Shake, Rattle and Roll.The title of that rock and roll oldie popped into my head as I followed President Trump’s travels to South Korea and China, along with this week’s stunning developments in Saudi Arabia.The president clearly wants to shake up the region -- and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un -- by convincing Asian leaders he’s willing to use force to compel Kim to denuclearize.Meantime, Trump is cheering this week’s efforts by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to shake up the Mideast. MBS (a

The summit between President Moon Jae-in and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Danang, Vietnam, on Saturday is significant in that it has formalized the restoration of relations between South Korea and China.One of its biggest outcomes is that Moon agreed to visit China next month for another summit with Xi. The meeting next month is expected to initiate summit exchanges to improve bilateral ties. Moon also invited Xi to visit South Korea next year for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. In response,

The reason why Flannery O’Connor and other Southern writers often wrote about “freaks,” she said, was because “we are still able to recognize one.” Writing about murderers, racists, traveling Bible-selling hypocrites, O’Connor was a master of her art, the strange genre she called grotesque. It was her way of telling the truth through lies and good through evil.Such writing was possible, she said, because for the most part, Southern writers still held “some conception of the whole man,” a faint n

The Moon Jae-in administration is showing signs of repeating the bad practice of following a spoils system by appointing political supporters as heads of public entities. The replacement of chiefs is expected at many public and private organizations that are exposed to government influence. Incumbent chief executives who were appointed during the previous government may feel out of place and be pressured to leave their posts.The Moon administration must put an end to the deplorable practice, whi

Mass killings like the one at a South Texas church are acts of extreme violence that defy rational explanation and simple solution. They raise demands for specific steps to be taken to ban horrors that are as indiscriminate as they are depraved.That doesn’t make this a time to mourn and shrug. America needs to deal with its propensity for gun violence. Here was another reminder.Tens of thousands of churches across America held worship services Sunday, but it was the First Baptist Church in tiny

The corruption scandal involving former aides of Jun Byung-hun, a top adviser to President Moon Jae-in, shows how complicated Korean politics can be. On the surface, it is a typical bribery case in which politicians and business executives traded influence and kickbacks. But the fact that it is the first time that the state prosecution has targeted a top presidential aide since Moon took office in May is stoking political speculations. Given what prosecutors have found so far, the main suspects