Some old Koreans may remember the sight of a group of women from the provinces boarding an airplane bound for Okinawa at Gimpo International Airport to work at a farm in the southern Japanese island -- sometime in the late 1950s. It was an event for celebration because these young women represented the first South Korean migrant workers leaving their homes to earn foreign money on a government-arranged contract. A few years later, the military government that took power in a coup began extra e

As artificial intelligence is becoming more and more a part of our lives and has even begun to replace human beings in some lines of work, people are concerned about the relationship between humans and AI. Is AI just a convenient assistant to humanity or will it pose a potential threat? What could happen if AI outsmarts us and impersonates humans some day? What if, in the future, AI could take human form and live among us, indistinguishable from humans? Recently, the Washington Post carried an i

On Sept. 6, Basic Books is publishing “Slouching Towards Utopia,” my economic history of the “long twentieth century” from 1870 to 2010. It is past time, I argue, that we shift our understanding of where the hinge of global economic history lies. Some might put it in 1076, when the European Investiture Controversy cemented the idea that law should constrain even the most powerful, rather than being merely a tool at their disposal. Another big year is 1450, when the arriv

The world, we are often told, is now defined by great power competition, where states like China and Russia are either seeking to overthrow the “rules-based international order” or stealthily working within the system to change it to their benefit. The Biden administration’s foreign policy strategy is prefaced in large measure on the great power paradigm, and senior US officials like Secretary of State Antony Blinken frequently invoke the theme during their remarks. Part of mai

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, lies along the Dnieper River in southeastern Ukraine. After Russian forces brutally invaded Ukraine six months ago, they gained control of the nuclear facility early in the fighting. They based soldiers and heavy equipment there and have been using the plant as a defensive shield, lobbing shells from there and hoping Ukrainians would not risk hitting one of the six power units by counterattacking. But Russian officials say Ukraine has

When Mikhail Gorbachev walked into the room for our interview in Moscow, he brought with him the impressive aura of a man who was still a sitting president, a confident leader who was prepared to devote just a bit of his busy schedule to yet another ho-hum exercise of message deliverance, with yet another Western journalist. This one with a camera crew. I had hoped for something more journalistically promising -- a somewhat spontaneous (and more productive) give-and-take. After all, it had been

Twenty years ago this month, President George W. Bush stood before the United Nations and warned that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a “grave and gathering danger,” setting the stage for an invasion six months later based on false premises about super-destructive weapons and purported connections to the 9/11 attacks. The war ultimately killed 4,500 Americans and more than 100,000 Iraqis, and cost the United States $800 billion, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. I'

Vietnam reaffirmed its commitment to international peace, stability and cooperation with Korea celebrating National Day and the 30th anniversary of Vietnam-Korea diplomatic relations on Friday at the Lotte Hotel in Seoul. Vietnam’s Independence Day, which falls on Friday, commemorates Vietnam’s declaration of independence from France and reading of the declarations of independence of Vietnam by Vietnam’s first President Ho Chi Minh at Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi in 1945. Vietnam wa

Despite skepticism and foreseeable hurdles, President Yoon Suk-yeol’s “audacious initiative” to North Korea deserves attention. But it does so only if the Yoon administration has a workable roadmap to beat the odds stacked by domestic and international concerns. Yoon has embarked on a familiar economic path. In his Liberation Day speech on Aug. 15, he unveiled a slew of aid projects in exchange for nuclear disarmament in the North. He offered food, assistance for power generati

Korean people commonly say that the image of the Korean Peninsula on a map seems to resemble a rabbit. The comparison is telling: Since a rabbit is a docile animal constantly threatened by ferocious predators, it matches the geopolitical situation of Korea, surrounded by belligerent neighboring countries. On the other hand, some optimists have come up with an opposite theory, that the Korean Peninsula resembles not a rabbit, but a crouching tiger that is ready to jump and fight back. Meanwhi

We have been here before -- catastrophe, carnage, collapse, climate calamities, war. This hottest summer of discontent is prelude to a freezing winter of gas shortage, inflation and more conflicts. As Europe, China and parts of America are facing heat waves and drought, a global food calamity is looming. Without any exit strategy on the Ukraine war, we face a prolonged period of stalemate, devastation and less willingness to negotiate even cease-fires. The rising global uncertainties mean th

Australia continues to be a source of bemused fascination to students of Western parliamentary democracy. After a pantomime period not so long ago in which the country changed its leader five times in five years, it has now been revealed that our most recently defeated prime minister, Scott Morrison, contrived over the past two years effectively to appoint himself minister to no fewer than five other major government departments. Moreover, Morrison did so without -- except in one case -- the kno

Every time Vladimir Putin’s obliging generals dispatch a soldier to the front lines of their “special military operation” in Ukraine, they give him a gift from their supreme commander. It is a lengthy and very creative essay rewriting the history of their homeland and the country they’ll be invading. It is titled: “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” And it ends with the proud author, Vladimir Putin, leaving them with four words to inspire th

This week marks the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between South Korea and China. Diplomatic recognition grew out of South Korea’s push to improve relations with former Eastern Bloc nations in the run-up to the Seoul Summer Olympics in 1988. In the year following the Olympics, communist forces began to collapse in much of Eastern Europe, and South Korea established diplomatic relations with countries there in quick succession. In September 1990, South Korea established diplomati

The results of the vote over a constitutional amendment that could have removed the right to abortion in Kansas gave rise to two common reactions: surprise (that a red state would vote in favor of abortion rights) and hope (that the process could be replicable elsewhere). Neither response, though, tells the full story. The real lesson in Kansas is that direct democracy -- can be a bulwark against extreme positions. But it’s being eroded in many states. The outcome in Kansas shouldn&rsq