There are several solid reasons the state prosecution should conduct a fair and thorough investigation of the allegations surrounding Rep. Sohn Hye-won. Most of all, the scandal smacks strongly of a typical case of conflict of interest. At the core of the case is that people close to Sohn, a member of the National Assembly Culture Committee, massively purchased properties in an old town in the southwestern port city of Mokpo. The property purchases – totaling as many as 25 – took place before an

Britain’s holiday from history was supposed to end this week. After three years of bitter debate, Prime Minister Theresa May hoped Parliament would back the agreement for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union that she painstakingly negotiated over the past 18 months. On Tuesday, however, Parliament voted 2-to-1 against her deal, a humiliating defeat that leaves the future of Britain’s relationship with Europe as unsettled as ever.　The only real option is a do-over -- a second referendum,

The news that the FBI opened an investigation in 2017 as to whether President Donald Trump was actually working for the Russians shouldn’t have come as a shocker.　No public evidence has yet emerged from the FBI probe or from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that the president took orders from the Kremlin. And Trump has been furious in his denials.　Yet over and over this president makes common cause with the Kremlin with his statements, his policies, the many contacts between his te

In July, the country’s state pension operator introduced the stewardship code, a set of principles intended to get institutional investors to actively engage in corporate governance to enhance shareholders’ interests.The National Pension Service, South Korea’s top institutional investor and the world’s third largest, with 630 trillion won ($560 billion) in assets, holds more than 5 percent stakes in 297 local listed firms, including Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, Hyundai Motor and Posco.The NPS

The White House has announced US President Donald Trump will hold his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in late February. The Trump administration said it would announce a location at a later date.No signal has come from either side yet that they have narrowed the gap between their demands -- the North’s implementation of denuclearization and the US’ relief of sanctions against the North. 　Experts in the US are very skeptical that North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons pro

In 2015, a student tweeted about an extra credit activity in my psychology course, igniting a discussion about the “tragedy of the commons” -- the idea that when masses of people engage in excessive consumption, it can have catastrophic environmental consequences, such as climate change. In light of the recently proposed Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, let’s revisit this idea and consider how carbon pricing can serve as an effective solution to this problem.For the class activity, eac

From the moment he launched his campaign for president, Donald Trump compared the barrier he wanted to build along the US southern border to China’s Great Wall. With the US government now shuttered by the standoff over funding Trump’s wall, both he and his Democratic opponents might want to take a closer look at the Chinese fortification -- and why exactly it failed.The Great Wall visited by tourists today is the handiwork of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and was primarily constructed in the mid-

Chinese leaders do like their slogans, and where foreign policy is concerned, two have reflected Beijing’s thinking in recent times. The first is the cautious principle of tao guang yang hui, usually rendered in English as “hide your light and bide your time,” which guided Chinese policy for decades after Deng Xiaoping established it in the 1980s. In late 2013, though, President Xi Jinping coined a new slogan to define a more assertive, muscular approach: fen fa you wei, or “strive for achieveme