Human rights activists can be forgiven if they show less than complete enthusiasm for the upcoming summit meetings between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his South Korean and American counterparts. It is not just the distinct possibility of failure that they fear, although there is that. There is also the prospect that even if the talks succeed in lowering peninsular tensions or -- in a best-case scenario -- bringing a peace treaty and denuclearization, they will do so at the cost of legiti

When Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France last year, he was presented as a kind of European savior, a wunderkind who had burst onto the French political scene just in the nick of time. Now, many are asking, with a combination of schadenfreude and defeatism, whether Macron’s star burned too bright -- and so is destined to burn out fast. But this focus on Macron’s record so far threatens to overshadow his crucial message about the future of European democracy.Macron won the French presi

The conventional TV era is expected to come to an end. Trends have changed to TV-centered content received via set-top boxes, such as cable TV and internet-based online video-streaming contents. The impact from the emergence of “Over the Top” services, resulting from the swift development of information and communication technology, has spelled the end for the conventional TV age. Even the number of households with no TV has been increasing.The top issue in the cutting-edge media industry is now

Something odd is happening in the relationship between Congress and the executive branch regarding the use of military force. For decades, or even longer, countless senators and representatives have complained that presidents are not properly respectful of their constitutional prerogatives in making decisions on employing US military power. And today, most Democrats and a number of Republicans seem to agree that President Donald Trump is an impulsive, erratic, even dangerous commander-in-chief.　

The year is 1994. The United States and North Korea have just signed an agreement finalizing terms for denuclearization. No, this is not a piece of science fiction; it is something that actually happened. And yet, for some reason, North Korea remains today in possession of nuclear weapons. So what went wrong?First, let’s recount what happened in 1993. That year, as a member of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), North Korea hosted inspectors from the International Atomi

The leader of what was once considered one of the best-managed soccer clubs in the world stepped down Friday and the Twittersphere erupted in two opposite directions: jubilation and sadness.　Half of English football fans seem to regard the departure from the Arsenal Football Club of 68-year-old Arsene Wenger as coming years too late. The other half rues the brutality of a changing industry that turned his virtues into handicaps. Wenger was enormously successful and his club was nicely profitable

Police around the world are supposedly there “to serve and protect,” and yet we see the current showdown between a former chief of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and President Donald Trump sinking America’s already shaky democracy further into jeopardy. Elected leaders are of course mandated to assemble their own teams of specialists on agriculture, finance, public welfare and the like, but the police represent a different kind of institution, assigned a singular task, and that is ensuri

When Cuba’s President Raul Castro hands over power, the change will be more symbolic than substantive. The 86-year-old Castro will remain party leader until 2021 -- and his handpicked successor, Miguel Diaz-Canel, wasn’t chosen for his determination to dismantle Cuba’s police state or abandon its socialist economic system. Nonetheless, the end of the Castros’ era is an opportunity for change, and Diaz-Canel has every reason to try to seize it.Cuba’s economy is in a truly dismal state. After year

One of the most critical roles of a president is to negotiate terms of peace and war. The fate of a nation, or even the world, could hang in the balance; a misstep could plunge humanity into a worldwide war, but the right step could bring about long-awaited peace. A sudden and intense interest in the American president since his agreement to a US-North Korea summit took me to South Korea as editor of the book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.” More than two dozen top mental health professiona