The Korea Herald

Toward a peaceful Asia-Pacific region

Dec 6, 2011

MELBOURNE ― The Western Pacific is currently facing a difficult problem: how to accommodate China’s rising aspirations in a region where the United States has held primacy since the Cold War’s end. Is the U.S. determined to maintain dominance in the Asia/Pacific region? Or is it willing to operate through multilateral forums that allow all involved parties to help set the rules? The way this issue unfolds will determine whether peace will continue to prevail across the Pacific.It is hard to see
[Kim Seong-kon] In pursuit of a third possibility

Dec 6, 2011

Once again, South Korea is in political turmoil. One of our lawmakers recently became a lawbreaker by detonating tear gas in the National Assembly to protest the free trade agreement between Korea and the United States. Newspaper reports say that this lawbreaker declared himself a patriot who tried to save his country from the evil hands of national traitors, who are selling out their nation to American commercialism. He seemed to believe that the world is divided into two camps: patriots and tr
Record of brinksmanship shows Merkel’s mettle

Dec 5, 2011

During the financial crisis of 2008, German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Nicolas Sarkozy for a private lunch in the Paris house of Sarkozy’s wife, Carla Bruni. This gesture of friendship didn’t keep the French president from using a news conference shortly thereafter to harangue Merkel for refusing to supplement a 130 billion euro ($175 billion) spending program proposed by the European Union with an additional German spending program. When asked how their countries were reacting to the crisis,
Climate change: A matter of justice

Dec 5, 2011

DURBAN ― Before the Copenhagen climate-change summit two years ago, the two of us sat together in Cape Town to listen to five African farmers from different countries, four of whom were women, tell us how climate change was undermining their livelihoods. Each explained how floods and drought, and the lack of regular seasons to sow and reap, were outside their normal experience. Their fears are shared by subsistence farmers and indigenous people worldwide ― the people bearing the brunt of climate
Fed should stand ready for third round of stimulus

Dec 5, 2011

The Federal Reserve’s efforts to help dollar-starved European banks have pleased global investors, but the central bank’s moves can only temporarily distract attention from a dilemma back home: what to do about the exceedingly weak U.S. recovery. Lately, the patient has shown tentative signs of improvement. Today, the Labor Department announced that the unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent in November, the lowest since March 2009. Nonfarm employers added 120,000 jobs. Pending home sales are up.
Next president of KAIST should be a woman

Dec 5, 2011

KAIST plays a critical role in Korea as a trendsetter for the nation in the sciences. Innovations at KAIST quickly become innovations throughout Korea. It was a tremendous breakthrough when Professor Robert Laughlin of Stanford was appointed president of KAIST, bringing a new international emphasis to the institution. KAIST set a precedent through that appointment of hiring foreign faculty that impacted the entire nation. The decision by President Suh Nam-pyo of KAIST to employ English as the pr
Dudley should resign as New York Fed president

Dec 5, 2011

A major financial crisis is brewing, brought on by a toxic combination of failing European sovereign governments and highly leveraged international banks, which could be affected by a breakup of the euro area. In the weeks and months ahead, a major U.S. financial institution may face serious trouble, and government officials will have to decide whether that trouble is just a temporary lack of liquidity ― or a far more serious question of solvency. In the original lender-of-last-resort formulatio
[J. Bradford DeLong] The right tax rate for the rich

Dec 5, 2011

BERKELEY ― Via a circuitous Internet chain ― Paul Krugman of Princeton University quoting Mark Thoma of the University of Oregon reading the Journal of Economic Perspectives ― I got a copy of an article written by Emmanuel Saez, whose office is 50 feet from mine, on the same corridor, and the Nobel laureate economist Peter Diamond. Saez and Diamond argue that the right marginal tax rate for North Atlantic societies to impose on their richest citizens is 70 percent.It is an arresting assertion, g
Politicians of America: Can you smell the coffee?

Dec 4, 2011

Wake up, America, you are being exploited, duped and brainwashed. Though political analysts ― left and right ― differ on their prescriptions on how to save America from decline, there is one thing they seem to agree on: The vast majority of Americans spend most of their lives politically asleep.Crossroads GPS, an advocacy group founded by Republican operative Karl Rove, recently produced a commercial called “Wake Up,” an anti-Obama attack ad that portrays a woman tossing and turning in the middl
[Yuriko Koike] Could Burma turn democratic?

Dec 4, 2011

TOKYO ― Historic transformations often happen when least expected. Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalizing policies of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union emerged at one of the Cold War’s darkest hours, with U.S. President Ronald Reagan pushing for strategic missile defense and the two sides fighting proxy wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Deng Xiaoping’s economic opening followed China’s bloody ― and failed ― invasion of Vietnam in 1978. And South Africa’s last apartheid leader, F. W. de Kle
Cost of educational zeal more than just money

Dec 4, 2011

“Mom, I really want to go to the costume play this weekend, you know I am really, really into it. Until now I hung around just watching the festival but this is my first time ever joining it. I’ve bought everything for that day, a violet wig, pink dress, kill-heels. Mom, can I go? Please...”“No.”Last week when I caught a glimpse of the evening news, I instantly froze on the spot. The anchor told a story about a murder case, which may be something that we are usually immune to, but it hit home in
Bright prospects for Korea-India relations

Dec 4, 2011

A recent trip to New Delhi and Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) for a meeting of the executive committee of the World Federation of U.N. Associations served as a reminder to me that India is developing at a breathtaking pace economically, politically, and socially, and is becoming one of the most influential powers in the world. Its economy is growing at more than 7 percent annually; it has an advanced IT sector, a long cultural history and democratic strength. That development has been reflected in
[Naomi Wolf] The American hangover brings survivalist sense of style

Dec 4, 2011

NEW YORK ― As turmoil stalks America’s financial markets and protests fill its streets, Americans’ lifestyle choices are evolving in a telling way: once seen by the rest of the world as an exuberant teenager ― the globe’s extrovert, exporter of rock ‘n’ roll and flashy Hollywood movies ― Americans are now becoming decidedly withdrawn, or at least inward-looking. Trends in leisure activities reflect that change: frugality and making do are in; gaudy consumerism is out.This change is due to the fr
U.S. must clean up the foreclosure mess now

Dec 2, 2011

About one in every five families with a mortgage in this country is “underwater” ― owing more on the loan than the home is worth. That’s part of a slow rot that is spreading through our economy. (None of which is helped, by the way, by the failure members of the congressional supercommittee to do anything but blame each other for doing nothing.)In the four years since the housing bubble burst, the banks, the Wall Street “packagers,” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal government have don
[David Ignatius] Openness all the world can see

Dec 2, 2011

WASHINGTON ― In the early days of the Arab revolutions, it seemed as if a smartphone might be enough to break the power of repressive governments. These little devices could gather crowds, yes, but even more important, their cameras could document the violence that regimes used to suppress their people. The smartphone changed the balance of intimidation. The rulers and their henchmen were suddenly at risk of being prosecuted, like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, or hunted and killed, like Moammar Gaddaf