The Korea Herald

[Peter Singer] Are you buying oil from Saudi Arabia?

Nov 14, 2018

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate on Oct. 2 has focused attention on the Saudi regime, and especially on its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In large part, this is because Turkey’s government has kept the episode in the international spotlight.At first, Saudi officials said that Khashoggi had left the consulate. But with the Turkish government revealing lurid details of the murder, they finally acknowledged that he had died, claiming his death
[Jeffrey D. Sachs] Trump’s diminishing power and rising rage

Nov 14, 2018

The drama of Donald Trump’s presidency has centered on whether an extremist president would be able to carry out an extremist policy agenda against the will of the majority of Americans. So far the answer has been no, and the midterm elections make it far less likely. Yet Trump’s rising frustrations could push him over the edge psychologically, with potentially harrowing consequences for American democracy and the world.None of Trump’s extremist policy ideas has received public support. Trump ha
[Steve Lopez] One California calamity after another, and yet we always endure

Nov 14, 2018

We have no hurricanes, cyclones or statewide freezes in California.Everything else, we have.Earthquakes, yes. Torrential downpours, yes. Mudslides, yes. Extended droughts, yes. A president who kicks us when we’re down, yes.All that, as well as mass shootings and wind-whipped killer firestorms that devour parched vegetation, homes, people and everything else in their path.A town named Paradise has been reduced to ash.More than three dozen are dead in the Tubbs fire.The Woolsey Fire marches on Wes
[Kim Seong-kon] Native sons and daughters of Korea

Nov 13, 2018

In his monumental novel “Native Son,” Richard Wright depicts the tragic life of an African-American boy named Bigger Thomas who has to survive in the hostile environment of the white-dominant American society of the 1930s. It was the Great Depression era, and African-Americans were particularly in trouble because they were “last hired and first fired” at the time. Unable to get a job, Thomas is forced to live with his family in a one-room tenement in a slum district on Chicago’s South Side. Natu
[Anjani Trivedi] Rules of the road evade driverless cars

Nov 13, 2018

People have been imagining driverless cars since at least 1958, when Walt Disney Co. aired “Magic Highway U.S.A.” It’s been almost five decades, and we’re still talking about them.Initially, evolution in transport had been a product of necessity: As we moved from horse-drawn carriages to horseless ones, from steam engines to internal combustion, each development improved distance and speed. Then came luxuries like comfort and fuel-efficiency.Driverless cars could become more convenient than conv
[Mary C. Curtis] Did politics of division work? Yes and no

Nov 13, 2018

Donald Trump is a celebrity president, more interested in declaring a “great victory” after the 2018 midterms than in vowing to bring the country together. As he sparred with the media Wednesday and bragged about outdoing Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and famous folks who stumped for the other side, he did his best Rodney Dangerfield routine, playing the aggrieved president who has all the power but gets no respect.When asked about the violent episodes that shook America in the weeks before Nov. 6
[Lee Jaemin] New technology, the new economy and overregulation

Nov 13, 2018

Korea is a “fast” country. Everything is quick and speedy, with one exception: The regulatory framework. By and large, laws and regulations fall way behind technological development in the market. Startup companies’ first encounter is regulatory red tape. How ill-matched for a country that excels in information and communication technology. The tricky part is, these regulations have legitimate objectives. In particular, they are intended to mitigate risks, known and unknown. The default answer i
[James Stavridis] Today’s armies are still fighting World War I

Nov 13, 2018

A hundred years ago today, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the First World War in Europe ended. It had cost tens of millions of lives, utterly destroyed the existing political order, and paved the way for the rise of fascism and a repeat performance of global conflict in the form of World War II. Barbara Tuchman, in her peerless book on the outbreak of the war, “The Guns of August,” said, “Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.” In the
[Adam Minter] Your old smartphone is a security risk. Live with it

Nov 12, 2018

That obsolete smartphone stashed away in a drawer or closet may not look like a national security risk, but the Trump administration is contemplating treating it as one.Unscrupulous Chinese recyclers and manufacturers could transform old phones into “counterfeit goods that may enter the United States’ military and civilian electronics supply chain,” according to a draft rule. To prevent that from happening, the Department of Commerce proposes to severely restrict the export of used electronics.I
[Leonid Bershidsky] 80 years after Kristallnacht, I call Berlin home

Nov 12, 2018

I’ve been asked time and again how, being Jewish, I could choose to live in Berlin, of all places. The 80th anniversary of an event known in modern Germany under the unwieldy German-Russian name Novemberpogrome, is a good day to attempt an answer.The English-speaking world refers to it as Kristallnacht. The word Reichskristallnacht was first heard in 1939 from Nazi functionary Wilhelm Boerger to describe the events of Nov. 9, 1938, when Nazi storm troopers throughout Germany and Austria staged a
[Noah Smith] Democrats should aim high

Nov 12, 2018

The US government is divided once again. Democrats have the House of Representatives, while Republicans still hold the presidency and have deepened their control over the Senate. This means actual legislative breakthroughs are likely to be few and far between. But that doesn’t mean it’s useless to think about policy -- on the contrary, now is a perfect time for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to lay out their big ideas, as a way of inspiring the country to think about the future. Here’s a b
[Trudy Rubin] House win means Democrats can scrutinize Trump’s foreign policy

Nov 12, 2018

Don’t expect the mixed results of Nov. 6’s midterm elections to rein in “Trumpism.”I refer to the president’s personalized foreign policy that disses treaties, friendly leaders, old alliances and anything multilateral, but favors dealings with strongmen.Although the House of Representatives changed hands, the Republican Party’s increased control of the Senate will block any effort to pass legislation that could circumscribe Donald Trump’s foreign policy efforts. Moreover, the US Congress has rar
[Allison Jaslow] This is a time for everyday heroes

Nov 12, 2018

“Not all heroes wear capes.” This Veterans Day, I have a new spin on that popular saying: Not all American heroes wear camouflage.I appreciate the high regard most Americans have for us veterans in the post-9/11 era, but the strength of our country depends on patriots of all kinds. Every citizen has to be invested in the success of our democracy, not just those in the warrior class. And I definitely didn’t deploy to Iraq twice to defend this country, our constitution and our ideals abroad just t
[David Ignatius] America’s leaders could learn much from the ghosts of 1918

Nov 11, 2018

What would the ghosts of 1918 -- not just the soldiers who were slaughtered in the trenches of World War I, but the statesmen who failed to make a durable peace afterward -- tell politicians a century later about the perilous world we inhabit today? America just finished a snarling, bitterly divisive election, and we’re all puzzling over how to interpret the results. President Trump, meanwhile, headed for Paris last weekend to commemorate the armistice of what historian Margaret MacMillan has ca
[Leonid Bershidsky] Foldable phones are a chance for a tired industry

Nov 11, 2018

On Wednesday, after years of rumors and speculation, Samsung finally presented a smartphone with a foldable display that it plans to start selling next year. At the risk of sounding like a wide-eyed teenager, I consider this a potentially disruptive innovation on the scale of the iPhone -- if the manufacturers can handle it right.The technology has been more or less ripe for a while: The organic light-emitting compounds and the circuitry that delivers electric charges to them can be printed onto