The Korea Herald

Gun control after Newtown

Dec 19, 2012

NEW YORK ― The brutal murder of 20 children and seven adults in Newtown, Connecticut, shakes us to the core as individuals and requires a response as citizens. The United States seems to reel from one mass gun killing to another ― roughly one a month this year alone. Easy access to guns in the U.S. leads to horrific murder rates relative to other highly educated and wealthy societies. America needs to find a better way.Other countries have done so. Between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s, Austra
No flying cars, but the future is bright

Dec 19, 2012

It has been 40 years since the last astronauts left the moon. That anniversary, which passed last week, has put some prominent technologists in a funk. “You promised me Mars colonies. Instead, I got Facebook,” reads the cover of the current issue of MIT Technology Review. In an essay titled “Why We Can’t Solve Big Problems,” editor Jason Pontin considers “why there are no disruptive innovations” today. Technology Review’s headline, running below the face of Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, now 82,
Japan’s Abe could join reformers’ pantheon

Dec 19, 2012

Since November 1982, Japan has had 18 prime ministers, with an average stay in office of 658 days. Arguably, only two left the job smiling: Yasuhiro Nakasone and Junichiro Koizumi, both strong reformers with clear agendas who were, not coincidentally, among Japan’s longest-serving chief executives. Let’s hope that lesson isn’t lost on Shinzo Abe, Japan’s next prime minister, when he takes office Dec. 26. With his landslide victory, Abe has a political opening to push reforms that could lift Japa
[Shashi Tharoor] Educating a girl to benefit a whole community

Dec 19, 2012

NEW DELHI ― One of the more difficult questions I found myself being asked when I was a United Nations under-secretary-general, especially when addressing a general audience, was: “What is the single most important thing that can be done to improve the world?”It’s the kind of question that tends to bring out the bureaucrat in even the most direct of communicators, as one feels obliged to explain the complexity of the challenges confronting humanity: how no imperative can be singled out over othe
[Daniel Fiedler] Why should Koreans vote?

Dec 18, 2012

Today the majority of South Koreans will go to the polls to elect their next president. However, as in all modern democracies, not all of the eligible voters will cast a ballot today. In South Korea the voter participation rate has been on a steady downward track since the founding of the Sixth Republic in 1987. This downward track has occurred in both presidential and parliamentary elections resulting in an over 20 percent drop in voter participation. In the last presidential election a little
If passed, stricter gun laws could be effective

Dec 18, 2012

As the nation reels from the horror of Friday’s shootings in a Connecticut elementary school, where a gunman so numb to human sensibility that he could casually snuff out the lives of wide-eyed innocents slaughtered 20 children and six adults, politicians are crafting news releases. Among them are New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and California’s Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, who are both calling for stricter gun-control laws.This will be denounced, of course, as opportunism by many conservativ
Go nuclear on the filibuster

Dec 18, 2012

Nothing exposes partisan hypocrisy quite like the filibuster, that irksome parliamentary rule that allows a minority of U.S. senators to block legislation, judicial appointments and other business by requiring a 60-vote majority to proceed to a vote. Almost invariably, the party in power considers the filibuster to be an enemy of progress that must be squashed, while the minority fights to preserve it at all cost. That the same players often find themselves arguing from opposite sides depending
[Meghan Daum] Earhart’s letter and a gayer approach to marriage

Dec 18, 2012

Amelia Earhart’s “prenuptial agreement” with her husband, George Putnam, whom she married in 1931 when she was 32, drew a flurry of attention last week. Los Angeles writer Amanda Hess posted the letter on her Tumblr page after running across it in the online library of Purdue University, which houses Earhart’s papers.“On our life together I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any midaevil [sic] code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly,” Earhart wro
[Kim Seong-kon] What smartphones cannot do

Dec 18, 2012

Recently, I was invited by a university to give a talk on the role of Koreans in a globalizing world. When I entered the auditorium filled with approximately 400 undergraduate students, I expected to face 800 twinkling eyes, full of curiosity and enthusiasm. Instead, I was met with 400 totally uninterested students, all holding on to a smartphone as if it was a sacred chalice or the Excalibur. I noticed most of them were busily transmitting text messages, tweeting and surfing the Internet. Few p
Liberal case against right-to-work laws

Dec 18, 2012

The enactment of a so-called right- to-work law by the state of Michigan last week is indeed, as the news media have described it, a blow against the union movement. Michigan, of all places. But it is also a blow against fairness and common sense. “Right to work” sounds like a law guaranteeing you a job, or at least protecting your job once you’ve got it. A lot of the propaganda by the Chamber of Commerce and similar business groups is about so-called forced unionism. In fact, it’s almost the op
[David Ignatius] The case for John Kerry

Dec 17, 2012

WASHINGTON ― What kind of secretary of state would Sen. John Kerry make? That’s the question of the moment after U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s surprise decision Thursday to withdraw her name from consideration, making Kerry the likely nominee. Kerry is a familiar figure to America and the world. He has been a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for nearly three decades. This very familiarity can seem something of a liability: the lean face, the patrician bearing, the status as a pres
Change is possible with North Korea

Dec 17, 2012

North Korea’s success in putting a satellite in orbit, after four previous unsuccessful attempts, will satisfy the hardliners in Pyongyang who care only about their privileged status and not about the pain and suffering additional sanctions will impose on the people of North Korea.The three-stage missile that put this satellite in orbit is a potential threat to the region and the United States. The launch is an act of defiance; an act meant to intimidate the international community. It’s a messa
Liberal Democratic Party back in the saddle again

Dec 17, 2012

The Liberal Democratic Party, which was badly defeated in the Lower House election in August 2009 and had to give up power to the Democratic Party of Japan after ruling the nation almost without interruption since 1955, made a comeback in Sunday’s general election. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the current LDP chief, will regain the premiership. A Kyodo News exit poll showed that the LDP and its ally Komeito may gain two-thirds of the Lower House seats ― enough seats to overturn decisions by
Ferraris outnumber plans to clean up Asia’s corruption

Dec 17, 2012

Transparency International’s latest corruption report is sober reading for Asian leaders committed to ending dirty dealings in the world’s fastest-growing region. Dec. 9 was International Anti-Corruption Day, and Asia’s report card was a big disappointment. China, Japan and South Korea, three of Asia’s four biggest economies, all lost ground. So did such emerging-market darlings as Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Even Hong Kong, routinely celebrated as a model of economic freedom, slid
[Zaki Laidi] Is U.S. withdrawing from the Middle East?

Dec 17, 2012

PARIS ― For some time now, a certain strategic vision has been gaining traction: the United States is becoming energy-independent, paving the way for its political retreat from the Middle East and justifying its strategic “pivot” toward Asia. This view seems intuitively correct, but is it?Energy-hungry America has long depended on the global market to meet domestic demand. In 2005, the U.S. imported 60 percent of the energy that it consumed. Since then, however, the share of imports has decrease