The duration of the latest Syrian cease-fire may matter less than its genesis. Russia, Turkey and Iran brokered the agreement without US involvement -- a worrying sign of the waning regional influence of the world’s only superpower.Whether this decline is temporary or permanent remains to be seen. What is abundantly clear is that, having decided not to intervene to stop the worst humanitarian catastrophe since World War II, US President Barack Obama lacked both the leverage and the standing to b

Robert Park is a founding member of the nonpartisan Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea, minister, musician and former prisoner of conscience. --Ed.In a 1991 interview with the JoongAng Ilbo, North Korea‘s former ambassador to East Germany -- who defected in 1959 -- clarified the circumstances of Godang Cho Man-sik’s assassination: “After retreating to Kanggye, North Pyeongan Province, I heard from the leadership that on the night of Oct. 18 while the People‘s Army fled from Pyon

Inside the courtrooms of the International Criminal Court and in local communities, we are hearing the voices of those who have survived some of the world’s most heinous crimes. Stories of tremendous loss. Stories of human suffering that could have – and should have – been prevented. “I lost my entire family.” “I have lost my dignity.” “The only hope I have left is for justice.” New ICC President Judge Silvia Fernández de Gurmendi (Argentina) ©ICC-CPI​　In our own lifetimes, in conflicts unfoldin

My wife and I are a pair of city slickers who have returned to our roots. We have one foot in an urban life and the other in a rural one — although as we get older, we tend to stay more at our farmhouse in our hometown, Dangjin. People say that we are a typical example of trend reversal because the older one gets, the more one tries to lead a comfortable urban life. 　We had left our hometown almost half a century ago before we came back about 10 years ago after I retired as a high school princip

The Russian Embassy in Seoul was upset by the publication of the article “Ukrainian Exhibition Marks ‘Revolution of Dignity’” (The Korea Herald, Dec. 29, 2014), which incriminates Russia with violating Ukrainian sovereignty. I would like to set forth our position on this issue.First of all, we were disappointed that groundless accusations of some “Russian aggression” in the eastern part of Ukraine were pulled out of the Ukrainian Ambassador Vasyl Marmazov’s speech and quoted. I want to remind, t

It is an experience familiar to many foreign English teachers: Soon after arrival in Korea, their blood is taken and screened, with the results submitted to the immigration authorities. The reason? A government policy requires that non-ethnic Korean foreigners wishing to teach children must first prove they’re HIV-free. But, amid a pending U.N. committee ruling on whether the policy constitutes racial discrimination, an unclear picture of the current status and future of testing has emerg

Namir says that returning to his home country of Sudan would mean a certain death sentence. His only crimes, he claims, were converting to Christianity from Islam and criticizing his government in writings on the Internet. He is just one of the more than 5,300 asylum seekers that have entered Korea since 1994, according to figures from the Ministry of Justice published in the Hankyoreh newspaper. “I was arrested and tortured many times, and based on Sharia laws that govern my country I wa

Like the country itself, Korea’s farming sector transformed completely in a matter of decades. But unlike so many other industries, agriculture’s trajectory in the face of industrialization has been characterized by decline. From contributing 27 percent of gross domestic product in 1970, agriculture was responsible for less than 3 percent of economic activity in 2010. The farming population similarly plummeted from about 14 million people to fewer than 3 million over the same period.As in other

Public figures never have truly private lives. When that figure is a politician or other public servant, intense public scrutiny is typically defended as being in service of the public’s right to know. When allegations emerged last month that Prosecutor General Chae Dong-wook had fathered a son through an extramarital affair, the resulting media furor was accordingly intense. After repeated denials of any wrongdoing, Chae eventually offered his resignation to President Park Geun-hye and had it a

The firmly grounded train is rarely associated with the fear felt by nervous air travelers. But a string of minor accidents in recent years, including last month’s most recent three-way train collision in Daegu, has caused the public to question the safety of one of the country’s most popular modes of travel. In 2011, there were 130 incidents involving the high-speed KTX alone, according to the Board of Audit and Inspection. The BAI laid much of the blame for these incidents on rail operator KOR

In a country that emphasizes strongly conservative sexual mores, births outside of marriage are both frowned upon and rare. Such is the mix of social conditions, culture and taboo that the nation has the lowest proportion of out-of-wedlock births in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, at just over 2 percent. The average among the club of rich nations, in contrast, exceeds that figure more than 15-fold. These births, in fact, represent only a tiny fraction of the number of u

Four subway rides, a newspaper and packet of cigarettes, or one Big Mac: That is what a minimum-wage worker can buy after an hour on the job, and have change of a couple of hundred won. The minimum hourly rate of 4,860 won, due to rise to 5,210 next year, amounts to 1.08 million won a month for a 40-hour work week. Differences in purchasing power make comparison between countries difficult, but the nation’s rate ranks on the low end of the scale among wealthy nations. In 2011, just eight of the

 In Korea, an establishment selling sex is rarely more than a short walk or mouse click away. Such is the visibility of massage parlors, room salons and karaoke joints that facilitate prostitution that a first-time visitor to a Korean city could be forgiven for thinking the sex trade was legal.Even some 40 percent of Koreans claimed to be unaware that prostitution was illegal in a survey carried out in 2001, before the introduction of the 2004 Special Law on Prostitution that criminalizes both t

In an atmosphere of intense dispute and division, the issue of constitutional revision would seem to be a rare source of agreement across the political aisle. Both then-Saenuri Party candidate Park Geun-hye and her Democratic Party challenger Moon Jae-in included a constitutional amendment in their platforms in last year’s presidential campaign. This common ground was later built upon when the parties agreed in April to form a special committee, the first of its kind, to discuss the issue. Then,

If there is a right to life, is there also a right to die? That is the question the National Bioethics Committee sought to answer in a recommendation at the end of July that terminally ill patients and their family be given the right to withdraw life-prolonging treatment in certain circumstances. The proposal, which would apply only to patients close to death with no chance of recovery, would end the current legal obligation on doctors to provide all treatment necessary to sustain life irrespect

Korea cares what you think of it. That was ostensibly the message conveyed to the world in the announcement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs last month that it would survey 50 countries’ citizens on their impressions of the country. The poll, to be carried out over three years, will include Brazil, India, South Africa and Vietnam, among other countries with less-established relationships with Korea than the likes of the U.S. and Japan. Gauging how people outside the country “feel about Korea”

A quarter of a century later, the 1988 Seoul Olympics are still remembered as a defining moment of modern Korea’s arrival to the international stage. The Games offered the country a chance to show off its achievements of industrialization and democratization after the successive hardships of war, extreme poverty and decades-long military dictatorship. Since then, Korea has continued to bid for international sporting events with zeal ― often successfully. Having already hosted the Asian Indoor an

Korea’s English fever is well known. Despite a free public education system ranked among the best in the world, Korean parents spend some 20 trillion won ($18 billion) on private education each year, much of it on English education. For many parents, the younger their children can start learning, the better. In one survey carried out by Korea Institute of Child Care and Education in 2011, more than 90 percent of respondents with children in the first or second grade had begun their child’s Engli

The figure sounds alarming: Almost 1 in 4 Seoul citizens are not just overweight, but obese. So reported Seoul Metropolitan Government last month with the release of a survey of more than 23,000 residents aged 19 and older. The figure represented the fourth straight rise since 2008, when 20.6 percent of the city’s population were classified as obese. The report may have come as a surprise to many Koreans who have traveled to Western countries, not to mention the city’s foreign residents: Seoul w

The number of students from abroad choosing to study in Korea has risen considerably in recent years as the country has become increasingly internationalized. There were almost 90,000 foreign exchange students in the country in 2011, according to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology. The ministry has sought to encourage the trend, setting a target of 200,000 students in the country by 2020 as part of efforts to transform Korea into an “educational hub” of Asia. The interest in Korea