The Korea Herald

[Zaki Laidi] Macron Doctrine? Not yet, but his goals coming into focus

Jul 6, 2017

French President Emmanuel Macron invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to Paris as his first foreign guest, while US President Donald Trump will attend this year’s Bastille Day celebrations. By reaching out to two world leaders who made no secret of their hope that he would never make it to the Elysee Palace, Macron has set the stage for a new and ambitious French foreign policy.The message Macron is sending is that he will remain open to new opportunities for compromise -- talking to anyone
[Noah Feldman] New travel ban rules distort family dynamics

Jul 6, 2017

President Donald Trump’s administration has issued guidelines through the State Department for who will be exempt from the travel ban from six majority Muslim countries, which the US Supreme Court allowed Monday to partly go into effect. The guidelines are highly arbitrary in defining what counts as a family relationship that merits exemption. For example, your mother-in-law is close enough to come into the US, but not your grandmother, a blood relative without whom you wouldn’t exist.That’s bec
[Trudy Rubin] Trump must join fight against disinformation

Jul 6, 2017

President Donald Trump’s twitter tirade against MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski last week revealed more than his continued willingness to demean his office — and women.He lambasted Brzezinski, co-host of Morning Joe, as “low I.Q., Crazy Mika” claiming she’d been “bleeding badly from a face-lift” when she briefly attended a social gathering at Mar-a-Lago on New Year’s Eve. On the surface, this was one more meltdown by a thin-skinned president who can’t stand criticism from mainstream journalists — which
[Letter to the Editor] Lessons for America from Korea: Mass protest works

Jul 6, 2017

When I moved to South Korea in 2015, I was impressed the country had a female president. In 2016, I thought the US would follow suit. Unfortunately, the unthinkable happened: Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States. Before Trump was elected (he lost the popular vote by more than 3 million by the way), Korea had its own political crisis with Park scandal. And yet, the Korean people moved swiftly and in unison with a single goal in mind: Impeach President Park. Public protests
[Adam Minter] Used goods new big thing in Asia

Jul 5, 2017

On the second floor of a 2,230-square-meter, used-goods superstore in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur, Koji Onazawa pauses beside some old Japanese surfboards. He’s spent nearly two decades at Bookoff Corp. -- a corporate legend in Japan that’s barely known outside it, with 832 secondhand shops across the country. Now he’s running Jalan Jalan Japan, the company’s first true foray into selling more than just used books abroad. “We’re not a representative of Bookoff here,” he says. “We’re a representa
[Kim Myong-sik] Moon’s populist approach to nuclear decisions

Jul 5, 2017

South Korea is at a crossroads in both the peaceful and military uses of nuclear power. The Moon Jae-in government shut down the oldest nuclear power plant in the nation and then announced a halt to two reactor construction projects, envisioning a total phasing out of nuclear energy in a few decades. In the area of military use, the new government says it remains committed to the international nonproliferation regime, but public opinion is turning heavily in favor of going nuclear. The governmen
[David Ignatius] Cooperation with Russia key to peace in Syria

Jul 5, 2017

When Donald Trump meets Vladimir Putin this Friday in Hamburg, Germany, the two presidents should have in the back of their minds the insignia worn by the Syrian Democratic Forces militia, which is America’s main ally in Syria. The patch shows a map of Syria bisected by the sharp blue line of the Euphrates River.The Euphrates marks the informal “deconfliction” line between the Russian-backed Syrian regime west of the river and the US-backed and Kurdish-led SDF to the east. In the past several we
Trump’s tweets prove again, billionaires don’t know best

Jul 5, 2017

By now, the rational or at least nonmisogynistic among us have had an opportunity to be appalled by US President Donald Tweet’s recent Trumps (or is that backwards? It’s hard to remember) regarding the hosts of “Morning Joe,” a cable TV talk show about which the president is apparently fixated. The exact language of the comments hardly deserves to be repeated again, but the nastiest (and loudest cry for psychiatric help from within the White House) was directed at Mika Brzesinski and touched on
[Ben Carlson] Baby boomers will live long but might not prosper

Jul 5, 2017

Investors are constantly reminded that it’s impossible to avoid risk in their portfolio. People are worried about geopolitical risk, interest rate risk, liquidity risk, losing money, volatility, uncertainty and the permanent impairment of capital. The list could go on forever.For the tens of millions of baby boomers who have retired or will be retiring in the years ahead, there is another risk that could prove far more important. The biggest threat to the majority of retirees will be outliving t
[Christopher Balding] Chinese companies can stand sunlight

Jul 4, 2017

For all their national pride and natural boosterism, Chinese officials don’t seem to think much of their own companies. Regulators have sought to limit everything from high-speed trading to short-selling, arguing Chinese firms can’t yet handle the vagaries of modern financial markets. They’re particularly leery of greater transparency, for fear of what might be exposed. Only last week, the China Banking Regulatory Commission was accused of secretly tipping off key banks to dump bonds of companie
[Joseph E. Stiglitz] Trump and the truth about climate change

Jul 4, 2017

Under President Donald Trump’s leadership, the United States took another major step toward establishing itself as a rogue state on June 1, when it withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. For years, Trump has indulged the strange conspiracy theory that, as he put it in 2012, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.” But this was not the reason Trump advanced for withdrawing the US from the Paris accord. Rather, the ag
[Kim Seong-kon] Certain endings and new beginnings

Jul 4, 2017

Last week, the LTI Korea Translation Academy held the commencement ceremony for our graduates of 2017. As president of the academy, I was so proud of the students from different nations who wore gorgeous academic gowns and caps, with big smiles on their faces and certificates of graduation in their hands. During my congratulatory remarks, I asked them to always keep three things in mind wherever they go. I told them, “First, I want you to build a cultural and literary bridge connecting the world
[Mac Margolis] Brazil needs to look beyond scandal

Jul 4, 2017

It’s hard to catch a breath in Brazil. Just the other day President Michel Temer dodged a brick, surviving potentially job-ending charges in electoral court that he’d won his mandate with dirty campaign money. Political bulls promptly declared Temer a survivor who would not only salvage vital political and economic reforms but also tough out his beleaguered presidency.But in a country where two of the last four democratically elected leaders have been ousted in disgrace, and some of the highest-
[Tim McGrath] Remembering James Monroe, last president to die on Independence Day

Jul 4, 2017

In the fall of ’16, Americans elected a presidential candidate with a well-deserved reputation for partisanship. Once inaugurated, he surprised his countrymen by seeking to end party politics and usher in a time of unity among Americans rarely seen in our history.Obviously, we’re not talking about 2016.No, this was in 1816 and that president was James Monroe. He and President Trump share little in common. Trump graduated from military school at 18 and compared it to actually being in the militar
[Other view] A tax battle for Congress to settle

Jul 4, 2017

We all know brick-and-mortar stores are failing left and right, victims largely of the national shift to e-commerce. One big disadvantage of the physical stores, besides having to pay for infrastructure and the staff to run it, is that they have to collect sales tax and their online competitors generally do not.And that means another big loser in the evolving digital world is state government, which is losing lots of tax revenue. States have been having to contend with the 1992 Supreme Court cas