When I was president of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, I once held a workshop on cultural differences so my staff could learn and discuss foreign cultures. At that time, I felt it was imperative that my staff was thoroughly informed of cultural differences because of an incident that had embarrassed us. A Korean institution that had donated hundreds of Korean-language textbooks to India discovered that those books were just piled in a warehouse, never having been used. Among th

  Summertime, and the livin’ ain’t easy. News screens keep showin’ How people die. We look away, ’cause we know what we’re seein’. Our pain’s not just knowin’ -- It’s knowin’ why. Newsbreak: Our worst nightmares are being splashed across our news screens, one after another. Unfortunately, the tragedies seem way too familiar -- because today’s tragic news reads like pages ripped right out of warning memos in which governmen

Why is Marxism thriving in China and not in Marx’s place of birth? Why is Buddhism more practiced in East Asia than in India? Why has Islam more followers outside Saudi Arabia? Ideas and religion spread through globalization, but it was really their localization that created more believers and followers. What succeeded was not globalization, but glocalization, the internalization of universal ideas and beliefs by the many, and not just the few. Few Westerners see the irony of a suppose

While US President Joe Biden took the center stage at his first NATO summit last month and German Chancellor Angela Merkel got some of the limelight for her last such appearance, a little-noticed piece of theater was playing out in the wings: The alliance‘s most antagonistic members were making nice. Meeting in Brussels, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Turkey‘s Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to a “verbal ceasefire” during what French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian de

How does former US President Donald Trump still command the Republican Party’s complete allegiance? Everyone knows he has terrible judgment and a vindictive, petty personality. Even Trump’s own daughter and son-in-law are reportedly distancing themselves from him. And yet, whatever Trump says is still gospel for the overwhelming majority of Republican officeholders and commentators. For recognizing the legitimacy of President Joe Biden’s election, Representative Liz Cheney of

When I heard the news that the former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld passed away, I remembered meeting him in Washington 10 years ago. In October 2011, I visited the former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld‘s office in Washington, DC to discuss various issues, including ROK-US relations. The conversation was later written in my book titled “Communications with Leaders of the World” published at the end of that year. I had met Secretary Rumsfeld several times before, but it was

Eleven years ago, I was awestruck when I watched the then Apple CEO Steve Jobs presenting the iPad. Since there were some leaks about Apple’s new tablet computer, I was somewhat prepared to witness a new device. What surprised me the most was that Jobs sat down in a classic Le Corbusier LC-3 chair and rested the iPad against a crossed leg before browsing the internet and demonstrating apps with his fingers. It was an intricately orchestrated body posture, but I couldn’t resist the

July marks the beginning of the second half of the year. In the first half, the COVID-19 pandemic has dominated the news in South Korea as it has elsewhere. As vaccine rollout continues around the world, with predictable difficulties, hope for an end to the pandemic is tempered by fears of new variants. After a slow start, the pace of vaccination in South Korea has picked up, raising hopes for the second half of the year. Aside from the pandemic, the big story in the second half of the year wi

One obstacle to productive public debate in the United States is the media’s tendency to engage in “false imbalance” when reporting on economic policies. No, I don’t mean “false balance.” False imbalance refers instead to the temptation to disparage policies that are in fact reasonable attempts to balance competing objectives. We have recently seen examples of this in US health care reform, as well as fiscal and monetary policy. The problem of false balance i

With eight months to go until the next presidential election, South Korean voters are beginning to guess what kind of administration will replace the one that has put their country into an unprecedented level of political and social conflicts. Will it be as vindictive in treating the past ruling elite and as ideologically obsessed in pursuing socio-economic goals as was those now in power? Parties have drawn up charters and platforms in accordance with political ideals they chose, oftentimes h

Individualism is good, collectivism is bad. That’s what I first concluded as a teenager after reading Friedrich Hayek’s seminal treatise, “The Road to Serfdom.” Every life experience since then has confirmed my hunch. That makes it all the more irritating when opponents of individualism, out of ignorance or bad faith, keep distorting what it is. A particularly misleading charge is that individualism should somehow be tantamount to selfishness and egoism. Individualists t

The Angry Young Men were a group of young writers from the UK who were disillusioned with the conservatism of their society in the 1950s. Inspired by John Osborne’s monumental 1956 play “Look Back in Anger” and Leslie Paul’s 1951 autobiography “Angry Young Man,” this group of young writers powerfully indicted the empty promises of postwar British society and its obsession with tradition through their literary works. The leading figures in the movement included

As Senate Republicans were blocking a bill to expand voting rights for Americans, the Chinese government was destroying Apple Daily, the pro-democracy tabloid that campaigned for greater voting rights in Hong Kong. The comparison is worth making, because of the way China has systematically shredded Hong Kong’s democratic freedoms over the past year. Under cover of a new national security law, and COVID-19, Beijing has diminished voting rights, while arresting pro-democracy activists and m

China has now delivered more than 1 billion vaccine doses, hitting that COVID-19 milestone the same weekend that Brazil passed one of its own: more than 500,000 deaths. Daily case numbers remain worryingly high, and those hospitalized and dying include larger numbers of young people. India, meanwhile, is at risk of a third wave of infections sooner than predicted, after a devastating second. The end of the pandemic is almost here. But the tail is long and -- thanks to shortsighted global and na

The US has traditionally been a nation of optimists about technology. But just when the world seems poised for a technologically-driven productivity boom, Americans have acquired a dour outlook about the march of progress. Growing fears that not everyone will share in the benefits is leading to resistance that threatens to hold the nation back. Recapturing the bold attitudes of yesteryear will require more than rhetoric -- it’ll require sweeping policy changes. You’d think now would