He did it again. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin won another presidential election. While the outcome was no surprise, neither was the controversy that greeted his victory. Despite Putin’s claim that he won “an open and honest fight,” the opposition has charged that the outcome reflects vote tampering and outright fraud. The growing antagonism of forces opposed to Putin will make the challenge of governing Russia ― already quite formidable ― even more difficult.The outcome of Sunday’s pres

Gnothi Seauton ― In Greek, these words mean “know thyself.” Such was the inscription at the ancient Temple of Apollo, where people would visit the sacred Oracle. Moving on to present-day Korea, the Korean people indeed “know themselves.” Korea has a strong sense of national identity and pride, with the largely homogeneous Korean people being in no doubt with regard to their origins from Mongolian tribes and seen with the people’s determination to forge ahead for a better tomorrow and a general s

Credit the Obama administration with the patient pursuit of negotiations toward dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program. Once again it may all come to a frustrating impasse.Still, North Korea did announce Wednesday it would allow international inspectors into its Yongbyon nuclear complex and suspend nuclear weapons tests and uranium enrichment in anticipation of talks.The New York Times reports the latest round of contacts began last July with the U.S. offering 265,000 tons of food to get the

The World Bank report, “China 2030: Building a Modern, Hamonious and Creative High-Income Society,” which was released this week, stated that liberalizing interest rates according to market principles is a priority for China’s financial reforms over the next two decades, highlighting the dilemma facing the government. China’s banking system remains a highly regulated sector; policymakers set the interest rates, not the market and most of the large state-owned banks tend to offer credit facilitie

Earlier this week, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited President Barack Obama in the White House. The two met together with their national-security advisers for 90 minutes, then had a 30-minute chat alone, then moved to a lunch together with various high officials of their governments. Many words were exchanged during these meetings, but it turns out they all might have been superfluous. Netanyahu delivered his overriding message quite efficiently, and almost wordlessly, in t

You probably feel it intuitively. The grids underlying our digital lives ― our bank accounts, mobile phones, e-mail, medical records ― are more vulnerable than ever. Companies such as Lockheed Martin Corp., Citigroup Inc. and Sony Corp. have recently reported serious breaches of their networks. NASA said last week that hackers had launched 13 major attacks against it last year, including one in which they gained access to networks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages active space miss

The auditing profession’s top U.S. overseer usually does a flawless job of safeguarding the most embarrassing secrets of accounting firms and their corporate clients. Fortunately, every now and then, the watchdog slips up. Take the case of Kyoto Audit Corp., a Japanese affiliate of the Big Four auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers. On Feb. 14, the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board released its first-ever inspection report on the Kyoto-based firm. The report said the board’s staff reviewed

Dr. Choue Young Seek, founder of Kyung Hee University and the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, passed away on Feb. 18 this year. He devoted most of his life to promoting his peace theory through education, various peace movements and writings. He developed the initial ideas of his peace theory in his book titled “Creation of a Cultural World,” which he wrote during the Korean War. There are as many theories of war as there are major wars in history. Some are based on the aggressive human nat

A year after an earthquake in Japan touched off the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, here’s the question on my mind: Who’s going to jail? The news media are asking the obvious and safe questions ahead of March 11: How well did the government respond? Whither the devastated northeast? What’s the economic effect? When might the 52 of 54 nuclear reactors mothballed since then reopen? This barrage of “anniversary” articles misses the point. Anniversaries commemorate events in the past, ones for

Nowhere is the epic stoicism of the Japanese more evident than in their approach to a mountain of public debt that leaves government finances in a perilous state. Eclipsing the debt load of Greece, not to mention the advanced economies, Japan has the granddad of government debt at $11 trillion, which amounts to a debt-to-gross domestic product ratio that exceeds 200 percent. A policy board member of Japan‘s central bank was right to warn last month that his country is not immune to a sovereign d