Turns out, President Donald Trump’s supporters were right when they denounced his most fervent critics’ over-the-top comparisons of him to Hitler. Maybe the more apt comparison is to longtime former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. When I first arrived in the Soviet Union as an exchange student in 1978, I was shocked to see the long lines outside food stores and the bare shelves inside. Shocked to see how rumors of a meat delivery would send Russian women racing to the butcher, pushin

I was a modernist when I wrote my MA thesis on literary modernism. Later, however, when I decided to write my doctoral dissertation on postmodernism at the State University of New York at Buffalo, I converted to a postmodernist. Postmodern perspectives helped me rightly perceive the elusive and complex reality I was facing every day. Furthermore, postmodern perceptions that acknowledged the blurry boundary between fact and fiction, or highbrow culture and middlebrow culture fascinated me. When

Great global traumas have a way of revealing the gap between the sort of international system we might like and the sort of international system we actually have. The coronavirus pandemic is no exception. One lesson of the crisis is that strengthened global cooperation will be critical to preventing future outbreaks. Another lesson, however, is that we’re not likely to have a “one-world” moment anytime soon. Rather than attempt to remake the international order after the viru

If the coronavirus pandemic has made one thing clear, it’s that knowledge, preparation and science matter. Political spin can win elections and keep millions of people misinformed, but it doesn’t sway the forces of nature, of which infectious disease is one. “Reality must take precedence over public relations,” as the American physicist Richard Feynman put it in the aftermath of the Challenger disaster, “for nature cannot be fooled.” Post-pandemic, one migh

Now that Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed presumptive candidate Joe Biden, it‘s worth considering just how profoundly Sanders seems to have shifted the policy landscape. Despite the rise of inequality and other long-term economic problems, a majority of Democrats probably felt too comfortable with the current system to embrace revolutionary change. Although the Sanders insurgency is over, many of the progressive ideas he urged on the electorate may yet c

With the World Health Organization predicting that the coronavirus will not dissipate anytime soon, we are left to grapple with the stark reality of living with a highly contagious, still largely unknown virus with no known cure as of yet. The COVID-19 pandemic has infected nearly 2.6 million people and killed more than 180,000 people around the world since the first case of the acute respiratory illness was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. The pandemic has forced nearly ha

The first four months of 2020 have flashed by, and we are almost in May! Cold winter has given way to sunny spring and the beautiful flowers are blooming again. I still remember attending several traditional New Year gatherings in early 2020 in Seoul and wishing everyone a Great Year of the White Metal Rat. Unfortunately, the Year of the Rat did not have an auspicious start. COVID-19 has wreaked havoc globally since the start of the year, with few countries spared from its devastation. Now ove

In 1946, with war-ravaged Europe exhausted and in disarray, Britain’s wartime leader, Winston Churchill, gave a speech in Zurich in which he emphasized the need to “recreate the European fabric” in order to restore peace and freedom to the continent. “We must build a kind of United States of Europe,” Churchill declared. It was a foundational moment for what would become the European Union, even if Churchill’s views of the United Kingdom’s place in Europe

On the day after the April 15 election, a lawyer friend of mine living in California sent me an SNS message, quoting French philosopher Joseph de Maistre: “Every nation gets the government it deserves.” Upon the news of the government party’s stunning victory in the latest National Assembly election here, he was telling me that Korean voters were never more reproachable than Americans who had elected Donald Trump in 2016. For the past week, experts wrestled with the question

Intelligence agencies are used to making headlines when they fail to do their job. But after months of US President Donald Trump ignoring their warnings about COVID-19, and after years of his administration discounting their alerts about the danger of a pandemic more generally, it is time that intelligence professionals receive the credit they deserve. It should come as no surprise that Trump repeatedly dismissed intelligence about the threat of the coronavirus throughout January and February.

Amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, South Korean voters went to the polls to choose a new National Assembly for the next four years. The ruling Democratic Party won a landslide victory, giving it an outright majority for the first time since 2004. The ruling party and its allied Together Citizens’ Party now hold 180 seats, or 60 percent, of the total 300 seats. This will make it easier for President Moon Jae-in to push his legislative agenda. As the election cycle approached, conservativ

“We are facing a global health crisis unlike any in the 75-year history of the United Nations.” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said this in a video news conference on March 19, urging urgent global action to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Thus the world has sought solidarity and cooperation as the keys to overcoming the crisis. So how is Korea coping with the crisis? The answer is in a YouTube video recently made by the Korean Culture

The April election is over. The outcome was a landslide victory for the progressive ruling party and a total disaster for the conservative opposition party. Of course, opinion varies depending on the person, but many say it was a victory of the younger generation over the older generation. If this is true, young people must be happy, whereas older people are disappointed, if not devastated. Right after the outcome of the election was revealed, someone sent me a heartrending poem circulating

The coronavirus pandemic has torn the veil off a long-obscured and frightening reality: Our economies are unconscionably fragile, propped up by low-wage jobs, and our health systems are tissue-thin. As companies go bankrupt and workers are laid off by the millions, it seems likely that most major economic and cultural institutions will suffer the shock of transition, if not extinction. These include the media, which has a key role to play in shaping how we think of and act upon this new world.

The US government’s first economic relief bill to cope with the coronavirus shutdown was a stopgap measure. With employment in a free fall and businesses shutting down across the country, Americans needed money in their pockets as fast as possible. Without the time to figure out the optimal policy, the government turned to an existing system that was in place and ready to go: unemployment insurance. Millions of newly unemployed Americans now use these benefits as an economic lifeline. The