The Korea Herald

[Lee Jae-min] An awkward survival game

Oct 31, 2017

Korean schools are notorious for their brutal competition. From elementary school to high school and to college, students and parents are exhausted with a continuous wave of competition. Exams, scores and rankings over and over again. It has almost become our fate. But none of us expected to see the same school-type competition after college, and certainly not in a government training program.Consider this. The brightest students study, day in and day out, for a national exam for two to three ye
[Carl P. Leubsdorf] If Trump would stand up to the right wing he could notch some political success

Oct 31, 2017

With rare exceptions, Donald Trump has refused to reach out to opposition lawmakers and voters to build a governing coalition that would bolster his prospects for passing his prime proposals.He has paid a political price, exacerbating the existing partisan atmosphere, diminishing his own standing and forcing his congressional Republican allies to rely totally on their own, sometimes divided troops in a way that has proved challenging.Though partisan tension continues to be high, as evidenced by
[Minxin Pei] Paradox of Xi’s power

Oct 30, 2017

At the end of the six-day 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the roughly 2,200 delegates decided to add “Xi Jinping Thought” on the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics to the CPC’s constitution. With that, it became official: the era of Xi has begun.Only two previous Chinese leaders, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, have had their personally branded ideology enshrined in the CPC’s charter. Xi’s two predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, did not have their names
[Noah Smith] Rise of creative class worked little too well

Oct 30, 2017

It’s the rare public intellectual who admits to making big mistakes. Usually, the rule is to defend everything you’ve ever said, in an attempt to maintain a reputation for wisdom. Richard Florida, the noted urbanist and professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, is among the select few to go back and reevaluate his big ideas.　In his 2002 book, “The Rise of the Creative Class,” Florida both anticipated and helped promote the trends that would come to define the US
[Pittsburgh Post-Gazette] Boost to Brexit? Possible Russian role should be checked out

Oct 30, 2017

The British are now looking into whether President Vladimir Putin’s Russia intervened in the United Kingdom’s June 2016 referendum on continued membership in the European Union. “Brexit” won with about 52 percent, but it’s unclear whether Russian interference in the affair, through social media buys or other means, made a difference. Many people in Britain long have had reservations about integration and complaints about the EU, so the outcome did not come as a shot from the dark.At the same tim
[Kim Young-sun] ASEAN and Korea share common destiny

Oct 30, 2017

During the Korean Thanksgiving holidays early this month, the airport was flooded with people leaving the country in droves. So where were these people going? In fact, the No. 1 travel destination for the Korean people was once again in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. More than 600,000 people traveled to ASEAN during the holiday. To Korea, ASEAN is a very close partner and neighbor, and the two sides have close cooperation and exchange in a variety of areas.　 ASEAN and Korea became d
[Doyle McManus] If Trump tax plan passes, don’t count on raise

Oct 30, 2017

President Donald Trump and his Republican allies face a basic problem as they try to build public support for a cut in corporate taxes: Most Americans think big businesses pay too little in taxes, not too much. So the president and his staff decided to rebrand the proposal. Don’t think of it as a tax cut for corporations, they argue; think of it as a pay increase for ordinary workers.“The average American family would get a $4,000 raise under the President’s tax cut plan,” Trump’s spokeswoman, S
[David Ignatius] Might Xi Jinping’s star be burning too bright?

Oct 30, 2017

President Xi Jinping’s command at this month’s Communist Party gathering was so complete that President Trump likened him to a “king.” But some China analysts are wondering whether Xi has overreached.Xi dominated the stage, literally and figuratively, at the party’s 19th Congress, which ended this week in Beijing. His consolidation of power has nearly erased the collective leadership style of his recent predecessors and vaulted him into a Chinese pantheon occupied only by Mao Zedong and Deng Xia
[Trudy Rubin] Will GOP truth tellers gain any traction?

Oct 30, 2017

Enough! That was Sen. Jeff Flake’s message when he launched a fierce attack this week on President Trump’s debasement of the presidency. He was trying to shake his Republican colleagues out of their “complicity” in Trump’s destructive behavior.Flake’s blast followed a series of astonishing critiques of Trumpism by the conservative trio of President George W. Bush, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Bob Corker. This GOP truth squad has warned that our democracy and future security are being endangered.“I
[Christopher Balding] Can China inflate its debt away?

Oct 30, 2017

China is witnessing something most of the world’s major economies haven’t seen in quite some time: rising prices. With growth strong but debt at perhaps 300 percent of gross domestic product, that’s a welcome sign. The danger is that China’s government now hopes inflation will solve its other problems.From 2013 until this year, the GDP deflator, a broad measure of prices, never rose by more than 2.3 percent. Most of the time, it hovered just above zero. This pushed up the real cost of China’s de
[Edward Niedermeyer] Silicon Valley learns to play nice with Detroit

Oct 30, 2017

Ever since Silicon Valley’s autonomous cars and mobility apps captured the public imagination, so too has the prospect of an epic battle -- between the forces of high industry and high technology. Nurtured in part by recent history and in part by the part of our brains that loves to watch a good fight, the expectation of an auto-versus-tech throwdown has already become nearly inescapable.　And yet, after the first exchange of rhetorical salvos and billion-dollar investments, there are already sig
[Christine M. Flowers] Is #Metoo a modern version of the Salem witch trials?

Oct 30, 2017

It’s been a little over a week since the #Metoo campaign found its mojo, prompting social media to erupt in a “girl power” storm of women who decided that enough was enough. I wrote about it in my last column and really had no intention of returning to the same trough so soon.But I simply can’t ignore what is happening with this sexual assault business, and at the risk of getting more hate mail (and a few timid “attagirls!”) this week’s column is going to be #Metoo 2.1.Or, as I prefer to call it
[Noah Smith] Japan goes with another round of Abenomics

Oct 27, 2017

Japan’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party has figured out a novel and interesting way to stay in power -- govern pragmatically, focus on the economy and give people what they want.　Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his party have been returned to power in decisive fashion in an early election. It’s not difficult to see why -- the Japanese economy is doing better than it has in at least a decade. The Pew Research Center finds that since Abe took office in 2013, optimism about the economy has excee
[Cass R. Sunstein] Nudges made British life better

Oct 27, 2017

Just a few days after Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize in economics earlier this month, the UK’s Behavioural Insights Team released its annual report. What good timing! Thaler helped inspire the creation of the Behavioural Insights Team in 2010, not only with his academic work, but also by numerous (and continuing) discussions with the team.　Drawing on work in psychology, Thaler showed that people don’t always make fully rational choices, and that their decisions can be greatly affected by app
[Editorial] Surprise growth

Oct 27, 2017

Policymakers must avoid excessive optimism, strengthen fundamentals