Moon Jae-in and Lee Hae-chan, presidential chief of staff and prime minister respectively during President Roh Moo-hyun’s term, will soon launch a new party with people who follow ideals of the late Roh. The projected “Citizens Unity Party” is being created only to make a party-to-party merger with the main opposition Democratic Party in just a few weeks to take on Park Geun-hye of the Grand National Party in the presidential election next year. DP’s chairman Sohn Hak-kyu and its former floor le

President Lee signs into law today the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement which was ratified a week ago. The regular session of the National Assembly stays idle as opposition parties are boycotting it in protest of the government party’s unilateral passage of the FTA bill, claiming it as “null and void.”If opposition lawmakers do not turn up in the Assembly hall by Friday, the deliberation of the national budget will pass the legal deadline again this year. This legislative abnormality has been rep

An opposition lawmaker detonates a tear gas bomb at the rostrum of the National Assembly’s main chamber. Mobs in a nighttime rally beat up the Jongno police chief responsible for the public order of the heart of the capital. These two incidents related to protests against the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement demonstrate the state of lawlessness in the Republic of Korea.The National Assembly makes law and police execute it. When some individuals use violence to deny these institutions’ authority w

Korea joined the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD in November 2009, becoming the first country since the organization’s birth to go from aid recipient to donor. Since then, Korea has sought to chart a new course for development cooperation based on its unique growth experience.As part of such efforts, Korea will host the High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, the world’s largest and highest-level conference on development aid. The three-day forum is to kick off tomorrow in Busan, wit

A senior judge at Incheon District Court has rekindled the debate over the nature of social networking sites ― are they a private or public space?The judge has caused a stir by posting a scathing message against President Lee Myung-bak and trade officials on his Facebook page after the ruling Grand National Party unilaterally passed a bill to ratify the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement on Nov. 22.His posting read: “I will never forget Nov. 22, 2011, the day when the president and trade officials,

It is often said that there is no such thing as a free ride. A passenger’s free ride is not free, because somebody else has to pay for it. A case in point involves senior citizens on the urban transit systems that are hemorrhaging money.Almost one in five passengers is given free travel. In its performance evaluation of the seven subway corporations in six cities, the Ministry of Public Administration and Security says that people aged 65 or older, who are exempt paying fares, account for 19.3 p

President Lee Myung-bak’s administration has made its final decision on how to finance unification with North Korea: to build a “unification account” with carryovers from a government fund and contributions from civilians and corporations. The plan is an ill-conceived retreat from President Lee’s earlier proposal to levy a new unification tax.No one can tell whether or not South and North Korea will be reunified during the next two decades, as the administration expects. And there is no knowing

Since June, the Prime Minister’s Office has sought to mediate a conflict between the prosecution and the police over criminal investigation rights. But the office could not come up with a compromise that was satisfactory to both sides. To resolve the long drawn-out dispute once and for all, it had to invoke its authority to force a compromise on them.On Wednesday, the PMO announced its final answer to the knotty problem in the form of a draft to revise the relevant presidential ordinance. The dr

Despite the government’s opposition, a plan to collect more taxes from the very wealthy to increase welfare spending is gaining traction among lawmakers of the ruling Grand National Party.In an about-face, GNP leader Hong Joon-pyo expressed on Tuesday his support for the scheme, which is being promoted by Rep. Chung Doo-un, head of the Youido Institute, the party’s think tank. Hong stressed the need to impose a higher income tax on the super-rich. Under the current tax system, he said, people ea

The administration promised to halve the fiscal deficit next year and balance the budget in 2013 when it sent its 2012 budget bill to the National Assembly on Oct. 2. But it looks extremely difficult for the administration to make good on its promise.As a consequence of its earlier decision to spend its way out of the 2008-09 global economic crisis, the administration targeted a budget deficit of 25 trillion won for this year and 12.3 trillion won for 2012. Then it committed itself to producing

It is regrettable that the parliamentary ratification of the free trade agreement with the United States on Tuesday was marred by violence, as is often the case with the passage of bitterly contested bills. But free trade is what Korea needs to pursue as a nation whose economic progress has been driven by exports.The trade bill deserved bipartisan support, given that it was initiated by the opposition when it was in power. The least that could be expected was for the bill to be put to a vote in

President Lee Myung-bak returned home Tuesday wrapping up his 2011 round of East Asian diplomacy conducted through a series of summit talks in mostly duplicating regional frameworks. After attending the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Honolulu, Hawaii, the president took part in three ASEAN-based summit sessions in Bali, Indonesia, and then held talks with Philippine President Benigno Aquino III in Manila on Monday.The president’s diplomatic circuit also included attendance at

Oh Kil-nam met Marzuki Darusman, the special U.N. envoy on North Korean human rights, in Seoul Monday to seek his help in getting the return of his wife and two daughters now in captivity in North Korea. Last week, the 69-year-old retired economist was in Washington, D.C., to appeal to a meeting of legislators from around the world in his desperate efforts to be reunited with his family, which he had taken to the North from Germany in 1985 and was left behind when he returned to Europe a year la

“Meok-twi” meaning “eat and run” in the soju table language is often used to describe foreign investors making hefty profits before closing their operations in Korea. The new coined word appears in newspaper headlines and Internet blogs these days pointing at the Lone Star Fund over its sale of the Korea Exchange Bank after a long court battle and tussle with financial regulators.Lone Star, a Texas-based private equity fund, landed in Korea along with some other foreign buyout capitals during th

While the political arena is touch-and-go over the Korea-U.S. FTA bill, an independent lawmaker is creating a farce by suing a comedian for defaming lawmakers in general in a popular TV program. Rep. Kang Yong-suk, 41, elected from Mapo, Seoul, has a convoluted reason for filing a criminal complaint with the Seoul prosecution against Choe Hyo-jong last week. The legal action came immediately after he was found guilty of “collective libel” by the Seoul Appellate Court for his remarks concerning w