Recently, a Korean journalist stationed in Tokyo wrote an amusing article comparing Japan, Korea and the US. He wrote of his experience in each of the three countries when he tried to change the delivery date of a TV he had purchased. In Japan, the customer service agent was extremely nice and friendly, but declined his request politely, saying it was against the policy. In Japan, you are rude if you try to change your appointment when the prearranged date is near. In Korea, the customer consu

In 1936, human rights advocates pushed for a boycott of the “Nazi Olympics,” two years after Adolf Hitler seized power and began persecuting Jews. Some critics claimed the move was hypocritical given the ongoing discrimination against Black people in the United States. In the end, however, the games went on, with Black US track star Jesse Owens winning four gold medals. Thus, the 1936 games dealt a blow to Nazi claims of “Aryan” racial supremacy. Fast forward to the upc

In his quest to make his country the undisputed leader of the global economy, China’s President Xi Jinping can learn a lot from his next-door neighbor, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Not about what to do, but about what not to do. Except Xi just doesn’t seem to get it. Putin has been putting on a cram course of a clinic that you would think would be helping his nominally still-communist neighbor figure out how to out-capitalist the capitalists. Someday in the not-far-off

The 20th anniversary of China’s accession to the World Trade Organization on Dec. 11 has once again highlighted long-standing debates about how well China has lived up to its WTO obligations, and whether any deviation from its commitments boosts or slows its economic growth. This discussion affects many countries’ views on whether the current global trading system should be built up or pulled down. Former US President Donald Trump was bent on pulling down the WTO, by rendering inope

Approximately 13 percent of low-wage jobs in Germany would not be viable if workers understood just how good their outside options truly are. That is the conclusion of a recent paper by Benjamin Schoefer, my colleague here at the University of California, Berkeley, and his co-authors, Simon Jager, Christopher Roth and Nina Roussille. “When comparing workers’ subjective outside options against objective measures of pay premia from matched employer-employee data,” they note, &

History repeats itself -- and it oftentimes is not kind. I have been reminded of this in the closing weeks of the past several years. As Korea approached the 21st century, hearts filled with hope and eyes rejoiced at sights unseen before. The history of an undivided Korean Peninsula seemed likely to be repeated. But a Cold War freeze rose again. On Nov. 18, 1998, a cruise ship left Donghae Port on the east coast, carrying the first group of 826 South Korean tourists to Kumgangsan in North Kor

There are times when a literary work or a film is powerful enough to change a person’s life or even an entire social system by altering our consciousness. It means that literature and film can play an important role in both human lives and social progress. Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” is a good example. Lee’s powerful novel and its superb movie version, starring Gregory Peck, have changed so many people’s lives. The novel and the movie also changed m

After working on it for several months, the House of Representatives recently passed the Build Back Better Act. It’s status in the Senate is uncertain, but if enacted, it’s expected to increase government spending by $1.75 trillion over 10 years. With the legislation’s tax increases and tougher IRS enforcement, the Congressional Budget Office estimates a smaller, $250 billion increase in the deficit. But if temporary and sunset provisions designed to keep the official cost d

At last month’s COP26 climate summit, hundreds of financial institutions declared that they would put trillions of dollars to work to finance solutions to climate change. Yet a major barrier stands in the way: The world’s financial system actually impedes the flow of finance to developing countries, creating a financial death trap for many. Economic development depends on investments in three main kinds of capital: human capital (health and education), infrastructure (power, digita

Virtually every unofficial US Supreme Court watcher has reported feeling a chill wind of political reality and pending change as it whipped through the court’s imposing chamber this past Wednesday -- and then whooshed through the Great News Funnel into the homes of all Americans. A chill wind of change: You could hear it in the questions the justices asked in the oral argument of a case challenging a recent Mississippi law that bans virtually all abortions after the first 15 weeks of pre

This long, strange season of the pandemic has made so many things impossible that it’s easy to forget the many things it’s made newly possible. For me, one of its unexpected gifts has been a round-the-clock immersion -- and instruction -- in the vast gap between the two continents I call home and the radical differences that still cut up our seemingly connected global neighborhood. Ten times during the age of COVID-19 I’ve flown across the Pacific between my longtime apartmen

Coming back from a trip to Europe suggested to me that the US-China rivalry was not headline news within Europe. Europe appeared more concerned with the urgent job of economic recovery amidst the omicron threat that is leading to more lockdowns. Protests in Rotterdam and elsewhere showed that the public, especially the young, are rebelling against further restrictions to their rights to socialize. Back in Asia, the news is incessantly in the face on US-China conflicts, including threatened boy

Thanksgiving Day in the US this year was supposed to mark another step in a return to normal as more people traveled than at any time since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The next morning, the world awoke to alarming news of a new and potentially dangerous variant of the virus identified by scientists in South Africa. As expected, stock markets tumbled, and governments imposed travel bans on southern African nations. Over the weekend, the WHO officially declared it a “variant of concern&rdqu

President Joe Biden has pledged to “revitalize our national commitment to advancing human rights and democracy around the world.” This month, he will host a virtual Summit for Democracy as a demonstration of that commitment. But it is still unclear how democracy and human rights will fare in the trade-off of foreign policy priorities. This administration’s policy toward Africa will provide a good test case of how Biden’s team will navigate these choices, and that policy

“I don’t like communists,” said Chung Yong-jin, vice chairman of the Shinsegae business group in a message on social media recently. He was responding to comments about his picture carrying a red wallet and Jackson Pizza in an advertisement. “Do I look any bit like a communist? Never misunderstand me ... I believe in anti-communist democracy which should be the core of our patriotism and is the only way to realize the ideals of the Free World,” he said. As a citiz