Two new innovations of our foreign service are being prepared. One is designed to help recruit personnel with the ability and integrity required to advance Korea’s national interests in the global community. The other is designed to correctly evaluate the performances of diplomats posted overseas. A bill for the establishment of the National Foreign Service Institute (NFSI) passed the National Ass

Editorial June 28, 2011

It is an improvement if the current chaebol bashing by politicians of both the ruling and opposition camps signifies their independence from corporate influences. It is rather less reassuring, however, if our lawmakers choose the targets for their verbal assaults as a political ploy to chase votes. Grand National Party members have become harsher in their criticism of conglomerates for making prof

Editorial June 28, 2011

North Korea released dual warnings of retaliation against the South over the weekend, one about the floating of balloons containing leaflets and basic supplies and the other about the Key Resolve/Foal Eagle joint exercise with the U.S. military. The messages from the North Korean military used extreme words such as “turning Seoul into a sea of fire” with their nuclear and missile powers.The Key Re

Editorial Feb. 28, 2011

Some in the Korean Protestant churches may believe that they scored a major victory in their campaign against a legislative move to introduce Islamic bonds or “sukuk” here as parties have dropped a bill aimed to exempt various taxes on the special type of loans originating in the Arab world. But is that so?When we observe the recent actions by religious groups concerning political and social issue

Editorial Feb. 28, 2011

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is wrong. The way to fix his state’s fiscal crisis isn’t by destroying public-sector unions and the half-century tradition of collective bargaining among teachers and state employees.Walker argues that given the growing state deficit, there is no other choice than to slash the wages and benefits of public-sector workers whose compensation, he suggests, far exceeds t

Viewpoints Feb. 28, 2011