My presence on Facebook is fairly minimal. I keep my “friends” list small and I post infrequently. So I wasn’t too surprised when the social media company said I likely was not among the more than 87 million users whose data were swept up by Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm connected to Donald Trump and possibly Russia’s interference in our 2016 election.　But as Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg answered questions before Congress about online privacy and his company’s reac

China is a big country. It has the world’s second-largest economy, a mighty military and huge population, and what and how China does matters. One recent case gave a good illustration of how easily a Chinese decision could affect people’s lives here in Korea: China’s decision to ban imports of plastic waste led local recyclers to refuse to collect plastic bags, which resulted in heaps of waste lying here and there. So it is important what kind of leadership a country with such tremendous influen

Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, recently noted that the public scrutiny of Facebook is “very much overdue,” declaring that “it’s shocking to me that they didn’t have to answer more of these questions earlier on.” Leaders in the information technology sector, especially in Europe, have been warning of the abuses by Facebook (and other portals) for years. Critics of Facebook have been making this point for years. Stefano Quintarelli, one of Europe’s top IT experts and a leading advocate fo

The second daughter of the chairman of Korean Air has scandalized the nation by throwing a tantrum at a less powerful person, just as her elder sister did to her subordinate three years ago.　Cho Hyun-min, a senior vice president of Korean Air, is said to have yelled in anger and hurled a cup of water at the face of a manager of an advertising agency during a business meeting last month. She is said to have done so because the agency employee failed to answer her questions on the UK properly duri

South Korea’s unemployment rate rose to a 17-year high of 4.5 percent in March, according to Statistics Korea. The youth jobless rate was as high as 11.6 percent. As the global economy began to recover, the US unemployment rate stood at a 17-year low of 4.1 percent for the sixth consecutive month in March, and that of Japan amounted to 2.5 percent in February. Compared with the US and Japan, the surge of Korea’s jobless rate is to some extent attributable to domestic problems.Employment increase