The Korea Herald

[Virginia Postrel] Remote work not about avoiding the commute

Jul 3, 2017

When I peered in the window at 140 Hawthorne Street in San Francisco, the place looked deserted. Maybe Automattic, the company that owns WordPress, had already abandoned the 1,300-square-meter former warehouse it renovated just four years ago. The long work tables were still there, the Aeron chairs still awaiting laptop-porting employees, a big screen still ready for someone’s presentation, a few computers still lining a back table. But no one seemed to be around.Then, way in the back of the cav
[Daniel L. Dreisbach] The Declaration, the constitution, the Bible

Jul 3, 2017

By Daniel L. Dreisbach
[Andres Oppenheimer] Latin America has surplus of talent, shortage of innovation

Jul 3, 2017

Amid the bloodshed in Venezuela, the corruption scandal in Brazil and the stream of bizarre tweets coming from President Trump, a very important news item has gone almost unnoticed in Latin America: A new study says the region is failing miserably in innovation.The Global Innovation Index 2017, a ranking of 130 countries around the world, says that African, Eastern European and Southeast Asian countries are doing much better than Latin America when it comes to modernizing their economies and pro
[Francis Wilkinson] A law to deter violence that won’t

Jul 3, 2017

Legislation is often reactive. Crime rises and in response legislatures fund cops, prosecutors, prisons. A high-rise burns and a new law requiring fire-retardant construction materials is readied.Kate’s Law is both reactive and proactive. Named for Kate Steinle, a 32-year-old American who was shot dead in July 2015 in San Francisco, the House of Representatives passed the legislation Thursday. The bill would raise maximum sentences for immigrants caught entering the US illegally, with the penalt
[Other view] Supreme Court’s travel ban decision creates new confusion

Jul 3, 2017

Monday’s US Supreme Court decision to allow a limited version of President Donald Trump’s travel ban to proceed until the court rules on the full case this fall was not a “clear victory for our national security,” as the president claimed in a triumphant tweet.Instead, it amplified a damaging message in the US and abroad, undercutting efforts to counter violent extremism. The ban targets six mostly Muslim nations -- Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. That fact betrays American values
[Joo Joong-chul] Has cultural diplomacy been forgotten?

Jul 3, 2017

Due to the allergic reaction to the “culture prosperity policy” of the former government, the word “culture” can hardly be found in the recent diplomacy of the new government. As the case may be, it is natural for cultural diplomacy to be left behind because of present diplomatic issues. Nonetheless, our government’s cultural diplomacy, represented by public diplomacy, has been making steady progress. We have pursued a “public diplomacy with the people” in earnest by building a collaborative sys
[Adam Minter] China won’t save blockbusters

Jul 2, 2017

It certainly looked like a bomb. “Transformers: The Last Knight,” which cost Paramount Pictures over $350 million to make and market, earned a lame $69 million during its first five days in US theaters in mid-June. Paramount executives could overlook that performance because in China, where the “Transformers” series has enjoyed a decade of wild popularity, the film earned over $123 million during the same period. But the time when Hollywood filmmakers could count on Chinese viewers to rescue the
[Sin-ming Shaw] Hong Kong’s handover hangover

Jul 2, 2017

Last month, an estimated 100,000 Hong Kong residents gathered in Victoria Park to mark the 28th anniversary of China violent repression of pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. As the South China Morning Post noted, the event in Hong Kong was the only large-scale public commemoration of June 4, 1989, permitted on Chinese soil. And, to the attendees, the Hong Kong demonstration reflected growing frustration, not only with China’s leaders, but also with their own.On the surface,
[Leonid Bershidsky] Sweden’s smart idea for reducing global killing

Jul 2, 2017

Sweden is about to take a bold step: Its government wants to be the first in the world to impose legislative curbs on selling weapons to undemocratic regimes. If other big arms exporters did the same, fewer people would die in senseless wars.Sweden is the 12th biggest arms exporter in the world, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, with 2016 exports worth $1.2 billion. Many in the country’s powerful civil society have long protested against sales to repressive regim
[Sebastian Johnson] Case for universal basic income

Jul 2, 2017

By now you will have heard rumblings of the policy idea known as “universal basic income.” This is the notion that the government should give every citizen enough no-strings-attached money to cover basic living expenses.In the last year alone, Mark Zuckerberg called on Harvard’s graduating class to “explore ideas like universal basic income,” Elon Musk told a gathering of world leaders in Dubai that “some kind of universal basic income is going to be necessary” and President Obama remarked that
[Ed Feulner] Cost of waiting to drain the swamp is high

Jul 2, 2017

"Drain the swamp!" It was the battle cry of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.Many Republican members of the US Congress echoed that call as well, riding it to victory -- and control of both legislative chambers.The American people rallied around the cry because it reinforced their impression of what Washington had become: a swamp infested with special interest groups and power-hungry bureaucrats.They rallied, too, because it held the promise of getting our country back on track -- by reformi
[Other view] ‘Clean Coal’ will always be a fantasy

Jul 2, 2017

"Clean coal," always dubious as a concept and never proved as a reality, has now failed as business proposition. Southern Co. has decided to stop work on a process that would have captured carbon dioxide emissions from a coal plant in Mississippi.Giving up on the project, which was nearly $5 billion over budget and three years behind schedule, makes sense for Southern‘s customers and shareholders. And giving up on carbon capture makes sense for the energy industry. The technology is too expensiv
[Adam Minter] China’s trafficking problem

Jun 30, 2017

The US State Department’s decision to name China one of the world’s worst offenders in human trafficking was greeted with predictable resentment in Beijing. With some justification, Chinese officials argue that they’re at least trying to tackle a difficult problem, and in any case, that they hardly belong in the same category as egregious regimes such as North Korea and Sudan. But the fact is that China’s trafficking issues are at least in part a legacy of government policies -- and they won’t b
[David Ignatius] Is war between China and US inevitable?

Jun 30, 2017

Let’s imagine a Chinese “applied history” project, similar to the one at Harvard’s Belfer Center that helped spawn professor Graham Allison’s widely discussed book “Destined for War.”Allison’s historical analysis led him to posit a “Thucydides Trap” and the danger (if not inevitability) of war between a rising China and a dominant America, like the ancient conflict between Athens and Sparta chronicled by the Greek historian Thucydides. A study by the Belfer Center’s Applied History Project ident
[Michael Schuman] Japan Inc. repeats its mistakes

Jun 29, 2017

Much of the economic news out of Japan these days is unusually good. Growth has picked up. Joblessness is practically nonexistent. The country even appears to be tackling some of its long-term problems. The government is breaking with its often protectionist past and finalizing a major free-trade pact with the European Union.Yet there are also troubling signs that government and business leaders still haven’t learned enough from 25 years of economic drift and decay. The latest example is the sag