Joe Biden has been elected to be the next president of the United States. Now he’ll have to get creative. When the president-elect takes office, he’ll confront the country’s two most acute challenges: an ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the economic damage it’s wrought. But he’ll have an uphill battle to enact the sort of bold policy agenda that many supporters were hoping for. Barring a January surprise in Georgia’s runoff election, Republicans are likely to r

One of the distinctive characteristics of Korean culture is “sinbaram.” In Korean, “sin” (pronounced “shin”) means God or spirits and “baram” means wind. When someone is excited, Koreans say, “sinbaram blows to him,” or “He is sinnada,” meaning “He is in high spirits” or “He is elated.” When sinbaram blows collectively, Koreans easily become ecstatic and accomplish astonishing things together. The w

In 2015, the year before Donald Trump became president of the US, a similar power shift occurred in Eastern Europe, albeit on a smaller scale. Like America soon after, Poland veered hard-right toward an anti-elitist populism built on the politics of grievance and resentment. What’s Poland like today? Bitterly divided. “This is war,” read some of the banners carried by hundreds of thousands of Poles, mainly women, who took to the streets in recent days. They’re marching

Among Democrats and many Republicans, there is a great temptation to dismiss US President Donald Trump’s administration as a bizarre aberration. Just as Republicans may try to blame the many transgressions of the past four years on Trump, hoping that their enabling role is quickly forgotten, Democrats might want to make a show of observing democratic norms, by graciously refraining from litigating the past. If so, upon the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, Trump and his administr

Joe Biden has survived a grueling election campaign and a cliff-hanger election. Next, he must fend off legal challenges from US President Donald Trump’s campaign. While he will most likely enter the White House on Jan. 20, 2021, he will wonder when he gets there whether the prize he sought for so long is a poisoned chalice. A President Biden will enter office confronting widespread economic distress, the seasonal escalation of a deadly pandemic, and a brutal international environment. T

As I write this, Thursday afternoon in Seoul, more than a full day after the 2020 United States presidential election came to a close, it remains unclear who is the winner. The Democrats, who had largely expected a “Blue Wave” and even a landslide victory, are expressing dismay while political pundits pronounce a nation deeply divided. When President Donald Trump won the election in 2016, despite having lost the popular vote to his rival Hillary Clinton, many were ready to see it

More than anything else, the face mask has come to symbolize the COVID-19 pandemic. It stirs strong emotions and deep prejudices. It has been at the center of public health debates and the turbulent US presidential election campaign. Since COVID-19 first began its spread from China, much has been written about differences in face mask use in the “East” and “West.” Examples from the “East” come primarily from South Korea, Japan and China, while the “West

Regardless of what happens in the vote counting, President Donald Trump has said he is going to the Supreme Court to ask for … something or other. When he does, he will have to overcome a hurdle of his own making: his claim to have “already” won the election, made during his rambling speech at 2:30 a.m. The justices -- including the crucial conservatives like Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett -- will not like the speech, which puts them in the position of being as

Former president Lee Myung-bak was back in the Dongbu Prison on the eastern outskirts of Seoul last Monday with the Supreme Court’s final sentence of 17 years. He was ordered to pay 18.78 billion won ($16.5 million) to the state in “fines” and “forfeiture,” though I don’t know exactly how they are different from each other. By the time he finishes his prison term in 2036, Lee will be 95 years old, if he is blessed with a life that long. He was arrested in Ma

It’s Election Day, and there are already lawsuits challenging votes and voting procedures. Some of them are invoking the Supreme Court’s 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore, which effectively handed that year’s presidential election to George W. Bush. We should expect a lot more to come. Bush v. Gore is widely misunderstood. It rested on exceedingly narrow grounds. As the court put it, the key issue was “whether the use of standardless manual recounts violates the Equal Protec

Defining the modern society as a risk society, risk management scholars insist one of the visible characteristics of the risk society is unidentified risk factors increasing while borders between countries disappear. The COVID-19 crisis is a disaster explicitly showing such features. Since the virus is invisible, it is difficult to contain it. Having started from somewhere, it has put the entire globe into a pandemic. It goes also the same to traditional disasters. The enormous amount of smo

After four years of President Donald Trump’s assault on the US constitution, it comes down to this. The courts have done what they could to limit the damage; the House of Representatives impeached him; and the Senate let him get away with it. Now all that remains is the final check provided by the constitution: a vote of the people. James Madison would have seen this coming. While the constitution was being ratified, he argued that its checks and balances would preserve the liberty that t

“Munyeodo,” which can be translated as “Portrait of a Shaman” or “The Shaman Painting,” is a short story by Kim Tong-ni that depicts the clash between traditional Korean shamanism and Western Christianity in premodern Korea. In the story, Kim superbly portrays the waning of traditional Korean culture in the face of the overwhelming influence of Western culture in early 20th century Korea. Kim’s story ends tragically, as the shaman mother kills her Christ

As Election Day nears, the possibility of a disputed presidential election is worrying a lot of people. You’ve heard the scenarios: An embittered Donald Trump loses but refuses to leave the Oval Office. An embittered Joe Biden loses but refuses to concede. Absentee ballots that arrive after Nov. 3 aren’t counted. Or they are counted. The angry left takes to the streets. The angry right takes to the streets. Lawyers take to the courts. Whatever goes wrong -- and chances are somethin

A second term for US President Donald Trump would complete the demolition of the post-war international economic system. Trump’s aggressive unilateralism, chaotic trade initiatives, loathing of multilateral cooperation, and disregard for the very idea of a global commons would overpower the resilience of the web of rules and institutions that underpin globalization. But would a victory for Joe Biden lead to a repair of the global system -- and, if so, of what kind? This is a much harder q