Most Popular
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Korea enters full election mode
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Seoul bus drivers go on general strike, cause morning rush hour delays
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Immigrant woman stabbed to death by Korean husband
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Lee Jong-sup resigns as envoy to Australia
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Official campaigning kicks off for April 10 elections
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Yellow dust engulfs S. Korea, advisory alert issued
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S. Korea to boost support for single-parent families
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Court upholds jail term for man who attempted to murder ex-girlfriend
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Kia EV9 wins world car of year
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Korea misses out on global bond index boost
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[David Ignatius] Budget: When delay means more pain
WASHINGTON ― It’s a truth of economics and life that if you have bad news coming, take the hit early and get it behind you. You can’t start building until the debris is out of the way. Modern illustrations of this “pain, then gain” approach start with Paul Volcker, Mr. Tough Guy, who as Fed chairman sharply raised interest rates in 1979 to break the inflationary psychology that had a grip on the U
April 26, 2011
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[Tim Rutten] Obama’s lack of moral clarity on genocide issue
The line between prudence and moral cowardice can be a fine one, particularly when it comes to the conduct of diplomacy.For Americans, the question of where and how to make such distinctions has a particular urgency last week, as we commemorated the 96th anniversary of the genocide inflicted on the Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. In massacres from 1915 to 1923, more than 1.5 million Armenians were
April 26, 2011
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[Frida Ghitis] Is everybody happy?
How happy are you? How happy is the country? This very important question has gradually gained attention over the years, occupying the attention not only of psychologists and New Age gurus, but of economists, political scientists and government leaders.The field of happiness studies is booming with researchers hard at work taking our emotional temperature, figuring out how we feel and trying to un
April 26, 2011
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[Michael Smerconish] A solution for FAA? Ask a morning radio guy
I have a blue-ribbon commission in mind for Ray LaHood as he tries to sort out what to do about sleeping air traffic controllers. The panel members I’m thinking of have names like Preston & Steve, Cataldi, heck, maybe even Harvey in the Morning. Because when I heard the secretary of transportation say he’d never allow naps on the job, the first person I thought of was a radio DJ.For years, Don Can
April 26, 2011
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[Kim Seong-kon] The silly, the sly and the ugly in Korea
In Korea you can easily find nice and warm-hearted people who are generous and trustworthy. In today’s Korean society, however, you may also come across three types of people: the silly, the sly, and the ugly. As for me, I have always been hopelessly silly. When I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for my graduate study in the United States in 1978, South Korea was not as affluent as it is today.
April 26, 2011
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[Charles Wohlforth] BP oil spill: Forgotten but not gone
From April into midsummer last year, Americans watched BP’s oil spew from the seafloor into the Gulf of Mexico with outrage and guilt that came to feel like a chronic stomachache.Then, on July 15, it stopped. And within a couple of weeks the bad feelings for a lot of us stopped too. There were reports that the surface oil was quickly disappearing. There was a government study that hopeful journali
April 25, 2011
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[Park Sang-seek] ‘Power maniac’ is the people’s enemy
Laurent Gbagbo, who was captured after a long and brutal civil war in Ivory Coast, said a year before he became president in 1999: “What does (former Serbian and Yugoslavian President Slobodan) Milosevic think he can do with the whole world against him? When everyone in the village sees a white loincloth, if you are the only person to see it as black, then you are the one who has a problem.”What m
April 25, 2011
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[Jonathan Weil] Geithner downgrades his credibility to junk
Fox Business reporter Peter Barnes began his televised interview with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner last week with this question: “Is there a risk that the United States could lose its AAA credit rating? Yes or no?” Geithner’s response: “No risk of that.” “No risk?” Barnes asked. “No risk,” Geithner said. It’s enough to make you wonder: How could Geithner know this to be true? The short answer i
April 25, 2011
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[Yang Sung-chul] From Libya to North Korea: Dictators and their children
Father: Can the people of my country tell me how I am to rule?Son: Do you not see that you are speaking like a child?Father: Should I rule this land for others and not (for) myself?Son: There is no state that belongs to a single man.Father: Does the state not belong to its ruler?Son: Alone in a desert, you would make a perfect ruler.The above dialogue between King Creon and his son, Haemon, took p
April 25, 2011
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[Katherine Schlaerth] Early retirement may be hazardous to your health
He was a frustrating patient, a retired field worker with poorly controlled diabetes and hypertension. I’d warned, I’d pleaded, I’d explained, but nothing had worked. He ignored dietary advice, didn’t exercise and failed to use his medication rigorously. We grew to dread his visits. Then one day he came to the office early for medication refills. His pot belly was almost gone, and his blood sugar
April 25, 2011
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Debt at 200% of GDP dares S&P amid succession
So Naoto Kan is a goner. That’s the word in traumatized Tokyo. Japan’s prime minister had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get his mojo back in the five weeks since a record earthquake and tsunami. He failed, and pundits wonder if he will make it to his first anniversary in office in June. Kan would be the fifth to go in five years. Investors harbor a well-honed cynicism about Japanese leaders. They
April 24, 2011
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Stop partisan politics and fill federal vacancies
If you wanted to leave your job and your boss asked if you could stick around until your replacement was chosen, how long would you be willing to wait? A week? A month? Well, Daniel Hurley has been waiting two years.That would not be any concern to most of us except that Hurley is a federal judge. And his plight reflects a growing national problem: vacancies on the federal bench at a time when cas
April 24, 2011
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Birds gotta fly, flight controllers need to sleep
Napping on the job will be strictly forbidden. Sounds reasonable, but is it?Following the discovery of several air traffic controllers caught sleeping on duty in recent weeks, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood handed down a no-napping edict this past weekend.But can a government edict prevent bone-tired air traffic controllers working the midnight shift, the swing shift or two shifts in a r
April 24, 2011
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[David Ignatius] Upping the ante to support Egypt reform
WASHINGTON ― Samuel Johnson famously observed that the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind. The same could be said about America’s current budget crisis: It should force some hard decisions about foreign policy priorities ― so that we spend more to support the democratic revolution in Egypt and less to seek a military solution in Afghanistan. Today, the United States is allocating about $110
April 24, 2011
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[Meghan Daum] Kids, teachers do your own homework
I get lots of emails. They generally break down like this: People telling me I’m brilliant and the reason print media is hanging on; people telling me I’m a moron and the reason print media is dying; people trying to get me to write about their book/cause/personal gripe; people asking me to read something they wrote about their book/cause/personal gripe; and people asking for help with their homew
April 24, 2011
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[Dorothy Stuehmke] Should we feed North Korea?
North Korea has recently made a desperate international appeal for food aid. Reports from aid workers and international nongovernmental organizations warn of a major food shortage. As the United States deliberates whether to restart a food aid program in North Korea, it must consider the following questions: Is there a true humanitarian need, can we address the potential risk of food diversion and
April 24, 2011
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[Dominique Moisi France turning American world view upside down
PARIS ― From Washington, the enthusiasm of the French for intervention in Libya is seen with a mixture of relief and puzzlement. The Americans do not want the job and are happy that someone else does. Indeed, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s willingness to intervene (alongside British Prime Minister David Cameron) helped close a dangerous gap between the world of “values,” which would call for direct A
April 24, 2011
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The Libyan ‘wedge’ among NATO members
The desire to “do something” about the situation in Libya drove the U.N. Security Council to authorize use of all possible measures ― diplomatic language for military force ― to protect civilian populations in that troubled country. The consensus behind that vote quickly evaporated as Russia and China, holders of permanent seats and vetoes on the Security Council and which abstained on the decisio
April 22, 2011
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[Zhao Kejin] Libya’s expanding complications
With no end in sight the situation is turning into a humanitarian disaster with far-reaching consequences After weeks of seesawing firefights, the Libyan conflict seems to have fallen into a stalemate. The Western allies have assumed that they could intervene and oust Libyan ruler Muammar Gadhafi through air strikes. But even with the aid of the allied bombardment the rebel forces have been unable
April 22, 2011
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[Howard Davies] Bank reform itself needs reform
LONDON ― Over the last three years, oceans of ink (or bytes) have been expended on articulating schemes to solve the conundrum of “too big to fail” banks. Many academics and pundits have castigated regulators and central bankers for their inability to understand the obvious attractions of so-called “narrow banking,” a restoration of Glass-Steagall-era separation of commercial and investment/mercha
April 22, 2011