Most Popular
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[AtoZ into Korean mind] Humor in Korea: Navigating the line between what's funny and not
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Yoon seeks rebound, taps 5-term lawmaker as chief of staff
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Medical standoff deepens as doctors reject new med school plan, talks
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[Exclusive] Korean military set to ban iPhones over 'security' concerns
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[Herald Interview] Why Toss invited hackers to penetrate its system
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[Graphic News] 77% of young Koreans still financially dependent
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S. Korean envoys convene to navigate strategy amid Middle East tensions
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Korean, Romanian leaders discuss defense tech, nuclear energy
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North Korea fires several short-range ballistic missiles into sea: JCS
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Samsung, SK hynix investors dump shares on Nvidia crash
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Naked aggression
Philippine President Aquino told reporters in Brunei last week that a military confrontation between the Philippines and China would be “no contest.” In terms of military strength, China has “a great advantage,“ he said. “Even in a boxing match, there’s one and half billion of them, (while) we are barely 100 million.”All true, of course. But stating the obvious seems totally unnecessary and counte
June 10, 2011
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Chinese house price collapse rumors wishful thinking
Media reports that the prices of new homes in major Chinese cities are plummeting at double-digit rates amount to nothing more than bunkum and wishful thinking. Admittedly, shrinking sales of new apartments can be observed in most Chinese cities nowadays. But this is just a possible harbinger, not evidence, that property prices have begun to drop. China’s rocketing housing prices are so unpopular
June 10, 2011
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[Salman Haidar] A time of troubles in Pakistan
The killing of Osama bin Laden was like a huge seismic tremor that gave rise to a number of aftershocks that still plague Pakistan. The fact that U.S. attackers were able to penetrate deep into Pakistani territory without being challenged made the security apparatus look helpless and unworthy of the automatic public trust it has claimed and received. A mood of disenchantment with the army was indu
June 10, 2011
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A U.S. strategy for fighting cyberattacks
The Pentagon is developing a new cyberwarfare strategy that calls for the use of military force ― including conventional weapons ― in response to certain kinds of damaging online attacks on U.S. institutions. That’s fine in theory; if foreign agents launch a cyberattack on, say, the nation’s electrical grid, it may be both reasonable and proportionate to fire missiles at, say, the attacker’s energ
June 9, 2011
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[David Ignatius] Testing the Afghan exit ramps
WASHINGTON ― The argument within the Obama administration for a big troop withdrawal from Afghanistan over the next year goes roughly like this: We’ve killed Osama bin Laden. That means we’ve achieved the core goal for which we sent forces in 2001. We have a ticket out, and we should take it. The counterargument from administration hawks is that a quick departure is a guarantee of failure. It risk
June 9, 2011
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U.S. economy is being suffocated by uncertainty
The economic recovery is 2 years old this month. Isn’t that reassuring? I didn’t think so. As recoveries go, this one is as blah as it gets. Judging by the most recent indicators, we may be headed for a double dip, or perhaps a period of flatlining that feels just as bad.Job growth is sluggish and unemployment is again on the rise. In the first three months of this year, the economy slowed substan
June 9, 2011
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[Fuller W. Bazer] English-only lectures
The editorial in The Korea Herald, June 7, 2011, states that “The spreading of English-only lectures in Korean universities is likely to slow, as presidents and deans have concluded that they have been largely ineffective because of the unpreparedness from both professors and students.” This is not forward thinking in a global society that embraces English as the language of science and business.
June 9, 2011
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[Fenton Johnson] Sex in the time of AIDS
Thirty years ago, on June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control published a notice of a strange illness affecting five Los Angeles gay men, two of whom died before the report could be published. The illness soon acquired the designation AIDS, along with a burden of fear and misinformation that it has never quite shaken.The decades of terror and rage and sacrifice and nobility that followed have
June 9, 2011
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[Joel Brinkley] U.S. has trust issues with China
A little-noticed disclosure resulting from the American military assault on Osama bin Laden’s home in Pakistan ought to be throwing a bright spotlight on a serious dilemma for the United States.Before they left, Navy Seals blew up the stealth helicopter that crashed just outside bin Laden’s house. But the tail section remained intact, studded with design elements of its stealth technology, somethi
June 9, 2011
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[William Pesek] It’s bubble time as Asia braces for Fed’s QE3
Pretend you’re Darmin Nasution, Indonesia’s central bank governor, and inflation is running at about 6 percent. Do you raise interest rates or cut them? This isn’t a trick question, but one facing Asia’s monetary authorities as they brace for a possible third round of U.S. quantitative easing, an effort by the central bank to get more money into the economy. No matter what Federal Reserve official
June 8, 2011
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[Graham E. Fuller] Saudi’s false reading of reality
A panicky Saudi Arabia has now openly seized the banner of outspoken opposition to Iran across the Muslim world, surpassing even Washington’s long and obsessive Iran-centered interpretation of Middle East events. Riyadh is perpetuating a false ― and hence dangerously misleading ― reading of key regional issues.The Saudi Kingdom grows understandably fearful as “stable” autocratic rule in the region
June 8, 2011
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[Liu Shijin] China’s true status
Despite the remarkable economic and social development it has achieved since reform and opening-up in 1978, China is still a developing nation, as indicated by both its per capita economic indices and its economic and social structure.It is necessary to take into account a country’s economic aggregate and its per capita output to accurately measure its real economic and social development levels.
June 8, 2011
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[Meghan Daum] David Mamet’s new herd
David Mamet, the acclaimed playwright known for characters that drop the F-bomb at every opportunity, has dropped the ultimate bomb on his fans and the creative community: He is no longer a “brain-dead liberal” but rather a “newly minted conservative.”This revelation is spelled out in his new book, “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture,” which hit stores last week. Accordin
June 8, 2011
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[Jonathan Alter] Don’t believe critics, education reform works
America’s education-reform movement ― the most significant social movement of our time ― is just completing another productive school year, with hundreds of districts beefing up accountability and standards. Amid grim news about budget cuts, the year brought new awareness that relying on seniority alone in determining teacher layoffs is mindless. It’s like saying that if the Chicago Bulls wanted t
June 8, 2011
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[Robert Reich] Unbridled public contractors in U.S.
President Obama is mulling an executive order to force big government contractors to disclose their political spending. He should issue it immediately. But he should go further ― banning all political activity by companies receiving more than half their revenues from the U.S. government.Consider Lockheed Martin, the nation’s largest contractor. It’s received more than $19 billion in federal contra
June 8, 2011
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Rumblings in Inner Mongolia have ethnic edge
The protests in Inner Mongolia were the result of an unfortunate mixture of economic and ethnic grievances, which spilled into public protests after a Mongol herder was run over while trying to block a convoy of coal trucks coming in from the grasslands.The fatality galvanized latent discontent over the mining industry’s penetration of the region. Critics see this as resource exploitation that deg
June 7, 2011
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[Joseph E. Stiglitz] Choosing the next IMF leader
NEW YORK ― Sooner than expected, the International Monetary Fund will have a new managing director. For more than a decade, I have criticized the fund’s governance, symbolized by the way its leader is chosen. By gentlemen’s agreement among the majority shareholders ― the G8 ― the managing director is to be a European, with Americans in the number two post and at the head of the World Bank.The Euro
June 7, 2011
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Human behavior: What’s bugging you?
What annoys you? Traffic jams, car alarms, flight delays, phone trees, junk mail? People who cut in line? People who talk loudly on cellphones? People who eat noisily and clip their nails in public? You’re not alone. These are just some of the irksome things we confront daily.Since annoyances are ubiquitous, and so many people are annoyed so much of the time, you might think that science could off
June 7, 2011
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[Edward Humes] Wal-Mart gets that a smaller carbon footprint is good for business
If you care about green, it’s hard not to view these as the worst of times, marked by looming climate, water and energy crises, vanishing fisheries, mile-a-minute deforestation ― the list is numbingly endless. In response, we have a largely apathetic public, an environmental lobby rendered toothless by said apathy, a political left and center paralyzed by fear that protecting the planet might hurt
June 7, 2011
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[Kim Seong-kon] Literature: An end to chronic ideological warfare
The third Seoul International Forum for Literature, which took place at Kyobo Conference Hall two weeks ago, was a literary festival for writers from all over the world. Under the theme, “The Globalizing World and the Human Community,” 14 celebrated international writers including two Nobel laureates, Le Clezio and Gao Xingjian, joined 31 representative Korean writers to discuss what to write and
June 7, 2011