It is not uncommon for Korean political parties to undergo a power vacuum or leadership crisis. This often happens when party leaders step down in the wake of an election defeat or a major scandal. An interim leadership -- usually termed an “emergency planning panel” -- takes over until party members choose new leaders. As the name suggests, such an abnormal situation should come about only rarely. It seems, however, that this is not a rarity, but the norm for Korean parties: Currently, all thre

By the time British citizens went to the polls on June 23 to decide on their country’s continued membership in the European Union, there had been no shortage of advice in favor of remaining. Foreign leaders and moral authorities had voiced unambiguous concern about the consequences of an exit, and economists had overwhelmingly warned that leaving the EU would entail significant economic costs.Yet the warnings were ignored. A prereferendum YouGov opinion poll tells why: “Leave” voters had no trus

I wrote an opinion piece in April 2013 at the height of the Cyprus financial crisis and criticized the European Union for its handling of that crisis, particularly the heavy-handed approach of some of the strong members of the union. Now I am thinking maybe that criticism was too soft.　The American journalist of the early 20th century, H. L. Mencken, said, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”  Sadly, the case in point has become the saga of the United

Populism, nationalism, and xenophobia all contributed to the victory of the “Leave” campaign in the United Kingdom’s recent referendum on membership in the European Union. But these forces float on the surface of a larger sea change: a fundamental shift worldwide in the relationship between the state and the market.Since the birth of modern capitalism, these two frameworks of human activity have generally been at odds. While the market tends to expand geographically as its participants pursue ec

While the short-term economic consequences of Brexit are not to be dismissed, it is the impending failure of the European project that should provoke the bigger sense of concern. The EU‘s two biggest achievements since the establishment of the single market -- the euro and border-free travel -- are both under threat. These implosions would be a magnitude more painful than the British vote.　The two are closely linked. European governments realized in the 1980s that competitive currency devaluatio

Only four months after it came into being, the People’s Party is in crisis. How the party copes with the crisis will affect the future of not only the party itself but also national politics -- especially the next presidential election. The crisis, touched off by allegations of financial wrongdoing during the April 13 election campaign, culminated with the resignation of Ahn Cheol-soo, the party’s paramount leader, and his joint leader Chung Jung-bae on Tuesday. Their resignation came a day afte

The seemingly endless controversies involving Hong Ky-ttack, a vice president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, show that a combination of personal greed and President Park Geun-hye’s misuse of her right to appoint senior officials has resulted in another disaster. As in similar cases, much of the blame for the latest mishap should go to Park, who is good at assigning the wrong people to the wrong posts. At the base of the problem is her preference for those who helped her election ca

Type “Brexit lessons” in the Google search engine and you get 1.95 million results. This is as of Saturday night.The one that I liked the most was from the Huffington Post.“The decision to stay or leave the EU is a phenomenally complex mash-up of politics, geopolitics, economic and social entanglements with benefits from being part of a larger community (including retired Brits living in sunnier places). Voting made the decision look simple. It was anything but. Media failed to communicate what

The British vote to leave the European Union is likely to trigger a chain of complex reactions whose impact cannot be fully calculated. It has already caused a steep drop in the value of the pound sterling and of shares in the London stock market. That was expected. But the ripple effects in the rest of Europe’s markets have been just as bad, if not worse. This was not foreseen.　In voting to leave, the British intended to “take back control” of their country from the Brussels-based EU bureaucrat

Over 2,000 years ago, Plato was skeptical of democracy because he felt that voters, even though restricted to property-owning male citizens, were swayed easily by the rhetoric of politicians.Democracy disappeared for over 1,500 years following its demise in Athens and it was only then that its slow evolution began in England and spread to other parts of the world. Doubts regarding its efficacy persisted but were countered by arguments that it was the worst form of government except for all other

We hear a lot about patriotism, especially around the Fourth of July. But in 2016 we’re hearing about two very different types of patriotism. One is an inclusive patriotism that binds us together. The other is an exclusive patriotism that keeps others out.Through most of our history we’ve understood patriotism the first way. We’ve celebrated the values and ideals we share in common: democracy, equal opportunity, freedom, tolerance and generosity.We’ve recognized these as aspirations to which we

It’s the summer of 2019, three years after British voters stunned the world by voting to leave the European Union. The U.K. has regained its economic and financial footing, as well as its national confidence. A smaller and more unified European Union now functions in a more coherent fashion.But the road has been bumpy and, as a result, the global economy came close to recession, financial instability and more isolationist policies. Meanwhile, the global standing and influence of both the EU and

Early this year, a newspaper published by China’s ruling Communist Party, reported growing calls among Chinese citizens to put pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.The paper said that a growing number of Chinese, both elites and ordinary citizens, regard Pyongyang as a burden to Beijing rather than an old friend.It pointed out that “changes in public opinion are altering the external environment of China’s policy on North Korea and can be converted into pressure that pushes the

From Thursday, local and foreign institutions will be obliged to make public their identity when they engage in a certain level of short selling on the local bourse.The new disclosure rule is applicable to stock investors whose short sale of a particular listed company is worth 1 billion won ($856,000) or more. In addition, irrespective of worth, investors whose short-sale balance sheet exceeds 0.5 percent of a particular company’s total stocks issued must go public.The disclosure items include

In a recent article, I presented solid evidence that the global economy has been doing very well for the world’s poor during the past 25 to 35 years. China’s growth has been stellar, India’s has been solid and many smaller poor countries got a boost from demand for natural resources. Now developing-world growth has dipped, thanks to the China slowdown and the resulting slump in commodity prices. But the gains the poor countries made are unlikely to be reversed. And those decades of stellar growt

Several years ago, it occurred to me that social scientists today are all standing on the shoulders of giants like Niccolo Machiavelli, John Locke, Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim. One thing they all have in common is that their primary focus was on the social, political, and economic makeup of the Western European world between 1450 and 1900. Which is to say, they provide an intellectual toolkit for looking at, say, the Western world of 1840, but not necessarily

Looking at reliable recent polls, you could come away with two contradictory conclusions: Donald Trump is cratering, allowing Hillary Clinton to run away with the presidential race. Or Trump has survived an awful month and is surprisingly competitive.I’m going presume to tell you what the state of play really is by looking at multiple surveys and extrapolating a bit.Clinton, though she remains an unpopular candidate, has an advantage of about 7 points, though it’s slightly less when third- and f

The tensions festering in the Saudi royal family became clear in September, when Joseph Westphal, the U.S. ambassador to Riyadh, flew to Jeddah to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, nominally the heir to the throne. But when he arrived, he was told that the deputy crown prince, a brash 30-year-old named Mohammed bin Salman, wanted to see him urgently. The ambassador was redirected. The United States and the crown prince swallowed their embarrassment. Palace intrigue is a staple of monarchies,

Few topics have spawned more commentary in recent years than unauthorized immigration, and few have generated as much pressure for a solution. But in a decision last week, the U.S. Supreme Court provided a nine-word ruling -- “The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided court,” it read in its entirety -- and no resolution. So a matter that has roiled American politics and government for years will go on roiling.The result of the Supreme Court action was to return the dispute over President Ba

Busan Mayor Suh Byung-soo said Monday he would respect the central government’s decision to expand the existing airport in the port city to meet the increased demand for air traffic in the nation’s southeastern region. He made the right decision.The central government announced on June 21 that it would scrap its plan to build the nation’s second hub airport in one of the two candidate sites -- Gadeokdo Island in Busan and Miryang of South Gyeongsang Province.　Busan had sought to host the new air