[Editorial] Wasteful trip

Five lawmakers from the ruling and opposition parties on the Strategy and Finance Committee set out on a nine-day business travel to Europe on Tuesday. They said they would visit France, Spain and Germany to learn about their fiscal rules. Of course, lawmakers are free to travel abroad for policy research. But at least they should have decency. The ruling and opposition parties wasted two years and six months neglecting the legislation of fiscal rules. Recently they agreed unanimously on a bill

April 21, 2023

[Editorial] Destructive rental fraud

In a country where tenants often pay a large lump-sum deposit for two years of rent under the unique “jeonse” housing system, landlords’ failure to pay back the deposits in time -- a result of either reckless borrowing or a shameless scam -- can be utterly devastating for cash-strapped tenants, often wiping out the entirety of their assets. A massive fraud case is now shaking up the jeonse lease system and sending shock waves through the nation, with thousands of innocent tenan

April 20, 2023

[Editorial] Apply same yardstick

The main opposition Democratic Party of Korea has seldom acknowledged allegations unfavorable to it. But regarding alleged vote buying at its national convention in May 2021, its leader Lee Jae-myung apologized five days after the allegations became known. He also asked for a fair and quick investigation. The party has covered up for its lawmakers in corruption allegations, condemning the prosecution for suppressing the party through what it called politically motivated investigations. Lee seems

April 19, 2023

[Editorial] Red flags about leadership

Two polls show that President Yoon Suk Yeol’s approval ratings have fallen in connection with the presidential office’s poor handling of the leaked US intelligence documents, among other negative factors. Yoon must take the warning signs seriously and try to address the dispute ahead of his upcoming state visit to the US. On Monday, a poll of 2,506 voters conducted by Realmeter from March 10-14 showed that 33.6 percent viewed Yoon’s job performance positively, down 2.8 percenta

April 18, 2023

[Editorial] United on populism

Ruling and opposition parties fight each other all the time over everything. However, when it comes to legislation that can win over voters, they are easily united. In a subcommittee meeting of the Strategy and Finance Committee on Thursday, they unanimously passed a public finance law revision bill. Under the existing law, a government-financed project, such as the construction of roads, ports and airports, must undergo a feasibility evaluation if it costs 50 billion won ($38.25 million) or m

April 17, 2023

[Editorial] Risks of a deeper slowdown

The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday lowered its 2023 economic growth outlook for South Korea to 1.5 percent, marking the fourth straight trimming since July last year. The revised IMF outlook for Korea -- a 0.2 percentage-point drop from its estimate in January -- did not come as a big surprise in consideration of the latest tumult sparked by fears of the banking crisis in the US and Europe, as well as other data pointing to a slowdown in various industrial sectors. The IMF’s 2023 g

April 14, 2023

[Editorial] Excessive goal

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said that the previous administration had raised the country’s carbon emission reduction goal too high without listening to industries sufficiently. The Moon Jae-in administration pledged to the international community to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent of the 2018 level by 2030. Han said in a plenary session of the Presidential Commission on Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth on Monday that the goal is becoming a heavy burden

April 13, 2023

[Editorial] US spying on allies

The United States has suffered another major classified data leak that allegedly contains spying activities on its key allies, including South Korea. Both countries are now scrambling to minimize the negative impact of the fiasco by claiming that most of the leaked documents were faked and reaffirming their bilateral alliance. But things are likely to become more embarrassing -- if not disturbing -- unless proper steps are taken. It is not the first time that the US has failed to keep its secret

April 12, 2023

[Editorial] Strengthen drug investigations

Police recently arrested four people who handed out drugged drinks to high school students on a street in Daechi-dong, southern Seoul. The suspects allegedly told students the drinks were good for memory and concentration. The police are currently on the hunt for another suspect who is thought to have ordered the manufacture and distribution of the drinks. Spiked drinks have been a problem for years among adults in nightclubs and other places, and the same approach is now used to blackmail young

April 11, 2023

[Editorial] Beyond chip glut

Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest memory chip and smartphone maker, said its operating profit in the January-March period would likely be at the lowest level in 14 years, a clear sign that its earnings are suffering from a setback in its core chip business. Samsung’s woes, however, cannot be brushed off as a temporary drop in profits, as its memory chip business has significant implications for the South Korean economy, particularly concerning semiconductor exports. Samsung&rs

April 10, 2023

[Editorial] Pass fiscal rule

Managing national debt counts for a lot. If a nation manages it poorly, its people pay a terrible price. If sovereign debt exceeds an optimum range, the country’s credit ratings could fall and foreign capital could flee. Worse, the nation could default on its debt. Many people's living standards would fall dramatically, as they did during the Greek and Latin American debt crises. The statement of government accounts for the fiscal year of 2022, which was approved in a recent Cabinet m

April 7, 2023

[Editorial] Regulating ChatGPT

Tech buzzwords tend to come and go quickly. Remember the metaverse? Or the fourth industrial revolution, a concept that swept South Korea several years ago? Now, all attention is placed on what is called “generative AI,” led by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The popularity of artificial intelligence-powered ChatGPT, which generates highly human responses to text queries based on algorithms and a vast volume of data sets, is sparking off a whole host of new phenomena in various applications

April 6, 2023

[Editorial] Delaying the inevitable

It is indisputable that raising electricity and gas fees is the only solution in the current situation to prevent majority state-owned public enterprises Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) and Korea Gas Corp. (KOGAS) from going bankrupt. Their losses have snowballed because they failed to reflect sharp international energy price increases in their fees. KEPCO suffered an operating loss of 32.65 trillion won ($24.8 billion) last year alone. It has to pay 3.8 billion won each day in interest payme

April 5, 2023

[Editorial] Decline in tax revenue

A drop in tax revenue is inevitable when the broader economy slows down and corporations suffer operating losses. But the country's tax revenue is currently declining at a worrisome pace, prompting policymakers to discuss the need for raising taxes. According to data from the Ministry of Economy and Finance, South Korea’s tax revenue amounted to 54.2 trillion won ($41 billion) in the first two months of this year, down 15.7 trillion won from the 69.9 trillion won recorded over the sam

April 4, 2023

[Editorial] Spotlight NK rights abuses

The government made public its report on North Korea’s human rights violations on Thursday. It is the first time that the government has made public its annual report on the North’s dismal human rights record since it began drafting a report under the North Korean Human Rights Act. The Unification Ministry is said to have prepared a report on North Korea’s human rights violations annually from 2017, a year after the act was passed and when the Moon Jae-in administration began.

April 3, 2023

[Editorial] ‘Bold measures' needed

There is no question that South Korea has to address its low birthrate, a chronic problem that can deepen problems affecting a wide range of fields such as the economy, welfare, defense and national competitiveness in the coming years. Strangely enough, the country’s low fertility rate did not get full attention from the presidents of the past two administrations. In this context, it is an encouraging sign that President Yoon Suk Yeol presided over a meeting of the Presidential Committee o

March 31, 2023

[Editorial] Wet blanket on relations

Textbooks that Japan’s elementary school students will use from next year contain distorted information about Korean and Japanese history. The government-approved textbooks apparently water down the coercive nature of Japan’s wartime wrongdoings and strengthen its sovereignty claim to South Korea's Dokdo islets, among other things. Historical distortions in textbooks has been getting worse, with Japan increasing ambiguous expressions and unfounded arguments to avoid admitting re

March 30, 2023

[Editorial] Mounting debt problems

The banking crisis, sparked by a loss of confidence by depositors and investors, toppled several banks in the US and Switzerland. It is now spreading into the eurozone. Given the tightly interlinked nature of financial systems across the globe, it is too naive to expect that South Korea would be left unscathed. The failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in the past few weeks sparked turmoil in the global banking sector. After the collapse of Credit Suisse, which was taken over by UBS

March 29, 2023

[Editorial] No compromise

The legislature should be a space where its members mediate and resolve social conflicts. But their negotiations over contentious issues are hard to watch, as only antagonism and confrontation seem to exist between the rival parties. The main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, which holds an overwhelming majority of 169 seats in the 300-member National Assembly, is wielding its legislative power as it pleases. The Assembly's passage of a revision to the Grain Management Act last Thursday

March 28, 2023

[Editorial] Two sides of the same coin

Two contrasting stories concerning cryptocurrency are currently in the news. First, bitcoin pulled off a strong rally this month, renewing investor appetite for the world’s largest cryptocurrency. Second, Do Kwon, the co-founder of Terraform Labs -- once a high-flying darling of the crypto market before crashing spectacularly -- was arrested in Montenegro on March 23. Few people can deny the fact that cryptocurrencies tend to be more volatile than other traditional investment tools. The cr

March 27, 2023