Most Popular
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Korea enters full election mode
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Immigrant woman stabbed to death by Korean husband
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Seoul bus drivers go on general strike, cause morning rush hour delays
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Lee Jong-sup resigns as envoy to Australia
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Yellow dust engulfs S. Korea, advisory alert issued
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Official campaigning kicks off for April 10 elections
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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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[Editorial] Will budget airlines help economy take off?
The growing number of low-cost carriers in Asia in recent years is putting pressure on Japan to reform its commercial aviation system.Two South Korean LCCs have expanded their routes to include service to and from Japan this year, following similar moves by Chinese and Malaysian low-fare airlines last year. Another South Korean LCC is set to start service to Japan in mid-July. Clearly, Asian LCC o
July 8, 2011
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[Editorial] Thaksin wins again
Yingluck Shinawatra and her Pheu Thai party have won Thailand’s parliamentary elections, claiming a commanding majority in the legislature. The results are a vindication of sorts for Shinawatra’s brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, deposed in 2006 by a military coup.We say “of sorts” because Thaksin has been vindicated before: Since the coup, Thai politics have been marked by the co
July 8, 2011
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[Coomi Kapoor] Rote learning explains lack of great achievers in India
In short, in spite of India’s universities churning out some two million graduates every year, there has been no Bill Gates, no Steve Jobs and no Nobel laureate among them in a long, long time.In spite of India’s universities churning out some two million graduates every year, there has been no Bill Gates or a Nobel laureate among them in a long time. The education system that rewards rote learnin
July 8, 2011
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[William Pesek] Billionaire’s return may put riot police to work
All dressed up in riot gear and nowhere to go. Such was the plight of two dozen Thai police officers stewing in boredom Sunday night near one of Bangkok’s busier nightlife districts. Thai elections tend to be anarchic affairs for the keepers of order, with protests often deteriorating into violence. This time was different; tear gas canisters sat unused after the victory of allies of Thaksin Shina
July 7, 2011
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[Hans-Werner Sinn] GIPS debt: Farewell to the euro?
MUNICH ― “It’s not the euro that’s in danger, but the public finances of individual European countries.” One hears this everywhere nowadays, but it’s not true. The euro itself is at risk, because the countries in crisis have, in recent years, been running the eurozone’s monetary printing presses overtime.Some 90 percent of the refinancing debt that the commercial banks of the GIPS countries (Greec
July 7, 2011
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[Lucian Leape and Helen Haskell] Limiting resident physicians’ work hours
Forty years ago this month, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that sleep-deprived resident physicians reading electrocardiograms made twice as many errors as their rested counterparts. Back then, in 1971, there were no limits on the hours that medical residents could be scheduled to work. Thirty-six-hour on-call shifts were the norm.Under new rules that take effect
July 7, 2011
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[Amos N. Guiora] Israel’s Gaza sea blockade is an act of self-defense
Self-defense against threats to national security and individual citizens is a core right and duty of all nation-states. No one seriously disagrees. And yet this week, the Mediterranean Sea will once again be the site of a dangerous attack on this basic right.Activists from around the world, seeking to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, plan to launch a flotilla of shi
July 7, 2011
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[Lawrence J. Korb] U.S. military’s abortion policy is out of date
More than 255,000 women have served in the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Twenty-one percent of the 2011 graduating class of sailors at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis were women; of the Marines, 17 percent. The Air Force Academy and West Point graduated similar percentages: nearly 20 percent and more than 16 percent, respectively. All told, women account for nearly 15 percent of activ
July 7, 2011
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[J. Bradford DeLong] Confessions of a deregulator
BERKELEY ― Back in the late 1990s, in America at least, two schools of thought pushed for more financial deregulation ― that is, for repealing the legal separation of investment banking from commercial banking, relaxing banks’ capital requirements, and encouraging more aggressive creation and use of derivatives. If deregulation looks like such a bad idea now, why didn’t it then?The first school of
July 7, 2011
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[Jeffrey Goldberg] Ex-Mossad chief’s Iran warnings may backfire
In a country of hard men, Meir Dagan, the recently retired head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, is one of the hardest. He is the Siberian-born son of Holocaust survivors, an ex-commando who has arranged the assassinations of many of Israel’s enemies. He is devoted to the defense of his country, and, like most of Israel’s samurai class, sees Iran, and its Jew-hating, missile-o
July 6, 2011
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[Joel Brinkley] Bombs before bread in N. Korea
Is there any greater nuclear threat to the world than North Korea? With a dozen nuclear weapons and a vile record of proliferation, this rogue state and its lunatic leader can be relied upon for just one thing: making terrible trouble for its neighbors and everyone else.Just last month, U.S. Navy warships intercepted a North Korean vessel carrying missiles to Myanmar (Burma) and turned it around.S
July 6, 2011
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[Simon Johnson] Could Italy be next European domino to fall?
In recent days, Greece’s parliament adopted new austerity measures and Europe’s finance ministers approved another round of Greek loans. So the European debt crisis is under control, right? Probably not. One obvious reason is Standard & Poor’s July 4 threat to declare a default if banks roll over Greek government bonds coming due over the next year. That could force everyone back to the drawing bo
July 6, 2011
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[Albert R. Hunt] Politicians lag U.S. voters on same-sex marriage
Almost 30 years ago, I flew around New York State with its new governor, Mario Cuomo. He told me that at a gay and lesbian advocacy dinner that week he and Bella Abzug, a firebrand left-wing former congresswoman, were the only straight people in attendance. I offhandedly remarked that the issue made me a little uncomfortable. Cuomo pounced. Every time you think about that, he said, assume that you
July 6, 2011
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[Naomi Wolf] Is pervasiveness of pornography driving men to insanity?
Understanding how pornography affects the brain and wreaks havoc on male virility permits people to make betterinformed choices.NEW YORK ― It is hard to ignore how many highly visible men in recent years (indeed, months) have behaved in sexually self-destructive ways. Some powerful men have long been sexually voracious; unlike today, though, they were far more discreet and generally used much bett
July 6, 2011
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[Doyle McManus] A real-world consequence of debt-limit delay
In 2008, as financial crisis threatened the U.S. banking system, President George W. Bush asked Congress to approve an emergency bailout. Leaders of both parties blessed the idea; both presidential candidates ― Barack Obama and John McCain ― endorsed it. But conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats rebelled, the House defeated the bill ― and the stock market plummeted in real time during the
July 5, 2011
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[Benedicta Marzinotto] EU budget’s outsize political role
BRUSSELS ― The European Commission is now in the process of formulating the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), a medium-term budget framework that fixes the European Union’s revenues and expenditures, including how much should be allocated annually to each objective and each country. The next one starts in 2014 ― and much more than money is at stake.The debate over the next year will be s
July 5, 2011
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[Meghan Daum] The sanctimony of San Francisco
Dear San Francisco,Will you please get a life? First you passed a law prohibiting the sale of most Happy Meals. Then you set your sights on banning circumcision. Now you’re trying to make it illegal to sell almost every kind of pet, including goldfish, within city limits.In one way, this isn’t entirely surprising. In order to buy a goldfish, you usually need to carry it home in a plastic Ziploc ba
July 5, 2011
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[Pankaj Mishra] Rising Turkey is no resurrection of Ottoman threat to Western world
Like many of Asia’s antique cities, Istanbul is a palimpsest, continuously inscribed by new movements of people and ideas, even as older writings on its parchment remain faintly visible. Few Istanbul neighborhoods manifest a multilayered identity as much as Kuzguncuk, which lies on the Asian shore of the Bosporus. Legend has it that Jews expelled from Spain in the late 15th century first settled h
July 5, 2011
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[Kim Seong-kon] Is Korea a conqueror of the world?
We should be more discrete and modest when it comes to evaluating the popularity of Korean culture overseas.With the rise in popularity of Korean television dramas and movies across Asian countries, the headlines of our newspapers invariably proclaim, “Hallyu (the Korean Wave) has conquered Asia.” When our K-pop group singers succeeded in attracting a huge crowd in Paris and London, our media once
July 5, 2011
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[William Pesek ] Commentary-Pesek
It’s a man’s world. That’s something, for better or worse, women in Asia can tell you. Japan and South Korea underutilize women with little regard for how it constrains growth. The Philippines sends all too many of them abroad as domestics to ship money home and support an inefficient economy. A preference for boys in India and elsewhere leads to elective abortion of female fetuses. Indonesia and
July 4, 2011