There are billions of reasons to be skeptical whenever President Donald Trump and his White House team roll out headline-worthy trade deals and job announcements.　Take the president’s visit to China, for example. Trump announced $250 billion of deals there on Thursday, and he and Chinese President Xi Jinping described them as “win-win” transactions full of economic benefits for both superpowers.　But as a Bloomberg News article reported, “The roughly 15 agreements unveiled on Thursday are mostly

The size of the global medical equipment market was estimated to be $371 billion as of the end of 2015, of which the Korean market share is estimated to be about 1.7 percent, the ninth-largest in the world. It is expected that the global digital health care industry will increase by 6.8 percent per annum to $6.8 trillion by 2020.　The global medical equipment market is dominated by major companies of advanced economies, such as the US, Germany and Japan, and each of these governments is very care

Russia values the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum -- which begins this week in Danang, Vietnam -- for the opportunities it affords all participants to engage in discussions and coordinate positions on a variety of economic, social, environmental and cultural issues. Member states strive to cooperate based on the principles of consensus and voluntary participation, mutual respect and willingness to compromise, regardless of the political situation. This is what APEC’s spirit of partnershi

On his recent trip to Japan, President Donald Trump sounded more like a 1980s trade negotiator than a 2010s statesman. He urged Japan to invest more in the US, buy more military equipment and import more liquefied natural gas, and generally pressed for other measures that he thinks will reduce his country’s trade deficit with its main Pacific ally.But Trump is focusing on the wrong things. Japan’s trade surplus with the US is mostly not about protectionism or aggressive Japanese policy -- it’s a

As the United States marks the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s election, the question of how Trump won still commands attention, with Russia’s role moving increasingly to center stage. Each new revelation in the investigation of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 campaign brings the vulnerability of the US democratic process into sharper focus.Last week, Congress unveiled legislation that would force Facebook, Google, and other social media giants to disclose who buys online advertising

Few people in South Korea, China and Japan now appear to be aware the three countries have held negotiations on concluding a trilateral free trade agreement over the past five years.The latest and 12th round of negotiations held in Tokyo in April drew little attention, having made little headway from previous discussions.During their meeting in November 2015, leaders of the three countries agreed to continue their work toward economic integration by making “further efforts to accelerate the tril

History does repeat itself. Jeong Yeon-ju, a liberal journalist, took the helm of the state-run Korea Broadcasting System at the start of the Roh Moo-hyun administration in 2003. He was sacked in 2008 in his second term as Lee Myung-bak’s conservative rule began. To force his departure, the new government reshuffled the KBS board, which then charged Jeong with a host of personal misdeeds. 　Nine years later, no sooner had Moon Jae-in been elected president in May 2017 than the CEOs of KBS and Mun

In November 1983, US President Ronald Reagan visited South Korea amid rising global tension. In September that year, the Soviet Union shot Korean Air Lines’ flight 007 out of the air, killing the 269 people aboard. One month later, many senior members of the South Korean government were killed by a North Korean bomb attack in Rangoon, Burma. The 1980s economic boom in South Korea was gathering steam, but anger at Chun Doo-hwan’s dictatorship was building.During his visit, Reagan addressed the Na