Most Popular
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Blinken calls on China to press N. Korea to end its 'dangerous' behavior
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New celebrity-endorsed therapy for face contouring requires only a pair of rubber bands
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Tensions heighten ahead of first president-opposition chief meeting
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Seoul to provide housing subsidy to married couples with newborns
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[Weekender] How DDP emerged as an icon of Seoul
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Doctor group's incoming head renews call for govt. to scrap medical school quota hike for dialogue
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Rapper jailed after public street fight with another rapper
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Woman gets suspended term for injuring boyfriend with knife
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NewJeans pops out ‘Bubble Gum’ video amid troubles at agency
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[Music in drama] An ode to childhood trauma
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[Wang Son-taek] Japan must take sincere measures
President Yoon Suk Yeol completed a surprise visit to Tokyo last week. The two leaders of South Korea and Japan agreed to finish the 12-year-old confrontation and open a cooperative relationship toward the future. As a result, GSOMIA, or the Military Information Protection Agreement, was normalized. Japan will lift export restrictions on Korea, while Korea will drop its WTO complaint over Japan's unfair trade practices. Japan welcomed the Korean government's proposal for a significant
ViewpointsMarch 23, 2023
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[Editorial] Raise deposit insurance limits
It is fairly rare for rival parties in South Korea to agree on any single policy. Quite surprisingly, politicians from both the ruling and opposition parties have put forth the same proposal: a hike of deposit insurance limits. “South Korea needs a new deposit insurance limit suitable for its stature as a nation with expanding economic power,” Sung Il-jong, the top policymaker of the ruling People Power Party, said Tuesday. Sung said Korea should reconsider the current deposit insura
EditorialMarch 23, 2023
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[Doyle McManus] SVB's demise a blessing in disguise
In the brief but spectacular collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, we may just have witnessed the best banking crisis ever. It might even have been useful. Nobody got seriously hurt, except bank executives who made bad decisions and shareholders who weren't paying attention. Those Silicon Valley libertarians who spent years demanding that government get out of the way earned their comeuppance when they begged the Federal Reserve to save them. "Where is (Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H.) Powe
ViewpointsMarch 23, 2023
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[Contribution] Georgia-Korea FTA is a win-win for both partners
Georgia and South Korea have more in common than meets the eye. The sheer size of the economy and population aside, fundamentally, both countries share a long-lasting historical experience of struggle for independence and freedom. Nowadays, both Georgia and South Korea find themselves in a complex geostrategic regional environment, yet their adherence to the rule-based international order and shared values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law is unwavering. A closer look at economy in
Diplomatic CircuitMarch 22, 2023
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[Editorial] Long-awaited cooperation
A bill that increases tax credits for semiconductor facility investment is expected to be approved by the National Assembly this month. Under the bill, tax credits will rise from the current 8 percent to 15 percent for semiconductor facility investment by large companies and from 16 percent to 25 percent for that by small and medium-sized companies. The majority opposition Democratic Party of Korea initially opposed the government-proposed 15 percent tax credit for large companies. It argued tha
EditorialMarch 22, 2023
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[Kim Seong-kon] If you are proud of your country, act accordingly
According to newspaper reports, today’s young people in Korea feel lucky and proud to be born in South Korea. There is a plethora of reasons. For example, recently, the United Nations dubbed South Korea as a developed country, which suits the country in every sense. Indeed, South Korea has now become a fully developed, advanced country both economically and technologically. South Korea’s economy is the 4th largest in Asia and 13th in the world. Its military power, too, ranks 6th out
ViewpointsMarch 22, 2023
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[Jeffrey Frankel] Fifty years of floating currencies
Fifty years ago this month, in March 1973, the Bretton Woods arrangement of fixed exchange rates was abandoned, and the world’s major currencies -- including the US dollar, pound, yen, and Deutsche Mark -- were allowed to float. At the time, the system’s demise was generally considered a policy failure. But the shift from fixed to flexible exchange rates was probably inevitable. The international monetary system that was designed at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, helped lay t
ViewpointsMarch 22, 2023
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[Editorial] Electoral reform
Political parties in South Korea are set to discuss electoral reform measures next week in a bid to fix the problems with the current mixed-member proportional representation system. But the outlook for a breakthrough is far from positive, given that major parties and their lawmakers seem unlikely to give up their vested interests. All lawmakers from the ruling People Power Party, the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea and the minor opposition Justice Party are scheduled to attend a parli
EditorialMarch 21, 2023
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[Daniel DePetris] China brokers Iran-Saudi deal but the US benefits
There was a time, only a few short years ago, when Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman thought Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was worse than Adolf Hitler. “I believe that the Iranian supreme leader makes Hitler look good,” Prince Mohammed told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg in a 2018 interview. Hitler may have tried to conquer Europe, he said, but Iran is “trying to conquer the world.” Contrast those alarmist words with a dip
ViewpointsMarch 21, 2023
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[LZ Granderson] Don't blame Mexico on gun, drug
Ken Salazar, the US ambassador to Mexico, met with the Los Angeles Tiems for more than an hour while visiting California in November. Her was eager to talk up the celebrations surrounding the US-Mexico diplomacy bicentennial. We were eager to talk about the border. The pas de deuk featured a lot of platitudes, a couple of tense moments, and a number I can't shake: 13,000. That was the estimate Salazar gave for the number of Mexicans who were studying at our universities at the time. Many of
ViewpointsMarch 21, 2023
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[George Soros] Updating my Munich predictions
It is exactly one month ago that I gave a speech on the eve of the Munich Security Conference. Since then, so many remarkable things have happened -- and have happened so fast -- that it is worth comparing my predictions of a month ago with the actual developments. The biggest changes have occurred in the global climate system. By this, I mean actual climate events and climate scientists’ understanding of those events. The main message I wanted to convey in Munich was that the global clima
ViewpointsMarch 20, 2023
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[Editorial] A new beginning
President Yoon Suk Yeol returned home Friday night from his two-day visit to Japan. Through his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, he kick-started summit diplomacy with Japan after a 12-year hiatus. The summit is a turning point in bilateral relations and a new starting point for mutual visits by the leaders of both countries. Yoon made a difficult first move to normalize South Korea’s relations with Japan. The summit owes much to his bold decision. The Yoon administration
EditorialMarch 20, 2023
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[Yoon Young-kwan] How China lost Asia to the US
Since the dawn of international politics, smaller states have faced the formidable challenge of navigating great-power rivalries. Today, it is the geopolitical contest between the United States and China that has compelled countries to balance their competing national interests. Toward which side they gravitate depends on domestic and external circumstances. Consider the Philippines, which has an interest in maintaining both its growing economic ties with neighboring China as well as its half-
ViewpointsMarch 17, 2023
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[Editorial] Allay bank fears
Since Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th-largest bank in the US, went bust on March 10, a series of unnerving developments have hit the global market, touching off concerns that banking woes could spread to the broader economy and other sectors. The sudden demise of SVB, whose main clients are technology and life-science startups, triggered volatility in stocks, bonds and other assets across the globe. The shock did not die down even though regulators quickly stepped in to allay fears and keep the tu
EditorialMarch 17, 2023
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[Lee Kyong-hee] Forgive but not forget a lasting solution
President Yoon Suk Yeol’s controversial speech on the 104th anniversary of the March 1 Independence Movement prompted me to watch two movies: “A Resistance” and “Anarchist from Colony.” Both are based on the heart-wrenching fate of courageous Koreans who as teenagers joined the massive anti-Japanese protests of March 1, 1919. A presidential speech customarily marks the watershed event. Yoon, no stranger to delivering fuzzy logic, kept his first March 1 address so
ViewpointsMarch 16, 2023
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[Editorial] Brace for contingency
North Korea recently carried out a series of missile provocations in an apparent protest against a resumed South Korea-US combined military exercise. It fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea off its east coast Tuesday. The launch came two days after it test-fired what it claimed to be two “strategic cruise missiles” from a submarine. It is the first time that it launched cruise missiles from a sub. Five days earlier, on March 9, it had fired six short-range missiles t
EditorialMarch 16, 2023
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[Jan-Werner Mueller] The dilemma of anti-populism
Following a year of halting negotiations, six of Turkey’s opposition parties have finally united behind a single presidential candidate in the election this May, with the hope of ending Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic and repressive two-decade rule. This month, the so-called Table of Six converged on Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the social democratic and secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), after having sidelined younger, more charismatic contenders s
ViewpointsMarch 15, 2023
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[Kim Seong-kon] Doing the opposite of foreigners’ observations
In the late 19th and early 20th century, foreign adventurers, reporters and missionaries visited Joseon, which is now Korea. During their stay in the “Land of the Morning Calm,” they wrote some penetrating accounts describing pre-modern Korea. Some of them were favorable remarks, and others were somewhat negative observations, though amusing. For example, they unanimously praised the Korean people’s exquisite handcrafts such as pottery, and their superb skills at archery. They
ViewpointsMarch 15, 2023
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[Editorial] Kakao’s takeover of SM
South Korean tech behemoth Kakao is now set to take over major K-pop agency SM Entertainment after striking a deal with Hybe, the fast-growing competitor agency that is home to BTS and NewJeans, to end their competition and cooperate with each other. The conclusion of the monthlong feud for SM came as welcome news to their respective investors and those who want K-pop to expand further with greater platform power and a deep talent pool. At some point, Hybe was close to winning the competition, b
EditorialMarch 15, 2023
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[Josep Borrell] Honesty can advance the Middle East peace process
Too many people are dying every week in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, and millions are living in fear and hopelessness. The world’s response has been characterized by too many statements and too little action. That must change. We in the European Union and the wider international community need to do more. We know that people around the world expect us to work for peace, justice and international law everywhere. But to act successfully, we first must be honest with each
ViewpointsMarch 14, 2023