If people can buy a year’s supply of products from Costco from a single visit, the U.S. retail giant must have seen a year’s supply of inspectors in just one day. Last Wednesday and this past Sunday, the Seoul city government sent dozens of inspectors to Costco Wholesale’s warehouses in Seoul to conduct thorough investigations into virtually all activities of the retailer in Seoul.Wednesday’s inspection is said to have detected as many as 41 violations of a plethora of city regulations: a constr

The line runs westward from the Han River estuary immediately above Ganghwa Island, goes a little down to the south and then creeps to the west to the tip of Yeonpyeong Island. From there the line moves northwest all the way to the cluster of three islands, Socheong, Daecheong and Baengnyeong. Between Yeonpyeong and Socheong, the line precariously runs close to the North Korean coast, leaving only a few kilometers (miles) of space to the land. This is the Northern Limit Line or NLL for short.Peo

MENOUFIA, Egypt ― You can see what the Egyptian revolution has achieved, 20 months on, by visiting this rural area of the Nile Delta that was the birthplace of the deposed dictator, Hosni Mubarak: Everything is different outwardly, but beneath the surface, almost nothing has changed yet. The revolution’s impact is most obvious in the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood won the parliamentary elections here, even in this former regime stronghold. And people seem free to say what they think, including

If you take the subway, you will notice that people are either dozing off ― quite an art form in Korea! ― or looking at their smartphones. Women, men, young and old are looking at their smartphones and nowadays playing smartphone games.And not just any game. The game de rigueur is Anipang. Anipang is a compound word ― “ani” comes from the first syllable of animal and “pang” is the onomatopoeic sound for an explosion. It’s a very simple game. All you have to do is align, either vertically or hori

When I look around, I find many extremes in our society. For example, our progressive and conservative historians confront each other as if they were archenemies. Our writers, artists and teachers, too, are divided by two mutually exclusive ideological groups. And our left-wing and right-wing politicians hopelessly antagonize each other as well. It is either friend or foe. In fact, such extremes can be found in every nook and cranny of our society these days. A few days ago, I went to Seoul Fina

PRINCETON ― My grandmother was one of the first women to study mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna. When she graduated, in 1905, the university nominated her for its highest distinction, an award marked by the presentation of a ring engraved with the initials of the emperor. But no woman had previously been nominated for such an honor, and Emperor Franz Joseph refused to bestow the award upon one.More than a century later, one might have thought that by now we would have overcome

TEL AVIV ― A drone recently penetrated Israel’s airspace from the Mediterranean. It was allowed to fly for about half an hour over southern Israel before being shot down by the Israeli air force over a sparsely populated area. It is still not known who dispatched the drone and from where, but it is now assumed that it was launched from Lebanon, either by Hezbollah, acting in Iran’s service, or by forces of the Iranian regime itself.If that is indeed the case, the episode should not be regarded a