Most Popular
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Exports to US reach all-time high, widen gap with China
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Trump rekindles criticism: US forces defending 'wealthy' S. Korea 'free of charge'
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[Music in drama] Rekindle a love that slipped through your fingers
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S. Korea discussed possible participation in AUKUS Pillar 2 with Australia: defense minister
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Opposition-led Assembly unilaterally passes bill to probe Marine's death
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[New faces of Assembly] Architect behind ‘audacious initiative’ believes in denuclearized North Korea
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Seoul Metro to seek legal action against malicious complaints
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Illit, mired in controversy, remains on Billboard charts for 5th week
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On May Day, labor unions blast Yoon's foreign nanny proposal
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[KH Explains] Will alternative trading platform shake up Korean stock market?
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[Andrew Sheng] Property bubbles and bank NPLs
How worrisome are real estate bubbles for the banking system? Based upon the recent subprime and then global financial crisis, they are very worrisome indeed. For households, a house is likely to be the largest single investment for most families. For companies, real estate and fixed assets are often, other than inventory, the most important assets, especially as collateral for loans from banks. F
April 8, 2011
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Promises made before votes are often broken
Thailand’s Pheu Thai Party’s proposal to give the three southernmost provinces some degree of autonomy sounded like a political campaign platform ― but on closer examination it looks more and more like a cheap ploy to win votes.What’s worse, its proponents are exploiting the sentiment of the Malay Muslims of the deep South, who deserve better.In this heavily centralized country of ours, decentrali
April 8, 2011
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[Yu Yongding] Monetary reform to make SDR reserve currency
The fundamental problem with the current international monetary system is that the U.S. dollar is used as the key international reserve currency, which gives the U.S. central bank the “exorbitant privilege” of printing the United States’ way out of its economic difficulties.And that is exactly what it is doing. Its printing presses are running at full speed in a bid to boost the U.S. economy, rega
April 8, 2011
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[Editorial] China’s message
The Filipino public’s consuming interest in the execution of Sally Ordinario-Villanueva, Ramon Credo and Elizabeth Batain was both melodramatic and inevitable. The three drug mules were the first Filipinos to be executed by China, and their personal narratives mirrored the stories and the self-image of millions of Filipinos, as hardy but unfortunate creatures of circumstance. Little wonder, then,
April 8, 2011
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[Shlomo Ben Ami] The many faces of the Arab spring
MADRID ― The attack by a Western-led alliance on Muammar Gadhafi’s forces in Libya is driven largely by principled motives. Had it turned its back on the Libyan rebels, the West would have betrayed its very identity.Of course, the same principles are not being applied to save the brutally repressed masses in Yemen or the Shia protesters in Bahrain. It is doubtful whether they will be extended to S
April 7, 2011
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More even-handed budget approach is needed
Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House Budget Committee, has proposed the most ambitious tax-and-spending plan that Capitol Hill has seen in years. His budget proposal for fiscal 2012 doesn’t merely seek to pare the enormous federal deficit and bring the national debt under control, which it would do much more aggressively than the plan President Obama offered in February. I
April 7, 2011
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Quran-burning touches off a killing spree
Florida pastor Terry Jones certainly deserves a lion’s share of criticism for his symbolic burning of the Quran on March 20, having been warned for months that it was almost certain to provoke violence in the Muslim world. It did, and now 24 people are dead in Afghanistan, including six U.N. workers in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.It is important to note, however, that the reaction of Musli
April 7, 2011
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[Julia Allison] Netiquette 101
Boorish relatives, vengeful exes, inappropriate work attire, unsent thank-you notes ― traditional advice columnists have spent decades offering prescriptions for these gaffes.Now, thanks to social media, the Internet and any number of gadgets and innovations, we have the means to offend or upset people on an unprecedented scale. With every new technology, there are new ways to make an absolute foo
April 7, 2011
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[Laurence Kotlikoff] U.S. fiscal meltdown in spitting distance
The two parties are having a heated debate over the Republican plan to slice $61 billion off Uncle Sam’s projected $3.6 trillion budget. If the Republicans get their way, the deficit will fall from 9.5 percent of gross domestic product to 9.1 percent. If they don’t, they’ll probably shut the government for a couple of days. Then they’ll compromise on, say, a $40 billion budget cut, having proved t
April 7, 2011
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[Ruti Teitel and Robert Howse] Debt, dictatorship, and democratization
NEW YORK ― After Saddam Hussein’s fall, the United States successfully pressed creditors to write off much of Iraq’s external debt. Senior American officials, including Paul Wolfowitz, later president of the World Bank, argued that the Iraqi people should not be saddled with obligations that the dictator contracted in order to enrich himself and oppress his subjects. Citing a long-standing doctrin
April 7, 2011
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[Naomi Wolf] Al Jazeera will benefit Americans
NEW YORK ― Al Jazeera correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin is on a victory lap in the United States ― or rather, Al Jazeera is sending him on its own victory lap. After all, Mohyeldin is a modest guy, despite being one of Al Jazeera’s best-known reporters ― and clearly a rising international media star.Al Jazeera has good reason to gloat: it has new cachet in the U.S. after millions of Americans, hungry
April 7, 2011
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U.N. should be honest Mideast broker
In 2009, a United Nations panel led by Richard Goldstone issued a 575-page bombshell of a report. It accused Israel of committing war crimes against the Palestinians in a three-week Gaza invasion. The Goldstone report was a diplomatic bonanza for Israel’s enemies around the world. The report was so damning that some Israeli officials stopped traveling abroad for fear they’d be arrested for war cri
April 6, 2011
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[Raphael A. Auer] Eurozone’s inflation divide
ZURICH ― Discussions within the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, which is poised to meet on April 7, are about to get hot. The risk that rising inflation in emerging Asia could spill over into Europe will pit the Bank’s inflation hawks against those in favor of ensuring as fast a return to full employment as possible. But what may cause even greater dissension is a renewed clash of natio
April 6, 2011
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[Amity Shlaes] Islam blamers ignore trouble source
Why is Libya exploding? Why are Iraq and Egypt always, even after many millennia, undemocratic? Why was there scarcely any looting or rioting in Japan even after the triple calamity of tsunami, earthquake and nuclear accident?Blame the rain. Or rather, the lack of it. Egypt and Libya boil over because precipitation levels there are among the lowest in the world. Japan has received enough rain over
April 6, 2011
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[Daniel Akst] Digital books eat Google dominance
Recently a family friend, knowing that I write books, asked how she could copyright her daughter’s poetry. For the record, the girl is 13. My answer ― don’t worry about it ― was the same one I give to writers fretful over Google’s plans to digitize the world’s books. Go ahead, Google. Scan my out-of-print works, now otherwise available for a penny (plus shipping) from used-book sellers on the Inte
April 6, 2011
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[William Pesek] This man’s $120 million taps a nation’s anger
Something fascinating is afoot in Japan: anger. People are fuming about the nuclear crisis that put their nation in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.The response is restrained compared with the perpetually aggrieved Tea Party crowd in the U.S., or Chinese who lash out at anyone abroad with the slightest criticism. Germans are plenty annoyed about bailing out deadbeat nations sharing the eur
April 6, 2011
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[Matthew Lynn] How to avoid the pitfalls of a new tech bubble
Initial public offerings. Big takeovers. Nerdy 20-somethings getting rich quickly. To borrow a phrase from an old Prince song, the markets are suddenly partying like it’s 1999 again. The tech bubble is back. Facebook Inc. is commanding an enormous valuation. So are Groupon Inc., Twitter Inc. and LivingSocial.com. Even Rovio Mobile Oy, the small Finnish company behind the hit app Angry Birds, looks
April 6, 2011
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[J. Bradford DeLong] The complex anatomy of slow recovery in U.S.
BERKELEY ― Between 1950 and 1990 ― the days of old-fashioned inflation-fighting downturns engineered by the U.S. Federal Reserve ― America’s post-recession unemployment rate would fall on average 32.4 percent over the course of a year from its initial value toward its natural rate. If the U.S. unemployment rate had started to follow such a path after peaking in the second half of 2009, it would no
April 6, 2011
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Carter’s visit encourages dissidents in Cuba
When former President Jimmy Carter last visited Cuba, in 2002, he delivered a remarkable speech via the state-run media that criticized the Castro dictatorship and exposed listeners to the truly revolutionary idea that it’s up to the Cuban people, not the one-party regime nor any foreign government, to determine Cuba’s future.Naturally, his visit raised hopes that this might represent an ever-so-s
April 5, 2011
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Excessive love for money is the root of all evils
Even people in the sports world are not free of this craze for money as more in-depth reports on the arrest of three soccer referees show. Lu Jun was arrested for taking bribes from local soccer teams. Before being exposed, he was known as the “golden whistle” for his “integrity.” He officiated in two matches at the 2002 World Cup finals in South Korea and Japan. Praising the clean soccer administ
April 5, 2011