The Korea Herald

[Naomi Wolf] A death in Galway

Dec 5, 2012

NEW YORK ― The case of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist from India who had moved, with her husband, to Ireland, continues to reverberate around the world. Halappanavar, an expectant mother, died after her doctors, citing Ireland’s legal prohibition of abortion, refused to remove her 17-week-old fetus, despite allegedly acknowledging that the fetus was not viable and placing Halappanavar in an intensive-care unit as her condition deteriorated.Indian activists are outraged. “While there
‘Coalition of the willing’ rising against China

Dec 5, 2012

By disregarding its passport, China has sparked a torrent of diplomatic protests. The new passport carries a map that shows China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and on its border with India.China did not need to occupy the disputed territories through invasion by the People’s Liberation Army. It did not have to fire a shot to validate its claims based solely on a map, making the whole affair a paper coup.According to Bloomberg, three separate pages in the passport include China’s “n
[Park Sang-seek] A conflict between individualism and collectivism

Dec 5, 2012

In the recent American presidential election, the subject of grand debate was individualism versus community: a shift of emphasis from liberty to fraternity. In the ongoing presidential election in South Korea, it is the same. Why? The two are quite different kinds of countries: America is a mature Western democratic and capitalist country and South Korea an emergent Eastern democratic and capitalist country, but they suffer from the same problem ― a conflict between individualism and collectivi
[Daniel Fiedler] Ending rule by law in Korea

Dec 4, 2012

The recent news covering the misconduct and subsequent upheaval among South Korean prosecutors are a stark reminder of an unfortunate fact of life for many in South Korea; the inequity that pervades the South Korean system of justice. This inequity arises from both cultural and bureaucratic factors but in the end owes its existence primarily to the lack of indigenous roots for the international concept of the rule of law. The South Korean legal tradition, like the Chinese, is based on rule by la
China needs more investors like Carson Block

Dec 4, 2012

Nothing ruins a chief executive officer’s year faster than hearing the name Carson Block. Allen Chan can attest to that. In April, he resigned from Sino-Forest Corp., the Chinese forestry company he co-founded two decades ago, after being targeted by Block’s Muddy Waters LLC. The short-selling firm shot to fame by correctly betting on declines in stocks of Chinese companies listed in North America, much in the same way that David Einhorn rose to prominence for being right on Lehman Brothers Hold
Every mistress needs someone to play sugar daddy

Dec 4, 2012

I know we’re just settling in with our popcorn for the scene where the lawyers and PR handlers transform disgrace into opportunity for the players in the David Petraeus story. Already Petraeus is on the contrition circuit, saying last week he “screwed up royally.” Why next thing you know, he will be nominated to replace Hillary Clinton at the State Department. But before we move on to “Act II: The Image Rehab,” could we clear up this business about how women get depicted when the stuff hits the
[Kim Seong-kon] What we can learn from our school textbooks

Dec 4, 2012

When I entered elementary school right after the Korean War, there were not so many books for us to read in South Korea. The postwar landscape was bleak and barren, and few sources of knowledge and entertainment were available except for some pulp magazines, vacuum tube radios and movies. When I was given my textbooks on the first day of school, therefore, I was overjoyed and filled with anticipation. During those days, our textbooks were not only a valuable means of information and knowledge, b
Bond’s ‘Skyfall’ could be our very real nightmare

Dec 4, 2012

Anyone who has seen the latest James Bond film, “Skyfall,” would be hard-pressed to find any traditional espionage tradecraft. More actual spying would have meant less of Daniel Craig running around in a too-tight suit chasing bad guys. When the villain ― in this case a cyberterrorist played masterfully by Javier Bardem ― is able to turn around and say to Bond, “Why are you doing all this running around and wasting your energy?”, anyone who knows anything about real spying is tempted to yell at
Keep satellites ready for bad weather

Dec 3, 2012

Thanks to an unbroken stream of atmospheric and oceanic measurements beamed to Earth from well-positioned satellites, meteorologists were able to predict Hurricane Sandy’s monstrous power and strange path (tropical storms typically turn right, not left) long before it hit the New Jersey coast. It’s the kind of precision we might assume can only get better, as scientists fine-tune their instruments and forecast models. Instead, in a few years, weather predictions in the U.S. are in danger of beco
[J. Bradford DeLong] America’s political recession

Dec 3, 2012

BERKELEY ― The odds are now about 36 percent that the United States will be in a recession next year. The reason is entirely political: partisan polarization has reached levels never before seen, threatening to send the U.S. economy tumbling over the “fiscal cliff” ― the automatic tax increases and spending cuts that will take effect at the beginning of 2013 unless Democrats and Republicans agree otherwise.More than a century ago, during the first Gilded Age, American politics was sharply polari
Nobel prize, Psy and Confucian orthodoxy

Dec 3, 2012

Four years ago, as a high school student, I had a chance to visit POSTECH. I clearly recall one monolithic structure standing firm in the middle of the campus. It was a gray pedestal, lacking a statue to support. Someone said that it was prepared for the first Korean scientist to win a Nobel Prize in science. I hoped it would not be long until a statue was erected. However, nominees for the 2012 Nobel Prize were announced last October, and it looks like the pedestal will remain empty for a while
Rising plutocracy threatens democracy in the United States

Dec 3, 2012

LOS ANGELES ― There is a good chance Rafael Cebrian is going to make it. The handsome young Spaniard is already a rock star and accomplished actor back home. Now he’s moved to Los Angeles, where his generous talent is already being recognized in Hollywood. His native tongue is even a plus in the ever burgeoning Spanish language market ― in the U.S. and globally.Like so many before him, Cebrian says, “In the U.S. there’s hope, and the feeling that you can achieve whatever you want.” Indeed, this
[Joel Brinkley] Tyrants fear social media most

Dec 3, 2012

Most of the world’s dictators share a common fear, and it’s not of the United States, NATO, the United Nations or any outside entity. No, the force that most threatens them is social media.Originally designed as enhanced online chat forums for young Americans, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and the rest have spread around the world and are now being used as cudgels against authoritarian leaders in places like Vietnam, Russia, Belarus and Bahrain. In those states and so many others, the leaders are att
[Robert Reich] The plight of U.S. retail workers

Dec 2, 2012

We’re officially into Christmas buying season ― when American consumers determine the fate of American retailers and, indirectly, the American economy.What’s often forgotten is that consumers are also workers, and if their pay doesn’t keep up, they can’t keep the economy going.A half-century ago America’s largest private-sector employer was General Motors, whose full-time workers earned an average hourly wage of around $50, in today’s dollars, including health and pension benefits.Today, America
Turkish economy meets EU entrance criteria

Dec 2, 2012

BERLIN ― Until recently Turkey was a country that had to borrow from the International Monetary Fund. But positive developments over the last 10 years have led Turkey to become a country that now lends to the IMF instead.Our ability to do this is a result of policies of fiscal discipline we have implemented since our own crisis in 2001. In the past, we had debts to the IMF of $20 billion. Now, that is down to $1.7 billion. Our central bank has reserves of $115 billion.The crisis we have gone thr