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Samsung, LG spar over picture quality of 8K TVs
[Graphic News] North Korea world’s 2nd most censored country
SK Innovation raided over allegations of trade secret theft
S. Korea, Japan explore possibility of talks between their top diplomats: s...
S. Korea’s oil stocks fluctuate after Saudi strikes
US flew spy plane over S. Korean capital area
Holliger, Saariaho win Isang Yun International Composition Award
‘Thousands of Mirrors’ festival to reflect world literature
[Herald Review] ‘Man of Men’ is a film that shouldn’t work but does, thr...
[Newsmaker] Politics of ‘head shaving performance’

Today Viewpoints

[Kim Seong-kon] Anti-virus software can be a virus, too

Many people enjoy the “Terminator” film series because the action-packed futuristic science fiction films are fun to watch, thanks to breathtaking action, time travel and enthralling cutting-edge technologies. But there is much more to the series than such visual pleasures. “The Terminator” and its sequels also provide valuable lessons and “post-humanist” hindsight in this era of nuclear weapons that can annihilate human civilization in a flash. The movie espe

[David Ignatius] Dunford was a steady hand during Trump-era turmoil

Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who will retire this month, is that rare senior official in Donald Trumps Washington whose career and reputation don’t seem to have been tarnished by his dealings with the president. The explanation is simple: The low-key, Boston-Irish Marine maintained the distance and discipline of a professional military officer. He did not try to be Trump’s friend or confidant, and he stayed away from palace intrigue. The White House

Today
Viewpoints
[Stuart Rothenberg] Why working-class whites aren’t giving up on Trump

“In some countries, working-class groups have proved to be the most nationalistic and jingoistic sector of the population,” wrote the highly esteemed sociologist and political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset -- 60 years ago last month.In his seminal article “Democracy and Working-Class Authoritarianism,” which appeared in the August 1959 issue of the American Sociological Review, Lipset observed that many in the working class were “in the forefront of the struggle a

Today
Viewpoints
[Shuli Ren] What’s worse than corrupt billionaires? Socialism

What’s worse than billionaires who bribe government officials? The “Gangnam Left,” stock pickers may say.The term, and subject of a book by Chonbuk National University professor Kang Jun-man, is a dig at South Korea’s wealthy elite who advocate socialist policies, such as boosting the minimum wage and spending billions to create public-sector jobs. Some of these technocrats have found themselves in hot water recently: President Moon Jae-in’s recently appointed justi

Today
Viewpoints
[Christopher R. Hill] Trump’s North Korean appeasement

Having met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un three times -- all to great fanfare -- US President Donald Trump may still believe denuclearization is underway in the Hermit Kingdom. If so, he is probably the only one who does, given North Korea’s frequent missile tests and upgrades to its weapons. It is anyone’s guess what the Trump administration’s North Korea policy will look like in a year, but for now, both sides seem to have what they want. Trump has wrangled a loose stal

Sept 16, 2019
Viewpoints
[Elizabeth Drew] Concern over 2020 election makes Trump increasingly unhinged

As the US Congress reconvenes this week after a six-week recess, the administration is mired in controversies, almost all of them set off by President Donald Trump. Trump’s behavior has been at its most peculiar since he took office, undoubtedly partly owing to panic over the 2020 election. He has more reason than most incumbent presidents to wish for reelection, as he is still facing several lawsuits. 　Perhaps the greatest political danger to Trump lies in the growing evidence that he has

Sept 16, 2019
Viewpoints
[Kim Myong-sik] Half century from Jeon Tae-il to Cho Kuk

The name of a social activist that I heard for the first time working as a journalist was Jeon Tae-il, a cutter employed by a small-time garment maker in Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon area. The 22-year-old man was little known even among workers in the corridors of the clothes factories, although he had led protests against extreme working conditions at his and other workplaces for some time. But he instantly became the symbol of labor movements in Korea when he set himself alight, waving the pri

Sept 12, 2019
Viewpoints
[Lee Joo-hee] Taking things out of context: The case of LG vs. SK

In our everyday drudgery of overwhelming duties and innate thirst for praise, it is easy to fall into the pit of spontaneous buck-passing when things go south.And such a defensive mode quickly transpires into aggressive offense against the point of threat, plastered with the rationale of self-righteousness, when the stakes get higher.In such a progression, it is easy to get lost in the tit-for-tat and all the emotions, with the direct parties and spectators losing grasp of what it was really all

Sept 12, 2019
Viewpoints
[Kim Seong-kon] Korea in the eyes of a lawyer/historian

Recently, I came across a book by Lee Seog-yeon, a famous Korean lawyer and civil rights activist, entitled “Sima Qian’s Korea Travelogue.” Sima Qian was a legendary Chinese historian of the Han Dynasty (206 BC to AD 220) who wrote the celebrated book “Records of the Grand Historian,” compiling Chinese history covering approximately 2,000 years. In his intriguing book, Lee, the Korean lawyer, perceives and interprets modern Korea through the eyes of Sima Qian, who e

Sept 11, 2019
Viewpoints
[Robert J. Fouser] Politics in age of hysteria

On my way to Seoul in late August, I was looking forward to a break from the Trump-induced hysteria of American politics. My hopes were dashed, however, as the hysteria over Cho Kuk, President Moon Jae-in’s nominee for minister of justice, spread. News about Cho and his family captivated the nation for weeks. In the end, the president decided to approve Cho’s nomination, Monday. The hysteria over Cho says as much about Korea as the hysteria over Donald Trump in the US. In both cases,

Sept 11, 2019
Viewpoints
[Joe Nocera] Trump administration playing dirty with automakers

The sad degradation of the US Department of Justice’s antitrust division continues. An agency charged with upholding the nation’s antitrust laws, without fear or favor, has become just another tool President Donald Trump uses to reward his friends and punish his enemies in corporate America.I don’t know how else you can characterize the news, reported by the Wall Street Journal on Friday, that the DOJ is investigating four major automakers that agreed to abide by California&rsq

Sept 10, 2019
Viewpoints
[Adam Minter] Time to regulate outer space

Last week, the European Space Agency reached out to warn Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies that one of its satellites might collide with a SpaceX communications satellite. When ESA first raised such concerns in late August, the chances of a crash were 1 in 50,000; SpaceX had said then that it didn’t think the risk was high enough to justify action. Now the odds had narrowed to 1 in 1,000. Yet ESA received no reply.Eventually the space agency unilaterally moved its satellite

Sept 10, 2019
Viewpoints
[Peter Singer] Why climb Everest? Don’s set goals on status

In 1953, when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, I was 7 years old. For a time, I was immersed in the stories of the epic climb. It seemed like an achievement for all of humankind, like reaching the South Pole. Would there still be any frontiers left, I wondered, by the time I grew up?A photo of the southern summit ridge of Everest has brought these memories back to me. But what a different Everest this is! The splendid isolation of th

Sept 9, 2019
Viewpoints
[David Ignatius] Trump unclear on China strategy

As we move into the fall, there’s one overriding foreign-policy priority for America: Find a strategy to deal with a rising China that protects US interests but doesn’t subvert the global economy. China is the challenge of our time, and the risks of getting it wrong are enormous. Huawei, the Shenzen-based communications powerhouse, argues in a slick new YouTube video that its critics want to create a new Berlin Wall. That’s not true -- Huawei and other Chinese tech companies ha

Sept 9, 2019
Viewpoints
[Liam Denning] Ohio’s great Chinese power conspiracy theory

An entity dubbing itself “Ohioans for Energy Security” has a warning for the good people of the Buckeye State: The Chinese government is quietly invading our American electric grid; intertwining themselves financially in our energy infrastructure.Before we get into the details of the one-minute ad in which a suitably ominous voice intones those words over much footage of President Xi Jinping, some context: Ohio recently passed legislation to subsidize struggling nuclear and coal-fire

Sept 6, 2019
Viewpoints

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