On Feb. 21, 1972, Richard Nixon became the first US president to visit the People’s Republic of China, setting in motion a process that would end China’s decadeslong isolation and kick-start the emergence of a modern, dynamic economy. But, despite the seismic economic changes in China in the intervening half-century, many in the West regard today’s People’s Republic as an unreformed communist country whose unfair trade practices are harming Western workers and consumers.

There is a romantic and lovely event in February. Someone confesses one’s love or goes out on a date with a special someone or even remembers past loves. Do you know which day I am talking about? Valentine’s Day in the past was a day only for lovers, but now it is a day for exchanging chocolates regardless if between lovers, friends or family. Some say it is a day established by the chocolate business to sell their products. Some say it is like any other normal day. However, it is

Jan. 10 marked the 40th anniversary of my favorite football memory. The San Francisco 49ers pulled off an 89-yard drive with an impressive play pass, designed by coach Bill Walsh, in which Dwight Clark literally rose out of the pack in the end zone and made “The Catch.” The 49ers came from behind and won the 1981 NFC championship against the Dallas Cowboys. The 49ers then went on to win 1982 Super Bowl against the Cincinnati Bengals. Clark told reporters following the game that quar

Every February, a memorial service is held in Yamaguchi prefecture, Japan for 183 men who died in a 1942 coal mine disaster. Most of them were Koreans, but the Japanese government does not acknowledge they existed. Likewise, wartime Korean laborers forced to toil in gold and silver mines on the island of Sado are overlooked. On Feb. 1, Japan nominated the Sado mines for a place on the UNESCO World Heritage List, exacerbating already fragile Korea-Japan relations and reminding us that their ong

The pictures from Ottawa over the last two weeks have defied every American stereotype of Canadians. We think of our northern neighbors as incorrigibly polite, their politics as moderate and their capital city -- when we consider it at all -- as boring, the Sacramento of the north. Suddenly, however, Ottawa has become the center of a global populist backlash against vaccine mandates and, more broadly, elitist liberal governments. About 500 truckers angry about new border-crossing rules between

In the early 1980s when I began teaching at Seoul National University, I had my students watch George Romero’s legendary film, “Night of the Living Dead” in one of my graduate classes. At that time, very few Koreans even knew what a zombie was. Accordingly, my students at SNU were shocked and appalled at the bone-chilling horror of the first modern zombie film released in 1968. After we watched the movie, I then taught my students how to read the film. For example, I compared

The latest blow to democracy is the explosion of coups around the world. Weak democratic governments that are failing to deliver are being overthrown. This global phenomenon has been most evident in West Africa. In the past 18 months, coups have occurred in Burkina Faso, Guinea and Chad. Mali has had two in that period, and Niger and Guinea-Bissau have narrowly escaped coup attempts. More coups occurred in 2021 alone than in the prior five years combined. Africa has been no stranger to coups si

Big Tech is an enemy of the American people. The largest corporations of our information economy wield unparalleled power over Americans’ lives. They enjoy almost unfettered access to our personal information. And they exercise more immediate control over our speech and livelihoods than even the government itself. They’ve had years to prove themselves responsible stewards of this power, by using it transparently and equitably, in the public interest and for the common good. They&rs

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought sweeping changes to the labor market that will continue to reverberate. During the shock phase in early 2020, millions lost their jobs and unemployment soared. In developing countries, poverty rates jumped, reversing years of progress. Developed countries recovered many lost jobs by the end of 2020, and some now face labor shortages. The churning has changed how people think about work and their expectations of it. As with the public health side of the pandemic

In May 1993, Estonia’s first post-Soviet leader Lennart Meri -- a wise man with bitter experience of life in the Soviet Union -- told the visiting US deputy secretary of state that Estonia urgently needed to join NATO. It was, he said, the only guarantee that Russia wouldn’t invade the Baltic state once a less Western-friendly and authoritarian Russian leader replaced then-President Boris Yeltsin. Meanwhile, Yeltsin openly warned the US that NATO’s expansion to the east would

  The 2022 Winter Olympics are underway in Beijing, among the nation’s closest foreign capitals at just some 950 kilometers from Seoul, four years after South Korea hosted the PyeongChang Games in Gangwon Province. Sixty-four Korean athletes are competing on snow and ice with the modest goal of ranking 15th or 16th in the medal standing. Famous movie director Zhang Yimou used a lot of his genius and high technology to add a landmark in the ongoing rise of China, but the opening cere

“Every day, thousands of innocent plants are killed by vegetarians. Help end the violence. Eat meat.” These words, written last month by an Edinburgh butcher on a blackboard outside his shop and shared on a vegan Facebook group, led to a heated online discussion. Some condemned the butcher for seeking to blur an important line between beings capable of suffering and those that are not. Others took it as a joke, as the butcher said he had intended it. But jokes can make serious poin

Lately, the foreign press has featured some intriguing articles on South Korea’s “Generation MZ,” a term that encompasses millennials and Generation Z, or roughly those born from the 1980s into the 2010s. For example, Bloomberg reported on young people in Korea in their 20s and 30s standing in a long line at 5 a.m. to buy famous brands at a department store. The New York Times, too, in an article called “The New Political Cry in South Korea: ‘Out With Men Haters,&rs

Having recently completed my 40th year as a card-carrying journalist, I feel compelled to share the one small nugget of wisdom I have gleaned from all those misspent hours hanging out with mayors, governors, legislators and other ne’er-do-wells of elected office. They are not all the same. This will shock some of you, I know, but like other human beings, they range from truly nice people to miserable jerks. This is not a matter of political viewpoint, age or gender. Awful people come in al