A Harvard University law professor’s recent article asserts that “comfort women” who served at Imperial Japan’s war-front brothels were “willing prostitutes” who worked under contracts and that their “sex slave narrative” is “pure fiction.” “The claims about enslaved Korean comfort women are historically untrue. The Japanese army did not dragoon Korean women to work in its brothels,” wrote J. Mark Ramseyer in his Jan. 12

Neatly tucked into the $1.9 trillion stimulus package is the second-largest welfare expansion in US history. President Joe Biden’s plan would increase child allowances -- cash welfare grants for parents with children -- from an annual $2,000 per child to a maximum payment of $3,600 for each child younger than 6 years of age and $3,000 for children aged 6-17. The result: $78 billion per year in new cash grants to families, on top of the nearly half a trillion dollars that government curren

  In recent times, Korean zombie movies have enchanted foreign viewers. For example, “Train to Busan,” which premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, enthralled international audiences as one of the finest zombie films ever produced. Its sequel, “Peninsula,” garnered comparable acclaim, as did the Netflix original series “Kingdom.” It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the Los Angeles Times headlined a recent article, “Zombies are everywhere in

When it comes to COVID-19 policy, President Joe Biden has clearly opted for a go-slow approach. If we “follow the science,” though, it’s apparent that he’s being too cautious. In his first prime-time address in office, he addressed the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in America. He expressed hope that, by Independence Day, family and friends could gather once again. But he immediately hedged, adding that this “doesn’t mean large events with lots of people toge

We’re starting to see the outlines of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, and you won’t be shocked to hear that it’s looking very different from President Donald Trump’s. But here’s something that may surprise you: Biden’s foreign policy also differs in significant ways from President Barack Obama’s. Trump declared his goal was “America First,” which often meant trashing allies and starting trade wars. It was a noisy way to interact

Over the course of his presidency, Donald Trump raised US tariffs on imports from China several times, from an average of about 3 percent when he took office in January 2017 to over 20 percent by the end of 2019. As a result, the current average US tariff on Chinese goods is essentially at the same level that the United States imposed on the rest of the world in the early 1930s under the Smoot-Hawley Act, a protectionist measure that many economists blame for the severity of the Great Depression

On Feb. 27, the Polisario Front marked the 45th anniversary of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, which it declared in 1976 to be the rightful government of the territory of Western Sahara. During the celebration -- which took place in the refugee camps of Tindouf, in the Algerian desert, where the seat of the SADR government is located -- the Polisario decried the continuing political impasse over the territory, which Morocco also claims. The deadlock must be broken – and the European

When Spotify made a debut in South Korea last month, a number of Korean users were disappointed because the service went online without the crucial library of Korean songs. The debacle stemmed from the fight between Kakao Entertainment, which controls about 40 percent of the domestic music service market, and Spotify, the worlds’ biggest streaming music provider. Speculation mounted over why they failed to reach a deal. One theory is that Kakao Entertainment, which runs the country&rsqu

Since the rush to develop began in the 1960s, the South Korean government has paid attention to the fertility rate. In the 1960s and 1970s, the rate was too high, and the government focused its efforts on birth control. The rate fell steadily, dropping below 2.1 children per woman for the first time in 1983. According to the UN Population Division, a total fertility rate (TFR) level of about 2.1 is enough to sustain population levels, excluding immigration and emigration. After holding in a nar

North Korea’s recent public displays of new intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles have raised fresh concerns about the risks the regime in Pyongyang poses to the US mainland. As President Joe Biden’s administration reviews US policy toward the DPRK over the past four years and draws what lessons it can from Donald Trump’s nuclear summitry with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, it should consider a new arms-control approach. The failure of Trump’s effo

Watching the worsening turmoil in Myanmar, where the death toll from the brutal police control rises day by day, South Koreans see flashbacks of their own streets four decades ago. Pro-democracy demonstrators were killed by the hundreds in the rebellious city of Gwangju and in the capital, Seoul, until the military finally withdrew from politics in the 1980s. Democratic governance has developed, with rightist and leftist groups exchanging power almost regularly. No blood was spilled on the pav

Economists concerned about slowing productivity have spent the past decade hotly debating the value of free digital services such as Google’s web search and Amazon’s online store. But those online services have proven their worth during the pandemic. And COVID-19 may ultimately push our society to learn new ways of using digital technologies that accelerate productivity growth. Over the past year I’ve been occasionally bombarded with tweets casting doubt on the value of softw

On Dec. 29 last year, Hasan Gokal, the medical director of the COVID-19 response team in Harris County, Texas (which includes Houston, the fourth-largest city in the United States by population), was supervising the administration of the Moderna vaccine, mostly to emergency workers. The vaccine comes in vials containing 11 doses. A vial, once opened, expires in six hours and unused vaccine must then be thrown away. On that December day, a patient arrived just before closing time, so a nurse had

South Korea is undoubtedly one of the most convenient places to live in today’s world. You can do practically anything electronically, including lock your door, so no one carries jingling metal keys in Korea. Moreover, you can obtain government documents online and even renew your driver’s license in a few minutes. At the same time, however, many bureaucracies make life incredibly inconvenient. According to recent newspaper reports, foreigners cannot buy Korean merchandise online b

Those Americans who cheered President Joe Biden’s announcement this week that the US would have enough vaccines to inoculate every citizen by the end of July might want to note the cold silence with which the rest of the world greeted the news. Biden’s triumphalism was more than a little grating, considering that the US, alongside most other rich countries, has essentially chosen to corner the market on shots that are desperately needed elsewhere. Just this Monday, the Mexican presi