For governments facing a growing wave of coronavirus cases as fall turns to winter, there’s a stark lesson in Saturday’s stunning election victory for New Zealand’s incumbent Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern: Voters really want their governments to suppress the pandemic. A landslide victory means Ardern could govern with the first outright majority since her country adopted proportional representation in the 1990s, with her Labour party on track to win the largest share of

South Korea’s stock market has been reinvigorated by a series of major initial public offerings this year. Starting with the IPO of SK Biopharmaceuticals in July, promising biopharmaceutical firms and other tech companies went public with their initial prices soaring rapidly ahead of IPOs. But recently, newly listed stocks were bearish unlike initial expectations. Big Hit Entertainment, the entertainment agency behind K-pop boy band BTS, slid for two straight days right after the hig

In 1989 I was a captain in the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment stationed in West Germany. Our regiment patrolled a stretch of the Iron Curtain that divided democracies and dictatorships. That November, the Berlin Wall fell and the Iron Curtain parted. The United States and the free world had triumphed over communist totalitarianism without firing a shot. The Soviet Union soon broke apart. Just over a year later, those same cavalry troopers helped kick Saddam Hussein’s army out of Kuwait. In

"Where does Korea stand in tackling climate change? Going forward, what path should we take next to ensure sustainable growth while Korea’s growth model has once led to a successful industrialization?" As I watched the global protest play out on the Global Day of Climate Action on Sept. 25, I found myself ruminating about Korea’s position in the global response to climate change which is so often condensed into the word "Green." In 2015, governments around the w

This summer’s weather -- the record-long jangma (rainy season), a series of more powerful typhoons, frequent heavy rains - seemed to be a strong warning of climate change. Siberia experienced a period of unusually high temperatures that occurred less than once in 80,000 years without anthropogenic global warming, and just recently, the US city of Denver went from a record heat wave of over 30 degrees to below freezing with snowfall overnight. The world is clearly suffering from abnormal w

Remember in June when China called a halt to purchases of US soybeans and then stopped buying US soybeans? Or last year, when China blocked imports of Australian coal and then stopped buying Australian coal? Yeah, me neither. That’s the way to think about Beijing’s latest “ban” on Australian coal. China has suspended purchases and told power stations and steel mills to stop using product sourced from its trading partner, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg New

The volume of smuggled goods to South Korea increased when compared to last year, according to a report from South Korean lawmaker Hong Ik-pyo based on the data from Korea Customs Service. According to the report, the volume of illegal trade between January and August this year has reached 239.9 billion won ($209.6 million), surpassing last year’s total of 209.4 billion won. The report added that illicit trade of cigarettes soared in particular. The volume of smuggled cigarettes as of

The news of the death of famed feminist scholar and activist Lee Hyo-jae last week brought back a memory from the early 1980s. I met her briefly at the house of a friend of mine, where she was hiding, in the wake of the civil uprising in Gwangju. She was among the pro-democracy intellectuals wanted by the Chun Doo-hwan regime, which had concocted a case against them for supporting the then opposition politician Kim Dae-jung’s “sedition and conspiracy.” It was a precarious tim

  진행자: 임현수, Paul Kerry 1.   Koreans protest Berlin district's order to remove 'statue of peace' 요약: 베를린 마테구에 설치된 소녀상에 떨어진 허가가 철회되어 철거 위험에 놓인 동상 [1] A legal battle to protect a statue erected in the German capital commemorating the victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery began on Monday as Koreans based in Germany sought to invalidate a Berlin district office’s order to remove the statue. *commemorate: 기념하다 *wartime: 전쟁 중의 *invalidate: 틀렸음을 입증 [2] Korea Verband,

Recruitment by South Korean firms of foreign experts in various fields dropped to 153 as of the first nine months of this year, according to data submitted by the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency to Rep. Lee Joo-hwan. The number is one-quarter of the 615 recruited in 2016.  (khnews@heraldcorp.com) 　

Wcoding, which provides coding education in English, says that Seoul needs to bring in more global talents and businesses to turn the metropolitan city into a regional tech hub. “We believe Seoul is an ideal place for tech-related ventures in Asia, and that’s why we’re helping our students find their true potential and also help them realize their dream.” said Kim Kyung-dong, co-founder of Wcoding.   “To bridge Korea and the rest of the world and become a ste