The Korea Herald

[Endy M. Bayuni] Widodo turns to Islam-nationalism to preserve Indonesia’s diversity

Apr 17, 2017

Irrespective of the result, the Jakarta gubernatorial election Wednesday will leave a bitter aftertaste that could have consequences on the political landscape in the rest of Indonesia. The election is already billed as the ugliest, most divisive and most polarizing the country has ever seen.　Religion, and to a lesser extent, race, were issues that were widely exploited in the election. Rivals trying to unseat the hugely popular incumbent, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, virtually forced Jakarta voters
[Other view] Protect privacy at the border

Apr 17, 2017

In a recent op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, naturalized US citizen Lubana Adi detailed how Customs and Border Protection agents seized and searched her phone without a warrant when she returned from visiting her family in Turkey. “Does the 4th Amendment apply to Muslim citizens at LAX?” she asked.The sad truth is that its core protections don’t seem to apply to any US citizen at the border, where customs agents are as free to pore through hard drives as they are to scrutinize roller bags and ba
[Other view] Stop pretending on Greek debt

Apr 16, 2017

Greece and its creditors say they’ve made progress in their endless negotiations over the country’s debts -- enough to avoid a default on payments worth more than 7 billion euros ($7.43 billion) in July. That’s good, but it was the easy part. The definitive settlement still isn’t in sight.For the past seven years, the International Monetary Fund and eurozone institutions have supported Athens with loans in exchange for fiscal austerity and structural economic reform. This strategy has failed to
[Robert Park] Japan and China visibly preparing for preventive strike fallout

Apr 16, 2017

Japan and China have already taken clear-cut measures to safeguard their nationals and interests in the event of a looming military confrontation.Meanwhile, Korean civilians -- who would suffer most devastatingly as “collateral damage” on account of preventive strikes against North Korea -- remain singularly and inexplicably vulnerable as well as thoroughly unprepared for the possibility.Bewilderingly, South Korea’s opposition to such strikes has yet to be delivered to the US in an unequivocal a
[Fabiola Santiago] US an increasingly authoritarian society

Apr 16, 2017

Finally, in a third statement two days too late made after United Airlines lost millions in stock market value, CEO Oscar Munoz got around to appropriately apologizing for the “truly horrific” forced removal of a passenger from a full flight.“I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the customers aboard,” Munoz said in a statement Tuesday. “No one should ever be mistreated this way.”　In his last two tries, the executive only managed to increase by another decibel the outrag
[Adam Minter] Dude, who plugged in my plane?

Apr 16, 2017

The concept is familiar: Replace car journeys with high-speed, electric-powered travel for the masses. China does it with a famous (and famously expensive) high-speed train network. Last week, Boeing and JetBlue Airways invested in another idea: electric planes. If their bet pans out, travelers could start making their first trips in the Teslas of the air in a decade. That could transform the way great swathes of the world get from point A to point B -- to everyone’s benefit.　Electric planes are
[Ben Carlson] How markets overcame past geopolitical crises

Apr 16, 2017

According to a survey by the CFA Institute, more than two-thirds of global investment professionals expect the geopolitical climate to affect investment returns over the next three to five years. And a full 70 percent of respondents expect these changes to negatively affect market performance.　In the past nine months or so, the world has seen its share of upheaval, starting last June with the Brexit vote and continuing in November with the election of Donald Trump as president. On April 6, anoth
[David Ignatius] Trump gets taste of success

Apr 16, 2017

For a reminder of how new administrations can quickly get into trouble in foreign policy, consider that Monday, April 17, marks the anniversary of the catastrophic Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. Bad things can happen to good presidents, and vice versa. 　President Donald Trump, after a mostly disastrous first two months, has had a good run these past two weeks in foreign policy. He acted decisively in Syria, gained China as a possible partner in dealing with North Kore
[Other view] Congress must have say in war-making decisions like Syria strike

Apr 14, 2017

President Trump’s decision to order 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria last week does nothing to bring stability to that country, protect American national security or strengthen our position in the world.　It does, however, continue an unfortunate trend of American presidents committing acts of war with hardly even the pretense of legal protocol or long-term geopolitical strategy.　Ostensibly in retaliation for the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons which killed upwards of 100 people
[Martin Schram] US, Russia rewind and rerun their classic thriller

Apr 14, 2017

Some one thousand miles due east of Moscow’s always-tightly secured Kremlin, where Russia’s president and foreign minister met Wednesday with America’s secretary of state, life has long seemed pastoral and downright peaceful.It may well be that nothing about the small southwestern Siberian city of Shchuchye was on the minds of Vladimir Putin, Sergey Lavrov and Rex Tillerson as they confronted each other’s diplomatic demons.They may never have known the tranquility that a handful of Americans sav
[Adam Minter] Why United won’t lose altitude in China

Apr 14, 2017

By mid-afternoon Tuesday, Chinese online anger at United Airlines was running so hot that the hashtag #UnitedForcesPassengerOffPlane was receiving 20 million views per hour on the Sina Weibo social network. Such fury is more typically reserved for geopolitical spats with the likes of Japan and South Korea. It’s little wonder that the outrage earned the attention of United Continental Holdings Inc. shareholders, who drove the company’s stock down 4 percent while the hashtag was still atop the ran
[David Ignatius] Trump got Syria and China right last week. That’s a start.

Apr 13, 2017

The Trump administration’s foreign policy has been a dizzying spectacle of mixed messages and policy reversals during its first three months. But in last week’s crucial tests, President Trump made good decisions about Syria, Russia and China — moving his erratic administration a bit closer toward the pillars of traditional US policy. The decision to strike a Syrian air base was a confidence builder for an inexperienced and sometimes fractious White House, a senior official said. Trump couldn’t b
[Chicago Tribune] United took worst route in overbooked flight incident

Apr 13, 2017

United Airlines sure had a twisted way of showing customer appreciation during a Sunday flight out of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. A video that has now gone viral shows security officers forcibly yanking a man out of his seat on a United Express flight and dragging him down the aisle by his wrists. Horrified passengers watched — and recorded.The incident occurred because United had overbooked the flight from Chicago to Louisville. The airline sought volunteers to give up their seats.
[Joshua J. Whitfield] Missiles and tweets can make us feel better

Apr 13, 2017

The suffocating suffering of children is difficult to watch, the young yellow pallor of quivering chemical death. Still and other-worldly, their paralyzed expressions of death are a judgment upon our plain stupidity.　As the better of our kind ministered futile mercy in their last moments, those small children died brutally and slowly, on our phones and televisions in between our pornography and sitcoms. Dead and bitter sacraments of a simple bitter question. Why?　It’s that we saw them die that m
[Andrew Sheng] Asia’s search for cultural-intellectual rejuvenation

Apr 13, 2017

Last month, Professor Michael Heng argued in Singapore that in order to achieve the Asian Century, there is a need for Asian cultural-intellectual rejuvenation.　Heng’s lecture was in the tradition of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Dean Kishore Mahbubani’s 1998 challenge -‘Can Asians think?’　This search for intellectual rejuvenation is made more urgent by the rise of Trumpism, which has overturned the American neo-liberal world order to spread free markets, democracy and technology to the r