The Korea Herald

[Robert J. Fouser] Challenges facing South Korea in 2019

Jan 1, 2019

South Korea finds itself in an odd place as 2019 begins. Progress in inter-Korean detente slowed at the end of 2018 after three historic summit meetings between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The economy also slowed at the end of 2018 as business and consumer confidence weakened. The slowing of good news has caused President Moon’s popularity to decline, raising fears that the nation will be left with weak leadership amid growing challenges.To deal with these challeng
[Mohamed A. El-Erian] Life is getting harder for central banks

Jan 1, 2019

For reasons largely outside its control, the Federal Reserve is now being widely blamed for fueling financial market instability and risking derailment of the US economy. This is quite a contrast from just a few months ago, when it was still being feted by many for its role as an active and effective repressor of financial market volatility. It is probably only a matter of time until the European Central Bank finds itself in a similar, perhaps tougher position. The reality is both central banks
[Anne Stevenson-Yang] Trump’s China strategy isn’t working

Jan 1, 2019

The Trump administration’s willingness to push the Chinese harder on trade has struck a bilateral chord. Beijing is listening. So far, so good. Now the question is what the US wants to achieve. Answer: the total destruction of China as a competitor.That isn’t a trade goal, and the demands being made contradict one another. This aim also unnecessarily awakens Beijing’s deepest nationalist fears.Unsure what to offer next -- and convinced that the US effectively persuaded Canada to take an executiv
[Albert R. Hunt] No, Mr. Trump, the press is only the enemy of lies

Jan 1, 2019

President Donald Trump doesn’t read or study history, so he’s probably unfamiliar with the Alien and Sedition Acts. He’d love them. They were the infamous series of discredited measures promulgated by President John Adams in 1798 and designed, in part, to silence unfriendly journalists.Trump poses the greatest challenge to a free press at least since President Richard Nixon. Any story that doesn’t celebrate him he derides as “fake news.” He’s repeatedly called journalists the “enemy of the peopl
[Gordon Brown] The Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 70

Dec 31, 2018

Seven decades after its adoption, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights remains a beacon of hope for the world, sending out an unequivocal message that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, and that no abuse of human rights can be allowed to continue without challenge.While illiberalism and authoritarianism are on the rise, it is important to recall that the UDHR -- and the covenants and conventions it has inspired -- champion every person’s right to life, liberty and secu
[David Ignatius] Here’s hoping the US-North Korea dialogue continues in the new year

Dec 31, 2018

Here’s one New Year’s resolution that should be easy: The United States and North Korea should resume the diplomatic progress they began in 2018 toward peace and denuclearization.It’s a measure of this year’s turbulent pace that the Singapore summit between President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un just six months ago now seems a distant memory. The promise of that meeting disappeared soon after it took place, in a stalemate that led many analysts to question whether Kim had ever been serious abo
[Walter Shapiro] My dream 2020 candidate -- someone to heal America’s wounds

Dec 31, 2018

As an alumnus of Newsweek and Time in their glory days, I sometimes can’t resist thinking like a news-magazine editor. Any news event -- the government shutdown, the withdrawal from Syria, the Brexit mess -- can be summarized by that all-purpose cover line, “NOW FOR THE HARD PART.”Similarly, the obvious cover for next Monday would be a racetrack starting gate with more than a dozen familiar Democrats (“There’s Bernie, there’s Beto, there’s Biden, there’s Booker ... ”) leaning forward in their sa
[Andy Mukherjee] Half a billion millennial voters are face of Asia 2019

Dec 31, 2018

In the first half of 2019, a billion Asians will elect the next leaders of the region‘s two largest democracies. Half -- 400 million in India, and 79 million in Indonesia -- are from the millennial generation, born roughly between 1982 and 2001. Many will cast ballots for the first time. Although the threat of sectarian hatred looms large over both the Indian and Indonesian elections, economics will still take center stage.The issue that will resonate most with younger voters is jobs.Indonesia’s
[Kurniawan Hari] At 24 years WTO faces more challenges

Dec 31, 2018

The World Trade Organization is to celebrate its 24th anniversary in January 2019. There is no better chance than today to assess the performance and outlook of the global organization.Such an evaluation is timely because the G-20 leaders’ summit in Buenos Aires in early December called for reforms in the WTO and also because of the global crisis stemming from the trade war between the world’s two largest economies, the United States and China.To assess its future, we need to look into the histo
[Anjani Trivedi] Barra eyes China for GM’s rebirth

Dec 28, 2018

In April 2014, Mary Barra sat on Capitol Hill listening to accounts of families who’d lost a member while driving in a General Motors Chevrolet Cobalt that malfunctioned. Months earlier, she’d been handed the reins of the largest US car company.　Defects that the company had failed to disclose for more than a decade led to the recall of almost 3 million small vehicles. The crisis shattered trust in GM, five years after it had emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and a $50 billion government bailout
[Justin Fendos] Emergence of #MeToo tribalism in politics

Dec 28, 2018

US partisan politics and the South Korean #MeToo movement shouldn’t have much in common. But if Koreans aren’t careful, the two are in danger of becoming similar, devoured by the pitfalls of tribalism. In many ways, the #MeToo discourse in Korea is in danger of devolving into a contest of whether you are against men or against women, with little ground in between.The dangers of bipolarization have been on full display in the US for a few decades now. In the recent midterm election, urban America
[David Ignatius] What Trump’s Syria decision means on front lines of fight against Islamic State group

Dec 27, 2018

The voice of Gen. Mazloum Abdi, the Kurdish commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces militia, is tight and controlled as he describes US President’s Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from the country and leave America’s allies to their fate.“This was something we never expected,” he said somberly in a telephone interview Saturday night from his command headquarters in northeast Syria. “Honestly, until now, everything the Americans told us, they fulfilled, and the same thing for us. … So we we
[Shuli Ren] Ladies in red make a bull case for Vietnam

Dec 27, 2018

Women hold up half of the sky, or so Communist China’s founding father, Mao Zedong, liked to say. These days, that’s certainly the case in Vietnam. 　Throughout the country, many well-known businesses are run by women. There’s Mai Kieu Lien, who captured the rising middle class’s thirst for protein-rich milk drinks and built Vietnam Dairy Products JSC into a $10 billion empire. Then there’s Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, founder of budget airline VietJet Aviation JSC, who became Vietnam’s first female b
[Jan-Werner Mueller] Reviving civil disobedience

Dec 26, 2018

With populism and authoritarianism on the rise around the world, there has been considerable talk of “resistance,” especially in the United States. A rather broad term, resistance could refer to everything from supporting opposition candidates to the life-threatening work of those who went underground to sabotage Nazi occupations during World War II. Such vagueness can cloud one’s thinking when weighing how best to achieve concrete goals.As it happens, there is a more precise alternative to “res
[Editorial] College tuition

Dec 26, 2018

Government should focus on enhancing college competitiveness rather than undermining autonomy