When President Trump recently tweeted that he has a big “nuclear button” that he can and will use, it was one of the most ridiculous things I had heard from a president. Well, one of the most, since ex-President Park Geun-hye said she “didn’t know” that she was getting in trouble when she let her friend Choi Soon-sil run the country. In addition to who spoke the words -- the president of the world’s most powerful country with corresponding responsibilities -- the choice of vocabulary had a great

Visit an apartment complex in Seoul at night. Cars are not just parked; they are packed in every corner of the compound. You could see any conceivable way of using space to leave a car for the night. The remainder are lined up on nearby streets until the next morning. Inside the complex, a small lane is left where one car can just barely pass. Passages for fire trucks have been narrowed and hydrants have been blocked. People push cars backward and forward the next morning to “dig out” their cars

When I studied at the State University of New York at Buffalo 40 years ago, I learned English poetry from the famous poet Robert Creeley. At the time, a host of celebrated American and Canadian poets visited the university for poetry readings. Whenever Bob Creeley introduced me to them, he almost always added after the formal introduction, “Mr. Kim is a reliable person.” It made me happy because I knew it was one of the best compliments an American can give. Indeed, if you are labeled as an unre

In one of the latest presidential tweets to make headlines, President Trump responded to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s nuclear button threat by saying he had an even bigger and more powerful one.Whether you love or loathe the president’s tweets, one must look beyond the 280-character count to assess the administration’s foreign policies. A good place to start is the latest national security assessment. The report outlines the threats of North Korea, Russia and terrorist networks, but it al

Is China destined to dominate the Asia-Pacific? Among US allies and partners in the region, there seems to be a growing doubt that America can win the ongoing competition for influence with China, and that they must begin preparing for a regional order headed by Beijing. The challenge for America, then, is to ensure that this feeling of strategic fatalism doesn’t become a self-fulfilling prophecy.It is an undeniable fact that China has been making a concerted and accelerating push for regional s

The onset of a new year brings plenty of predictions, and so I will hazard one: Many of the biggest events of 2018 will be bound together by a common theme, namely the collision of the virtual internet with the real “flesh and blood” world. This integration is likely to steer our daily lives, our economy, and maybe even politics to an unprecedented degree.　For instance, the coming year will see a major expansion of the Internet of Things, especially home and other smart devices subject to our co