Koreans are used to encountering candidates for high public posts who have a low level of ethical standards. But what we hear from the ongoing parliamentary confirmation hearings on presidential nominees is truly distressing. The series of confirmation hearings that started Monday will go until Sept. 19. There are a total of 11 nominees, six for the Constitutional Court, including its president, and five for ministerial posts. 　Already, many ethical violations have surfaced, some of them verifie

Visiting the US recently, I was told by virtually every American I met that attitudes toward China had shifted. This phenomenon, they claimed, cut across bipartisan lines as well as government, business and academic circles. The US was frustrated at not having shaped China in its own image, despite bringing the country into the World Trade Organization and helping to enable its economic takeoff. Instead, China had “ripped off” the US by taking advantage of it in trade and business. There was con

The 2016 presidential election wasn’t the first time Russia attempted to use Silicon Valley and its technologies against the US. During the 1980s, Soviet spies plied their trade up and down the San Francisco peninsula, stealing technology, recruiting agents and infiltrating local banks. It’s worth remembering that those efforts were ultimately thwarted and may have contributed in a small way to the collapse of the Soviet Union.　The episode almost 40 years ago even inspired an otherwise forgettab

We’ve all been there. Something breaks in your home or knocks your car bumper loose, so you turn to every American’s trusted helper: duct tape. But while duct tape may offer an easier, quick-fix solution, it doesn’t fully solve your problem, no matter how many new layers you slap on.Similarly, the Trump administration is offering a duct tape solution to bail out struggling coal and nuclear power plants. A taxpayer- and ratepayer-funded lifeline may help certain plants in the short-term, but Cong

On Tuesday, the government asked the National Assembly to ratify the declaration that President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signed shortly after their first summit in Panmunjom on April 27.　It was pushy and impetuous of Moon to submit the ratification motion to parliament, despite an agreement to the contrary a day earlier by floor leaders of the ruling party and two opposition parties. The three sides had decided first to await the results of the third inter-Korean summit in

As an escape from the relentless political theater in Washington, I took a London vacation.　I love British theater, and, as so often happens in London, the most intriguing shows were political with an eye on events across the pond. The 2008 financial crash, the demise of democracy, immigration, Brexit: the prospects were endless if you could cadge a ticket.　Watching political drama on stage was far more satisfying than the dispiriting reality at home.　I include under “political theater” the bril

It seems that the nation is better prepared for the Middle East respiratory syndrome than it was three years ago. But authorities’ response to a new case of the deadly infectious disease was not without loopholes. The biggest loophole so far was that the airport quarantine inspector let an apparent MERS patient pass through the checkpoint. The 61-year-old man told the quarantine officer that he was returning from a 22-day business trip to Kuwait and that he visited a hospital there with diarrhea

As far as you know, I’m just a regular female professional, but what you may not realize is that I’m part of a rising demographic of working women in their 30s who remain childless by choice so as not to derail their slowly rising careers.　I won’t lie, I’ve caught myself at times looking differently at co-workers who were working moms when they established certain patterns: arriving late to work, abusing work-from-home policies, taking frequent extended lunch breaks, dashing out of or canceling

Scarcely had I begun my first lecture of the fall semester here at the University of California, Berkeley, when I realized that I was too hot. I desperately wanted to take off my professorial tweed jacket.A tweed jacket is a wonderful but peculiar costume. If all you have for raw material is a sheep, it is the closest thing you can get to Gore-Tex. Not only is it perfect for a cloudy, drizzly climate, it is also surprisingly warm -- wet or dry -- for its weight. In the world before central heati

Back in 1965, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, then France’s minister of finance, famously called the benefits that the United States reaped from the dollar’s role as the world’s main reserve currency an “exorbitant privilege.” The benefits are diminishing with the rise of the euro and China’s renminbi as competing reserve currencies. And now US President Donald Trump’s misguided trade wars and anti-Iran sanctions will accelerate the move away from the dollar.The dollar leads all other currencies in su

The government is reportedly working on a wide array of measures to stabilize soaring housing prices.The measures are expected to focus on suppressing demand further as the government has done, such as raising tax on real estate possession and making it more difficult to take out mortgages. This time, eyes are also drawn to how much and where it will increase supply.　Supply expansion is a move in the right direction. The administration under President Moon Jae-in has effectively treated the owne