China’s 19th Party Congress is drawing to a close with General-Secretary Xi Jinping’s power affirmed and enhanced. Xi’s three-hour speech on China’s “new era” was greeted with rapturous applause by delegates in the Great Hall of the People. The rest of the population had the chance to clap along on a new video game. His name will be included in the Party constitution, alongside Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. On Wednesday, the new lineup of the Politburo Standing Committee will very likely see his

The most important constitutional amendment of 2017 isn’t to the constitution of a country: It’s the amendment approved Tuesday to the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party, which enshrines President Xi Jinping’s “philosophy” alongside the thought of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.Talk about a sign of the times. Around the world, from Poland to Spain to Turkey, Israel, India and the US, constitutional democracy is undergoing a stress test. Buffeted by the forces of nationalism and populism,

Korea has recently been experiencing instability due to an extreme divide in national opinion. Despite the fact that North Korea’s nuclear missiles are pointed directly at South Koreans’ hearts, they appear unusually calm. There is nothing close to fervent discussion on military readiness against the potential attack. Rather, anti-war factions increasingly emphasize the devastation of war and even ruthlessly criticize the US, which has assisted South Korea greatly in the field of security. A goo

It was too bad that internal confusion here deepened while national security concerns grew with North Korea’s rising nuclear and missile provocations. South Koreans have passed the past year in ever-worsening political turmoil, including a presidential impeachment and under fears of war as the North has tested the patience of the world community by exploding a hydrogen bomb and firing missiles of various ranges one after the other. During this extraordinary period, people’s political minds were

Earlier this month, I did the unthinkable. I went from being an owner of a smartphone with a 5.5-inch screen with a resolution of 1300 pixels and 3 gigabytes of RAM, to a user of a flip phone with a 3.8-inch display with resolution of 800 pixels and 2 GB of RAM.While my previous phone could take notes and basic voice commands, split the screen for multitasking and make my face Instagram-ready with its own filters, my new phone can make calls and offers a button key to a basic version of KakaoTal

The hero of Kim Kyung Hyun’s novel, “In Search of Lost G,” is a bewildered Korean American named Kyung Hoon who wants to restore his original name, a symbol of his original identity that he has lost since his arrival in America as an immigrant. On his first day at school in the States, Kyung was instructed to write his name on the board to introduce himself to his classmates. Unfortunately, however, he was so nervous that he was not able to finish writing down his full name before the class ende