The return of nine conservative lawmakers to the main opposition Liberty Korea Party will heavily impact Korean politics, over which President Moon Jae-in and his ruling party have been dominant since Moon took office in May. First, the nine lawmakers’ decision to bolt from the minor opposition Bareun Party and go back to the Liberty Korea Party they had deserted before the presidential election means that the nation’s conservatives have taken their first step toward recouping their strength. A

Donald Trump is reinventing the kowtow for the Twitter age. Last week, in fawning tweets, he celebrated Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “extraordinary elevation” at the 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress, and in a TV interview he bragged that he and Xi had the best “president-president” relationship ever. It was over the top -- especially in light of the fact that Xi is an authoritarian leader.Clearly, Trump, a man not known for his humility, wants something. China is the most important stop o

The Rohingya people of Myanmar have long been despised and persecuted as a Muslim minority in a majority-Buddhist country. Now, they are being slaughtered.A brutal campaign of terror has driven more than 600,000 of the Rohingya to flee the country to neighboring Bangladesh, and a political and humanitarian crisis is rapidly unfolding. The United Nations calls it “a textbook case of ethnic cleansing.”The exodus was sparked by a disturbing escalation of long-simmering tensions between Myanmar’s ma

President Moon Jae-in’s “balanced diplomacy” will be put to the test at the South Korea-US summit on Tuesday.In an interview Friday with Channel NewsAsia, a Singaporean cable television news agency, Moon said, “The relationship with China has become more important not only in terms of economic cooperation, but also for strategic cooperation for the peaceful resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue. That is why I am pursuing a balanced diplomacy with the US as well as China.”The key point of