The Korea Herald

[Andrew Sheng] Bridging the East and West

Jul 13, 2012

Life is journey of different cycles. Traveling last month with old university friends, an Indian from Zambia, two Americans, a Spaniard and two from France made me realize that communication between East and West remains a gulf to be bridged, despite our common use of the English language and English education. Do East and West think differently? The answer must be yes, if you define the East as the Asian continent and the West as Europe plus America. Globalization has integrated thinking and pr
How to stop fast march of drug-resistant TB

Jul 12, 2012

Public health professionals have warned about drug-resistant tuberculosis for years. Now comes news out of India and China to feed the concern. Doctors in India have documented more than a dozen cases of TB so tenacious, it responds to no known drug. This is a scary proposition in a country where 2 million of the world’s 9 million annual TB cases occur and where malnutrition, overcrowding and a weak health system create a hotbed for the often-fatal disease. Conventional drug resistance is also t
[Daoud Kuttab] Egypt weighs on Jordan’s mind

Jul 12, 2012

AMMAN ― The behavior of Jordan’s Royal Court in the days following the official announcement of the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi in Egypt’s presidential election tells an intriguing story. At first, Jordan’s King Abdullah II hesitated to sign a long-sought-after election law. This was followed by approval of the law, a request for its revision, and a surprise official meeting with the leader of Hamas.During the past year, King Abdullah has been adamant that Jordanians should
Will Egypt’s generals yield to elected leader?

Jul 12, 2012

In the first of what is likely to be a series of confrontations between Egypt’s new elected leader and the country’s armed forces, President Mohamed Morsi has called for a parliament disbanded by the generals to return to work, pending the election of a new representative body under a yet-to-be-written constitution. As with much about Egypt’s transition from autocracy to democracy, the controversy over the legitimacy of the People’s Assembly is overlaid with legal issues. The Islamist-dominated
Tame the dark money to protect democracy

Jul 12, 2012

There is little doubt that plutocrats are trying to buy the November elections. Not just control of the White House, but control of the U.S. House and Senate, too.Freed from campaign finance limitations by five pliant Supreme Court justices, wealthy donors with no sense of shame are pouring record amounts of money into so-called super political action committees. Donors to super PACs eventually will see their names made public; being shameless, they don’t care.But what about plutocrats who have
[Robert B. Reich] Coming soon to Wall Street, the biggest scandal yet

Jul 12, 2012

Just when you thought Wall Street couldn’t sink any lower ― when its excesses are still causing hardship to millions of Americans and its myriad abuses of public trust have already spread a miasma of cynicism over the entire economic system ― an even deeper level of public-be-damned greed and corruption is revealed.Sit down and hold on to your chair.Consider the most basic services banks provide you: You put your savings in a bank to hold in trust, and the bank agrees to pay you interest on it.
Enrique Pena Nieto: Mexico’s new face

Jul 11, 2012

Enrique Pena Nieto, the fresh-faced politician Mexicans elected this week to be their president, represents the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which completely dominated Mexican politics for 71 years until 2000. Many Mexicans are concerned that the PRI’s return will lead to a restoration of autocratic rule, an officially sanctioned detente with organized crime or a marked deterioration in bilateral cooperation. But these things are unlikely.Equally unlikely, however, is any kind of w
[David Ignatius] Rising tension over Iran and Syria

Jul 11, 2012

WASHINGTON ― Hopefully we won’t see a Middle East replay of the “The Guns of August,” as Barbara Tuchman titled her famous account of the slide toward World War I. But the region is edgy this summer as negotiators struggle to resolve confrontations with Syria and Iran. One small sign of the rising tension is that Saudi Arabia is said to have alerted some of its military and security officials to cancel their planned summer leaves. According to Saudi and U.S. sources, this limited mobilization re
Real estate prices are going back up in U.S.

Jul 11, 2012

House prices, after falling for more than five years, are rising again. All the major sales-price indexes show that there have been modest national increases in recent months, even after adjusting for seasonal patterns. When foreclosures and distressed sales are excluded from the data, prices are up even more. And we should expect further gains: The asking-price index, a leading indicator of sales prices, published by Trulia Inc. (where I work), climbed at an annualized rate of 3.3 percent in th
Attack ad politics

Jul 11, 2012

In this pivotal election year, fellow citizens, I give you a chilling vision of two Americas.One America is the swing states, the dozen or so states that don’t fall into the Democratic or Republican camps and will ultimately decide the presidential election. Those unhappy states ― they know who they are ― are already being flooded with noisy political advertising, day and night.The other America, the happier America, is what political strategists call “safe states.” In these lucky places, televi
[Kim Myong-sik] Yeosu Expo shows mankind’s future lies in oceans

Jul 11, 2012

When I made my second visit to the Yeosu World Exposition last week with a small group of friends, road signs led our minivan into a vast parking area located in the petrochemical complex 15 kilometers away from the Expo site in the port city’s New Harbor. (On the earlier visit in mid-May, our buses had been allowed direct access to the Expo ground.)The parking zone established in a landfill area was scantily occupied by cars and many shuttle buses were awaiting visitors to transport them to the
[Lee Jae-min] A whale of a science project

Jul 10, 2012

It was quite demoralizing, to say the least. Last Friday’s edition of the South China Morning Post, the leading newspaper in Hong Kong, ran a big cartoon deriding so-called “scientific whaling,” and it was obvious which country it was referring to.Korea’s about-face on whaling has become headline news in many parts of the world and invited renewed debate on the issue. The dreaded prospect of students of Hong Kong University asking me questions about it during my class on international law has al
Is Google a monopoly? Wrong question

Jul 10, 2012

Google responded last week to European antitrust regulators investigating a long list of claims against the world’s largest search engine. Whether or not the complaints against Google are valid, they may be looking backward. Increasingly, Google is not a search engine. Yes, Google accounts for 80 percent of all Web searches in Europe. It is facing criticism (some of it prompted by Microsoft) for favoritism toward Google’s own specialty search products ― travel, finance, hotels, restaurants, maps
Asian values offer no special fix for Europe

Jul 10, 2012

The economic misfortunes of Europe and America have inspired glee among some Asian leaders and commentators, especially those who champion “Asian values.” Exhorting Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi to learn from resurgent Asia rather than decrepit Europe, Kishore Mahbubani, the Singaporean diplomat-turned-pundit, pointed out recently how “quiet Asian pragmatism continues to deliver steady economic growth while Europe languishes.” Recalling how the International Monetary Fund prescribed austerity to Ea
Sanctions on Iran may help, but economic pain can’t be sole pressure point

Jul 10, 2012

The latest Iran sanctions came into full effect this week, adding to a byzantine array of unilateral and multilateral measures that prohibit Iranian oil imports, other trade and financial transactions, and freeze Iranian assets by countries concerned that Tehran’s nuclear program is intended for military purposes, not civilian ones.The international community is now on watch for cracks in Iran’s defiant stance: Will increased sanctions compel Tehran to make real concessions and allow for a diplo