It is regrettable that Posco Chairman Kwon Oh-joon failed to serve out his term, as all his predecessors had similarly failed. He offered to resign Wednesday two years before the end of his term for dubious reasons. 　He said he would step down voluntarily for the future of Posco. The steel mill dismisses suspicions of government intervention and notes that Kwon himself has mentioned nothing whatever to that effect.But few would accept such an explanation at face value.Until recently, Kwon had sh

The political debacle that resulted in the exit of the chief financial regulator and the potentially explosive online opinion rigging scandal involving a key ruling party lawmaker expose serious problems with the way the Moon Jae-in administration appoints senior government officials. 　First, the resignation of Kim Ki-sik as governor of the Financial Supervisory Service should raise many questions about the way Cheong Wa Dae vets candidates for high-level government positions. It is easy to imag

On Saturday I drove with my family to Peoria, Illinois, for an athletic competition. We stopped at a gas station off Interstate 55 to use the restroom. The station sold fishing tackle and snacks. It also sold bumper stickers.　One of them said “Black Trucks Matter.”　Two days earlier, on Thursday, a 14-year-old African-American boy, Brennan Walker, overslept and missed his school bus. He started walking to school, trying to re-create his bus route, but he got lost.　He approached a house in a subdi

This seems to be the year when Americans hit the pause button on the advance of technology in their daily lives and grapple with how we got here and where we’re going.　My Bloomberg colleague Tyler Cowen has written about a looming clash between the values of Washington and of the San Francisco Bay Area. They are indeed quite different cultures, and as each considers the future of tech, they will find models outside the US: the European style, and the Chinese approach.　The European model came up

In the spirit with which we mark life’s other landmark events, I would like to wish former first lady Barbara Bush a peaceful passing.　Mrs. Bush is nearing the end of her long and eventful life. It’s reflective of her characteristic candor that this was made public Sunday, when her family announced that she would no longer accept medical treatment other than palliative care.　Death is natural, but the systemic breakdowns that often lead up to it can be wrenching: painful, exhausting, dependent. A

CIA Director Mike Pompeo made all the right noises -- well, most of the right noises -- during his confirmation hearing Thursday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.　The former representative from Kansas and favorite of President Donald Trump promised to exhaust diplomacy before turning to a military solution to North Korea’s nuclear threat. He held out some hope that Trump might not walk away from the Iran nuclear agreement next month if the US and its European allies were close to te

President Donald Trump’s historic decision to meet Kim Jong-un to address the North Korea nuclear crisis brings with it opportunities for a peaceful resolution as well as risks. Among the many priorities involving this summit, President Trump must safeguard the interests of US allies while striving for verifiable North Korean disarmament. 　Protecting the security interests of Seoul and Tokyo during the summit is critical for continuing America’s role of maintaining stability in East Asia as it h

To understand the possible consequences of US President Donald Trump’s constant denunciations of the press, one need look no further than Ecuador, where former President Rafael Correa’s government attacked the news media for years. During his 2007-2017 presidency, Correa implemented a raft of measures aimed at stifling press freedom. And, like Trump, he regularly used the media as a whipping boy to rally his supporters.In 2015, Correa managed to pass a constitutional amendment recategorizing com

A scandal involving the manipulation of online public opinion is engulfing the political arena, with suspicions snowballing over who masterminded it. 　The scandal began in January with the ruling Democratic Party of Korea requesting police investigate a remarkable surge in the number of recommendations for an article critical of the government on a popular portal site. 　Two months later, three people were arrested. Unexpectedly, they turned out to be members of the ruling party. Both ruling and