Recently, I came across two intriguing articles that I read with great enthusiasm. One was “On My 100th Birthday, Reflections on Archie Bunker and Donald Trump” by Norman Lear and the other was “Pacifism is the wrong response to the war in Ukraine” by Slavoj Zizek. Both articles were penetrating and insightful, tackling vital issues regarding the crisis of democracy and world peace we are now facing. In a column that recently appeared in the New York Times, Norman Lear

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fingerprints appear to be all over the recent political developments that culminated in Mario Draghi’s resignation as Italy’s prime minister. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, Draghi responded decisively by supporting strong sanctions against Russia and by offering political, financial and military support to Ukraine. But both acts required overcoming resistance from populist parties within his own national-unity

With so much attention fixed on soaring prices for gasoline and groceries, one can almost overlook the fact that we’re also enduring an affordable housing crisis. The question is, why? Spanning the pandemic era from February 2020 through May 2022, home prices soared 43.5 percent. Over the past 12 months, home prices are up 19.7 percent, while residential property prices in the United States, adjusted for inflation, are now 6.7 percent above the prior all-time record levels of the 2006 bu

I heard great news this year in June: Lim Yun-chan got the first prize in the Van Cliburn Piano International Competition. He was the youngest winner since the competition was first established in 1962. The news was sensational in the field of classical music. When the news came out, I saw many people around the world start to get interested in classical music and Korean musicians. Usually, when a person becomes a winner in major competitions, he/she gets famous quickly and tons of scheduled pe

When it comes to the United States Congress, nothing is ever over until it’s over. But as of late July, it looks as though two major pieces of legislation will soon be on President Joe Biden’s desk, awaiting his signature. The first is the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) Act, which will provide tens of billions of dollars to support domestic semiconductor production and research. The second is the Inflation Reduction Act, a slimmed-down version of the fa

Four individuals weigh heavily on my mind these days. One survived a monthlong, self-tormenting sit-in to change the excruciating conditions of subcontract labor in shipbuilding; the other three lost their lives in the gray zone of confrontation -– and occasional, brittle mood of peace –- between the democratic South Korea and the authoritarian North Korea. Yoo Choi-an, a 41-year-old welder, on June 22, crumpled himself into a small steel structure in the main dock of Daewoo Shipbu

It was four in the afternoon on March 10, 1991, when the first planned explosion of Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons went off at the US weapons depot in Khamisiyah, Iraq, and the first gray-white smoke cloud that would come to be called the Plume wafted skyward and drifted over the troops. There would be many blasts that day. Bill Florey, a young and proud-to-serve E4 specialist, had just parked his truck after a day’s work. Francesca Yabraian, who would become his friend and woul

The defeat of Donald Trump to Joseph Biden in the last US presidential election brought celebration and relief for half of the American people, but frustration and fury for the other half. At that time, America was sharply divided by two groups that were constantly blaming each other. For example, the Democrats blamed Trump for the division of America, but the Republicans asserted that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were responsible. Perhaps both sides had a point. During the Clinton era, campa

It never rains but it pours. Every day this summer we are bombarded by bad news -- raging forest fires, the continuing Ukraine war, random shootings in different cities, a mutating omicron, monkeypox and rising debt distress all over. The good news for some is that the United States dollar is stronger than ever. Or is that bad news for others? In the Bali G-20 Financial Ministers and Central Bank meeting held last week, there was concern that currency volatility could trigger more instability

During my recent visit to South Korea, people often asked me about the popularity of K-pop overseas. Answering the question was always a bit of challenge because I’m not a fan of K-pop and don’t follow it closely. I have a sense of its popularity in the US and, to a lesser extent, Japan, but don’t know much about the rest of the world. I start the answer with these limitations, partly in the hope that the conversation will soon move in another direction, which is usually does.

Watching the Jan. 6 committee hearings, one could be forgiven for believing we’re living in the heyday of conspiracy theories, between the Holocaust denialism of the Oath Keepers, the loony pedophilia fears of the QAnoners and the “Stop the Steal” ravings of Sidney Powell, Rudolph W. Giuliani and former President Donald Trump himself. But don’t be too sure. Conspiracy theories have a long history. They date back to the Emperor Nero and the great fire of Rome, for instanc

  In the 2 1/2 months since the inauguration of the Yoon Suk-yeol administration in Seoul, relations between the former and present ruling powers of South Korea have turned from bad to worse, despite the new president’s assurance of “mutual cooperation.” The National Assembly plenary and committee sessions, social media postings and YouTube interviews produce extreme words of criticism from the opposing ranks concerning most government policy announcements, while the new

Last week, a bipartisan group of 16 US senators agreed on a long-awaited proposal to fix the Electoral Count Act, the ramshackle 1887 law that then-President Donald Trump used to try to overturn the 2020 election. Trump claimed the law, which sets the rules under which Congress counts electoral votes, allowed then-Vice President Mike Pence to block votes from states that Joe Biden won. Pence refused, which is why the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, chanted “Hang Mike Pence.&

Every day, we use bowls. We fill bowls with something and then empty them later. A bowl‘s identity varies, depending on what it contains. For example, if there is nothing in it, it becomes an empty bowl. If it contains jewelry, it is a jewelry bowl. If it has junk food in it, we call it a junk food bowl. Bowls come in different sizes. There are big bowls and small bowls. When we Koreans say, “He is a big bowl,” it means he is magnanimous and has the capacity of a great man. W

It is now clear that the talks aimed at reviving the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action -- commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal -- are going nowhere. After eight rounds of indirect talks, the Biden administration and the government of Iran’s hard-line president, Ebrahim Raisi, have failed to reinstate the deal that the Trump administration renounced in 2018. Iran refuses to return to the Iran nuclear deal unless it receives an ironclad guarantee that it won’t be repealed aga