The Korea Herald

[Park Sang-seek] How to become a global citizen?

Oct 11, 2018

These days the term “Global Citizen” has become a popular catch-phrase in Korea, particularly among the so-called “internationalized people.” Why has this term become so popular or even “sexy”? The trend reminds me of a speech I delivered at the International Management Institute of the Federation of Korean Industries on April 6, 2000. The title was “How to Become a Global Person.” Strictly speaking, the term “global person” is more appropriate than the term “global citizen,” because global citi
[Anjani Trivedi] What global slowdown? Japan Inc. is roaring ahead

Oct 11, 2018

Japan Inc. is getting its groove back. An overlooked policy change could be a driver.In recent months, Japanese companies have been posting a wave of positive data. Machinery orders -- a key indicator of companies’ capital spending in the future -- rose 12.6 percent on the year in August to the highest level in a decade, data Wednesday showed, much faster than forecast. Several analysts had expected orders to fall.Meanwhile, corporate investment shot up last quarter to the fastest pace in over a
[Peter Singer] Choosing the best students

Oct 11, 2018

In different countries and for different reasons, university admissions policies are under attack. In a Boston courtroom on Oct. 15, a judge will begin hearing a lawsuit claiming that Harvard’s admission process discriminates against Asian-Americans. In the United Kingdom, Member of Parliament David Lammy described Oxford and Cambridge as “fiefdoms of entrenched privilege” because of the many students they admit from private schools. In Japan, Tokyo Medical University has apologized for manipula
[Kim Myong-sik] What China means to South Koreans today

Oct 10, 2018

“How do you think the current North Korean denuclearization deal will be wrapped up?” A Chinese-American friend of mine asked me when we sat in a Korean restaurant at Incheon Airport last week. A research fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, she was returning to California after a seminar with members of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. She was curious about what average South Korean intellectuals expect from China in the current campaign to end the North’s
[Eli Lake] Suspend China from Interpol

Oct 10, 2018

In the high-stakes drama over the detention of Interpol President Meng Hongwei, one thing stands out. It’s the plea the international police agency’s secretary-general, Juergen Stock, made to his captors in China.Over the weekend, Stock officially requested that Chinese police clarify the status of Meng, who had not been heard from since leaving Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon, France, to travel to Beijing nearly a week before. “Interpol’s General Secretariat looks forward to an official respons
[David Ignatius] Jamal Khashoggi chose to tell truth. It’s part of reason he’s beloved.

Oct 10, 2018

George Orwell titled a regular column he wrote for a British newspaper in the mid-1940s “As I Please.” Meaning that he would write exactly what he believed. My Saudi colleague Jamal Khashoggi has always had that same insistent passion for telling the truth about his country, no matter what.Khashoggi’s fate is unknown as I write, but his colleagues at the Washington Post and friends around the world fear that he was murdered after he visited the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.I have known
[Noah Smith] Trump needs plan to win trade war with China

Oct 10, 2018

President Donald Trump’s trade war is less bad than it was just a short time ago. After some tense negotiations, the North American Free Trade Agreement has been replaced with a new, very similar arrangement, meaning the disruption to trade -- and to US relations with Canada and Mexico -- will be contained. The agreement might even ease the damage from the president’s misguided steel and aluminum tariffs. Trump has also turned his attention away from Europe, avoiding the mistake of getting into
[Matthew F. Ferraro] ‘America First’ will likely fizzle fast

Oct 10, 2018

The “America First” policy President Donald Trump extolls “has won,” scholar Robert Kagan wrote in a recent op-ed, surmising that the administration’s preference for unilateralism, trade protectionism and immigration restrictions amount to “a new direction of American foreign policy.”But there is reason to believe victory will be fleeting. In time, this period may be recognized more as the high water mark of a short-lived turn toward quasi-isolationism than the beginning of an enduring trend.To
[Kim Ji-hyun] Looking forward, not back

Oct 10, 2018

A few years ago, I was going through a very rough patch personally. There was a person I couldn’t bear to forgive. It’s not like I didn’t have a hand in the matter, but due to a complicated web of reasons -- which tends to be the case in close relationships -- I couldn’t bring myself to move on.For months, I spent all my free time either strategizing revenge, or seething in silent rage. Then I happened to see this painting on my sister’s wall. It was an amateur piece of work, but the words writt
[Hal Brands] China hack shows weakness of Pence’s new hard-line

Oct 9, 2018

If you thought the US-China relationship couldn‘t get much worse, consider what happened on Thursday alone. First there was a bombshell report from Bloomberg Businessweek of a major Chinese espionage effort targeting dozens of US corporations and the Pentagon. Then came Vice President Mike Pence’s speech, which offered the sharpest, most comprehensive indictment of Beijing’s behavior by any American leader since the Cold War. Pence labeled the situation with China a “great-power competition.” Wh
[Tyler Cowen] Renaming NAFTA just might work

Oct 9, 2018

The Trump administration’s renegotiation of NAFTA is decidedly underwhelming, the product of a toxic process that made only a modest modification of the original deal. The administration’s renaming of NAFTA, however -- it will henceforth be known as the USMCA, for the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement -- could prove to be a stroke of political and marketing genius.　Names really matter, and politicians should give as much thought to them as corporations do. Amazon, Google and Apple, for instance, have b
[Robert Fouser] Looking into global rankings of Korean universities

Oct 9, 2018

The Korean media like international rankings and report on them frequently. During the boom years, Korea’s rankings in gross domestic product growth and per capita GDP made for big headlines, but things have changed now that growth has slowed.In recent years, the standing of Korea’s universities, particularly according to the London-based Times Higher Education World University Rankings, have attracted media attention. The media use the annual results to lament about the low standing of Korean u
[Kim Seong-kon] Dreaming of a country we want

Oct 9, 2018

It is undoubtedly a blessing for anyone to have a country of his own, a place to which he can always return after traveling abroad and where he can live happily and comfortably with his friends and relatives. Unfortunately, not everybody is blessed in this way. There are those who have lost their homeland and become refugees wandering without hope due to war or political turmoil. In that sense, Koreans are blessed, even though the Korean Peninsula is unfortunately divided by political ideologies
[David Cay Johnston] Allegations of years of tax dodges add to an awful truth -- the president as ‘financial vampire’

Oct 9, 2018

Americans were confronted Tuesday with a profound problem, one that challenges our commitment to accountable democratic government and justice. It is an awful truth that we must face now that the New York Times has published a richly documented, 14,000-word expose alleging decades of deeply corrupt Trump family finances.After 18 months of interviewing people who worked for or with the Trump family and scrutinizing more than 100,000 documents, the newspaper painted a portrait “unprecedented in sc
[Noah Smith] Let immigrants save America’s struggling cities

Oct 9, 2018

Immigrants who want to work in the US can be sponsored either by individuals -- usually family members -- or companies. Regional immigration is a proposed variation on this system, in which a region -- probably a city, but perhaps a county or state -- sponsors an immigrant for a green card or work visa. It’s an idea that’s been tossed around in policy circles as a way to revive “old industrial cities that have been hollowed out.”I used to be against regional immigration. The reason is that if re