A lawmaker from the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea has raised the issue of abbreviating the unit of currency, and some of his colleagues are supporting his proposal for a redenomination.Rep. Choi Woon-yeol of the Minjoo Party said that it is the right time to start negotiating among lawmakers on whether to redenominate the currency. His suggestion indicates that the 20th National Assembly needs to take the initiative in garnering social consensus on the currency unit overhaul.The optimum

The middle classes that quake at the thought of gore and fascist hordes seem incorrigibly sanguine about a possible nuclear confrontation in South Asia with both India and Pakistan vying to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group.It is always baffling, isn’t it, to see the yawning difference in our responses in South Asia to a gathering communal threat, for instance, as opposed to the catastrophic prospect of nuclear annihilation? Only recently, Pakistan toggled between public outcry and terrified whis

Lack of knowledge on environmental issues is blamed for lenient verdicts given by Indonesian courts to those deemed responsible for the destruction.Enforcement of the law against those who commit environmental crimes in Indonesia has proved to fail as a deterrent. A series of trials of corporations held responsible for devastating and widespread forest and land fires last year ended in an anticlimax, sending the worrying message that burning forests is permissible.The recent acquittal of Frans K

The sporadic discord and skirmishes notwithstanding, Sino-Indian ties still move on an even keel of cooperation and engagement. The Silk Road project — linking China to all the major business and cultural hubs across Asia — might enhance the scope of friendshipThere is no letup in China’s effort to give body and substance to its initiative of reviving the fabled Silk Road. In its earliest form, this was a caravan route across the heart of Asia to carry Chinese products, silk above all — hence th

In the aftermath of the Orlando massacre, the Democrats applied a law that serves them well: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”So they used the bodies of the dead as leverage for their politics and framed the national debate in terms of gun control rather than terrorism inspired by the radical jihadists of Islamic State group. It was all about protecting their presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. They had to protect her. So they shouted about the guns.All that

 On Monday, eight days after 49 people were gunned down in an Orlando nightclub by a terrorist claiming allegiance to the Islamic State group, the U.S. Senate voted down four different gun control proposals, two from each party.Democrats saw the Republican proposals as too weak. Republicans saw the Democratic proposals as too tough.So nothing happened. There was no agreement on a way to keep people who are on the country’s terrorist watch list from buying guns capable of slaughtering dozens in m

The main opposition The Minjoo Party of Korea is pushing to divert funds from the state-run National Pension Service to build low-cost rental apartments for young people and child care centers to boost the nation’s low birth rate.The party launched Monday a large-scale special committee to promote the scheme, showing its determination to tap into the 520 trillion won pension fund ($446 billion) to finance its welfare projects.The committee consists of 13 lawmakers and 10 experts invited from out

The government has scrapped its plan to build a new international airport in the southeastern region, choosing instead to expand the existing airport in Busan.The decision, which is exactly the same as the one made five years ago, was reached Monday based on a feasibility study carried out by ADPi, a French airport architecture and engineering company. ADPi was expected to choose one of the two candidate sites for the new airport — Miryang, a town located between Busan and Daegu, and Gadeokdo Is

There’s no sense sugarcoating it: Philadelphia is one of the fattest big cities in the fattest country in the developed world. To its credit, it has been trying to shed the pounds -- back in 2001, its then-mayor enlisted the city’s basketball team in challenging residents to lose 76 tons in 76 days -- but very little has worked. That’s why Philadelphia’s decision to tax sugary drinks is so promising.　About one-third of Americans adults are obese, and obesity is a primary cause of diabetes, heart

Constitutional amendment can be proposed by a majority of National Assembly members or the president.” – Paragraph 1, Article 128 of the Constitution　After 3 1/2 years in the Blue House, what can President Park Geun-hye present as her major achievements? Or, what would the people readily cite as the meritorious deeds of the president to date?　These questions may be premature, as the president still has 18 more months to finish her five-year tenure. Important policies hardly bear fruit in just tw

The Korean guerrillas who operated along the east and west coasts under the U.N. Command during the Korean War had previously been anti-communists in the North Korean regime. With the intervention of the Chinese forces, to reclaim their homeland in North Korea, they evacuated to islands near Pyongan and Hwanghae provinces and continued their armed resistance with the support from the U.S. Army. The anti-communist guerrilla resistance in the Korean War began in the early stages of North Korea’s i

As a mother of two, I feel guilty and responsible for the staggering youth unemployment rate. The hopelessness and the desperation expressed by many of today’s young Koreans trouble me deeply. Seeing young people doing their best in whatever position life has landed them in moves me and inspires me. It must be a sign of getting old that I want to do something to make their day a little better when I see them try so hard. Just the other day, I was looking at a box of doughnuts and mochi, Japanese

Last week’s decision by MSCI not to include Chinese shares in its primary emerging-markets stock index has been viewed — widely and rightly — as a blow to China’s hopes of internationalizing its financial sector. There’s worse news, though: Even the progress China has made thus far is in danger of going into reverse. MSCI’s choice is a sharp contrast to the one made by the International Monetary Fund last December, when it promised to begin including the Chinese yuan in its basket of “special dr

The news that the unions of South Korea’s three major shipbuilders are moving to strike against restructuring plans is truly distressing. Workers at Hyundai Heavy Industries and Samsung Heavy Industries proclaimed last week a labor dispute with management -- the first legal step for collective action. They said workers will cast ballots soon whether to authorize a strike or not. The union of the third shipbuilder -- Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering -- had already voted for walkout, wit

As expected, investigations into incumbent prosecutors over the Jung Woon-ho bribery scandal is going nowhere. This raises a fundamental question -- whether it is legitimate to leave the investigation in the hands of the state prosecution. Prosecutors indicted a key figure in the case – former vice minister-level prosecutor Hong Man-pyo -- on Monday on charges of accepting kickbacks from Jung and evading taxes. The indictment accused Hong, already in custody, of receiving 300 million won ($251,0

It was simply great to have spent the last two weeks in Korea, my wife Jakyung and I splitting our time between her native Seoul and the beauty of the PyeongChang region. In the many years that I have been coming to Seoul, primarily for work, I have always found the combination of industriousness and warmth of the Korean people to be infectious. Yet I had a profound sense of happiness to return to New York City at the end of this trip, for the reason that many New Yorkers would have laughed at s

We now live in a time when rapid and radical social change is taking place in every nook and cranny of our society. In fact, the changes are so dazzlingly swift and drastic that we cannot possibly catch up with them at the same speed. Thus, we often end up being lost in this whirlpool of change and as a result are frequently embarrassed when the assumptions we inherited from the past turn out to no longer fit the present reality.   When I lived in the States about 40 years ago, a Korean-American

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which carry the Zika virus, are kind of like dogs. OK, the analogy isn’t perfect. Dogs don’t fly, and they don’t suck blood, and they don’t lay eggs. But like our canine pals, Aedes aegypti started out wild and got domesticated.With dogs, it took thousands of years. With these mosquitoes, the time frame has been much shorter. We humans happily joined in the process that changed wolves into dogs. With Aedes aegypti, we’ve been not-so-innocent and increasingly unhappy bys

On a long walk through the center of Seoul a few weeks ago, my thoughts drifted back to June 1987. Demonstrations in favor of a direct presidential election and other democratic reforms raged for days in central Seoul after the Democratic Justice Party convention nominated Roh Tae-woo as a presidential candidate on June 10. The demonstrations eventually forced then-president Chun Doo-hwan to accept a direct election and a series of democratic reforms on June 29, which set Korea on the path towar

Even before our two-party system coughed up the most disliked presidential nominees in modern polling history, Canada had firmly established itself as America’s favorite backup plan. Air Canada is already goofing on our quadrennial -- “How do I move to Canada?” Google searches with a new ad campaign called “Test Drive Canada,” in which Americans are encouraged to “Make it a long weekend! Take a look around. Try your hand with the metric system.” As the Quebecois might say, “ouaf ouaf.”But would-