted by the government in April is one of them.The legislation aims to launch a greenhouse gas emissions trading system in 2015 to stimulate corporate efforts for emissions reduction. In 2009, the Korean government voluntarily declared it wou

In his Aug. 15 Liberation Day speech, President Lee Myung-bak pledged to achieve a balanced budget during his term, which ends in February 2013. Following Lee’s pledge, officials of the Ministry of Strategy and Finance moved forward the target year for budget balance to 2013 from 2014.In drawing up the 2012 budget bill, they put priority on strengthening fiscal health. The bill proposes 5.5 percent growth in spending, a modest increase compared with the expected 9.5 percent growth in revenue.Und

Judges, as public officeholders, are constitutionally required to remain politically neutral. They are not allowed to take sides. The ethics committee of the Supreme Court drove this point home when it called on judges to exercise prudence on the use of the social networking services on Tuesday.The committee’s call for caution followed a political comment that a judge recently posted on Facebook. But the committee chose not to take any disciplinary action against the judge when it was called int

The ruling Grand National Party acknowledges that it is in crisis. Yet, it shows few signs of trying hard to pull itself out of the quandary. No wonder supporters are turning their backs on the party.The lethargy manifested itself when the party recently summoned its lawmakers to a conference on improving its image among the electorate ahead of the next parliamentary elections in April. The conference, rather than serving as a forum on proposed reforms, ended in a dispute over who would hold swa

The government and the ruling Grand National Party are promoting a plan to convert some 30 percent of nonregular workers in the public sector into indefinite-term employees as part of their efforts to curb the continued growth of irregular workforce.According to Statistics Korea, the number of irregular workers reached 5.99 million as of August, accounting for 34.2 percent of the nation’s 17.5 million paid workers. The figure represented a 5.4 percent increase or 309,000 workers from a year ago.

The government has found an easy way to curb inflation ― to change the way of calculating the consumer price index.Statistics Korea said Tuesday that it had updated the composition and weights of the goods and services used to produce the CPI, a job it does once every five years to ensure that the key measure of inflation reflects price trends more accurately.The change magically brought down the nation’s CPI rise in the first 10 months of the year by 0.4 percentage points. Before the revision,

A resigning prosecutor left a note of criticism of the prosecution, assessing it to be in “total disarray.” Paek Hye-sun at Daegu District Prosecutors’ Office asked her former colleagues whether they had no doubt about their political neutrality, fairness in investigation, and correctness in their judgment and standards on ever-changing social situations. But she apparently missed one thing in her reflection: the pervasive signs of corruption in the organization.Lee Kuk-chul, CEO of a mid-size s