The Korea Herald

Why Republicans misread Eric Cantor’s primary loss

Jun 25, 2014

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s loss to David Brat in the Virginia Republican primary has produced a national “availability cascade.” This is a process of belief formation through which a single event becomes widely known, is taken to reveal some broader pattern or truth, and produces a large-scale change in people’s judgments about probability. Like many availability cascades, this one may well lead to big mistakes. For mainstream politicians in the Republican Party, the post-Cantor cascade
[Kim Myong-sik] A farewell to ex-nominee for prime minister

Jun 25, 2014

Moon Chang-keuk’s withdrawal of his nomination for prime minister presented President Park with the Sisyphean task of searching for another person to fill the second-highest office in the administration. And it added gloom to a nation shaken by a frontline soldier’s deadly shooting rampage and the disappointing performance of the national soccer squad in Brazil. Eleven passengers of the sunken ferry Sewol remain missing 70 days after the tragedy in the South Sea. Yoo Byeong-eun, the owner of the
The limits of current climate negotiations

Jun 25, 2014

NEW YORK ― If the world is to solve the climate-change crisis, we will need a new approach. Currently, the major powers view climate change as a negotiation over who will reduce their CO2 emissions (mainly from the use of coal, oil, and gas). Each agrees to small “contributions” of emission reduction, trying to nudge the other countries to do more. The United States, for example, will “concede” a little bit of CO2 reduction if China will do the same.For two decades, we have been trapped in this
[Lee Jae-min] A red card from Brussels?

Jun 24, 2014

As the Europeans fumble for a red card, Korea is mounting all-out efforts to avoid it. All government agencies are being mobilized to talk the EU out of issuing a red card. The issue at hand is IUU (Illegal, Unreported or Unregulated) fishing, and the EU still seems skeptical of Korea’s plan to eradicate it. A yellow card was already handed to Korea in November last year when Brussels included Seoul on its preliminary list of IUU fishing countries along with Ghana and Curacao, a Dutch island in
Living in the Republic of Samsung

Jun 24, 2014

The oft-smiling Lee Jay-yong is both South Korea’s biggest hope and its biggest problem.The 46-year-old heir apparent to lead Samsung Electronics Co. has been the object of media obsession since his 72-year-old father disappeared into a hospital. Lee Kun-hee, Samsung’s chairman and Korea’s richest man, had emergency surgery in May after suffering a heart attack. The nation is already moving on to Lee the younger, with analysts and investors praying he’ll steer the family business well.What’s unf
CIA’s back-channel talks with ‘the bad guys’

Jun 24, 2014

When reports surfaced in Washington this month that the Obama administration has been holding secret back-channel talks with Hamas over the last six months, the denials came swiftly. “These assertions are completely untrue,” proclaimed State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf. “As you all know, Hamas is a designated foreign terrorist organization. ... Per long-standing U.S. policy, we do not have any contact with Hamas.”Let’s hope that’s not true. The CIA has always dealt with bad guys, and it’s
[Kim Seong-kon] Why we need good translators

Jun 24, 2014

Nonnative speakers of English often find it difficult to fully understand some English expressions. Sometimes, they fail to catch subtle nuances, and at other times they are unable to grasp the underlying meaning. For example, the English expression “I’ll see what I can do” almost always means “yes,” whereas “Let me think about it” is most likely to mean “no.” Another colloquial expression, “It’s OK,” often causes confusion, for it can mean “No thanks” or “I like it” depending on the situation.
Globalization of Korean fine art market

Jun 24, 2014

The international art market reached $64.6 billion in total sales of art and antiques in 2013, close to its highest ever recorded total, and advanced 8 percent year-on-year according to the Art Market Report 2014 published by the European Fine Art Foundation. But the Korean fine art market reached just 440.5 billion won ($432 million) in total sales in 2012, according to the Survey on the Art Market 2012 published by the Korea Arts Management Service. The figure represents only 0.63 percent of t
Give Norway’s beggars a break

Jun 24, 2014

Norway, one of the world’s richest nations, is about to ban begging in a move some see as a sign of rising anti-immigrant sentiment. Whatever the motivation, it’s the work of misguided people who want to hide what they can’t understand.A recent government-commissioned report says there are between 500 and 1,000 foreign beggars on the streets of Oslo. The city estimates it will spend 5 million kronor ($824,000) this year just cleaning up after them. Locals believe most of them are Roma, a group c
[Pankaj Mishra] Remapping of Middle East

Jun 23, 2014

The swift victories of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant in Iraq bring to mind the prescient words of John Buchan in his famous 1916 spy novel “Greenmantle”: “There is a dry wind blowing through the East, and the parched grasses wait the spark.”Buchan was writing about the wildfire of revolt and secession running across the old Ottoman Empire, which had for centuries enjoyed suzerainty over much of the Middle East. Propped up through the late 19th century by Britain and France, the sick m
Why Obama must send military advisers to Iraq

Jun 23, 2014

Most days an announcement that the U.S. will send up to 300 military advisers to noncombat duty in some far-off land wouldn’t get much media mention or public attention. Small deployments happen with some frequency, and many Americans never get past the headline. But these troops are going to Iraq ― dispatched by a president who has boasted of ending a long war in that nation.So Thursday’s news from President Barack Obama revived arthritic reflexes:Dovish isolationists fear that resuming U.S. mi
[Bernard Parent] Sewol disaster ― engineering education problem

Jun 23, 2014

The collapse of the Gyeongju auditorium in February followed by the capsizing of the Sewol ferry in April have resulted in hundreds of high school and university students losing their lives unnecessarily at a very early age. The cause of these sad events is being attributed mostly to the greediness of entrepreneurs who sacrifice public safety in favor of monetary gains as well as, in the case of the Sewol ferry, to the incorrect behavior of the crew members. However, I would argue that, ultimate
Airbnb is a risky neighbor

Jun 23, 2014

What’s not to like about the sharing economy? You take assets lying fallow (cars, homes, spare moments) and rent them out on a short-term basis to people in need. Essentially, we’re ramping up the productivity of a whole lot of capital.One group of critics is obvious: the folks who already make a living driving cars and renting rooms. Sharing cuts into their revenue, and over the last few years, they’ve been moving aggressively to stop it ― first by getting their thoroughly captured regulators t
Can Fed Chair Yellen float above politics?

Jun 23, 2014

Imagine that the Federal Reserve’s policy makers were as divided on monetary policy as members of Congress are on almost everything. Imagine that this lack of consensus also typically blocked action. The Fed’s post-crash moves on interest rates and its adventurous use of unorthodox measures such as quantitative easing simply couldn’t have happened.Not everybody agrees with me that this would have been a terrible thing. (To get a flavor of the alternative, skeptics could take a look at the euro z
[Robert Reich] Right-wing lies about poverty

Jun 22, 2014

Rather than confront poverty by extending jobless benefits to the long-term unemployed, endorsing a higher minimum wage or supporting jobs programs, conservative Republicans are taking a different tack.They’re peddling three big lies about poverty. To wit:Lie No. 1: Economic growth reduces poverty.“The best anti-poverty program,” wrote Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, in the Wall Street Journal, “is economic growth.”Wrong. Since the late 1970s, the economy has grown 147 percent pe