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[Kim Hoo-ran] Gwangju deniers damage democracy
[Leonid Bershidsky] Even Trump can’t drive Europe into Russia’s arms
[Tyler Cowen] Seven lessons about blackmail

Today Columnists

[Kim Hoo-ran] Gwangju deniers damage democracy

In Gwangju for the first time a few years ago, I walked down Geumnanro, the site of violent clashes between Gwangju locals and troops enforcing martial law on May 18, 1980. Events were being held on the broad avenue closed off to traffic for the day -- a play, a concert and a samulnori performance to name but a few, all commemorating the May 18 Gwangju Democratization Movement. There were few people in attendance, but that didn’t seem to matter. These were people remembering the massacre in whic

[Leonid Bershidsky] Even Trump can’t drive Europe into Russia’s arms

As the US demands more from Europe and castigates it ever more stridently, it’s increasingly clear that Russia is missing a historic opportunity. If President Vladimir Putin hadn’t made Russia an unreliable partner for its neighbors, he’d be poised to realize his fondest dream: of displacing the US as Europe’s security guarantor.　Despite European officials’ determination to preserve what’s left of the US-led liberal world order, the cracks in the transatlantic alliance are obvious. They were one

Today
Columnists
[Tyler Cowen] Seven lessons about blackmail

Every now and then, a few apparently random news events come together and influence how you see the world. My most recent lesson is that blackmail and blackmail risk are a lot more common than I had thought.　The first relevant news event is the allegation by Jeff Bezos that the National Enquirer has been blackmailing him with the threat to release photos of his private parts (there is much more detail to this story). Several other people have since alleged that the Enquirer has engaged in additi

Today
Columnists
[Timothy L. O’Brien] In Trump’s world, he never loses

Hanging on a wall behind the omelet bar at President Donald Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida -- where the commander in chief apparently stopped for a bite on Saturday after declaring a national emergency the day before -- is an old, framed poster. It’s from an ad campaign Walgreens once ran featuring the president back when he was the sorcerer of “The Apprentice.”　In white block letters on the poster, next to a photo of Trump cocking his index finger at the camera and shouting in fu

Today
Columnists
[Andy Mukherjee] Aging Singapore tries to avoid Japan trap

Japan has aged; Singapore is aging. Japan’s workforce is shrinking; Singapore’s has plateaued. Japan’s homogeneous society has struggled with immigration; Singapore’s island culture has been welcoming of foreigners, though increasingly less so.　So is the city-state scoring an own-goal by inviting a demographic decline and Japanese-style lost decades? 　After Monday’s annual government budget, in which Singaporean Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat announced stronger curbs on immigrants in service in

Today
Columnists
[Kim Seong-kon] Be confident and overcome inferiority complex

Watching popular American sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” Korean viewers could be appalled at the character Sheldon making fun of Howard for holding only a master’s degree from MIT. In the show, Sheldon, who is a theoretical physicist with a Ph.D. from Harvard, openly mocks Howard for his lower academic degree and his alma mater, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If a Korean TV series aired such a scene of belittling a specific degree or university, it would immediately create a nationwide sc

Today
Columnists
[James Stavridis] How US can escape Graveyard of Empires

The problems in Afghanistan often feel intractable, like a knot of countless ropes bound together. Every time a strand is pulled, another part of the knot tightens up. Currently, the Taliban refuse to have talks with the Afghan government, which they label a puppet regime; the Kabul government insists that any power-sharing agreement allow limited numbers of Western troops to remain; the Pakistanis, who have long sheltered Taliban leaders, are unwilling to fully encourage a peace settlement; the

Today
Columnists
[Lee Jae-min] It’s a good club to join, but the question is membership fee

Still a bit of a tongue twister even to experts: hard to pronounce and difficult to remember. Many tend to get the sequence of the letters wrong. The CPTPP stands for the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership. As the name speaks for itself, this is a treaty to save the TPP -- an originally 12-nation trade agreement in the Pacific region, spearheaded by the United States. Upon Washington’s withdrawal in January 2017, the remaining 11 states joined forces to rescue the deal. They

Today
Columnists
[Leonid Bershidsky] Artificial Intelligence is getting good at fake news

Algorithms have long been able to produce basic news stories from press releases or sets of financial data; that’s not much of a threat to most humans in the news business. Now, however, artificial intelligence has taken a step further. It’s learned to perform a tougher task -- to produce convincing-looking fake news.　Stringing together a few formulaic passages from a set of numbers is a mechanical job. Inventing a fake news story on a random subject requires imagination; not every human is up t

Today
Columnists
[Hal Brands] Are Russia and China getting closer? US spy chiefs think so

Substance often runs a distant second to drama in the age of Donald Trump. So it was when America’s intelligence chiefs visited Capitol Hill recently to deliver their agencies’ annual worldwide threat assessment. It got traction in the news media largely because Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA director Gina Haspel gave testimony that implicitly cut across Trump’s policies toward North Korea and Iran. Kim Jong-un has no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons, Coats and Has

Today
Columnists
[Andrew Sheng] Embrace diversity or accept divorce

Two major divorces are in the making in March. The obvious one is Brexit, which officially occurs on March 29. The other is the deadline for the US-China trade negotiations on March 1, when US tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports will increase from 10 percent to 25 percent. Even though a trade deal is likely, as both sides want to have a deal and the market is expecting one, this will come down to the wire as the gap in what can be achieved in the deal is still daunting.　Both negotia

Feb 19, 2019
Columnists
[Michael Schuman] What North Korea could learn from Vietnam

Vietnam is more than a convenient neutral site for the second summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, which is slated for later this month. The Southeast Asian nation is being held up as a model for what Kim’s isolated country could become if he adopts sweeping market reforms.　The choice facing Kim at the Hanoi summit is the same as it’s always been: weapons or wealth. The US has long offered North Korea a chance to develop its moribund economy in exchange

Feb 19, 2019
Columnists
[Anjani Trivedi and Shuli Ren] China’s default wave spares the biggest fish

Brace yourself: A growing number of hard-up Chinese borrowers are not making good on their debts. The pattern is all too familiar.　After a record year of defaults in 2018, two big issuers failed to meet their obligations in recent weeks. Coal miner Wintime Energy Co., one of China’s biggest defaulters last year, missed interest payments again this month. Beijing Orient Landscape & Environment Co., which builds water-treatment plants, was late on a 500 million yuan ($73.8 million) bond due this m

Feb 19, 2019
Columnists
[Leonid Bershidsky] Europeans grow tired of US-led alliance

As the US-led world order continues to fall apart, second-tier powers are trying to salvage what they can. But in Germany and France, at least, voters don’t really want the US to be part of the process.　The annual Munich Security Report, which provides the starting point for discussion at the annual security forum in the German city, is often a good indication of the Western security community’s current mood. The 2019 report, titled “The Great Puzzle: Who Will Pick Up the Pieces?” is somewhat le

Feb 19, 2019
Columnists
[Gina Barreca] Perils of going online in the middle of the night

Whatever you’re doing out of a sense of desperation at 2 a.m., odds are that it’s not going to be one of your healthiest choices.　Last week, I wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t sleep. Not wanting to wake my spouse in the middle of the night (or, as my students call it, “early evening”), I tiptoed into my office, disturbing the cats who blinked, yawned and then put their paws over their eyes in what I felt were exaggerated expressions of feline sufferance.　Once at my desk, I gave into temptation.

Feb 19, 2019
Columnists

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