The National Pension Service has announced it will diversify its investment portfolio by actively targeting overseas markets over the next five years, as part of its efforts to raise fund management profitability.Under its plan for the period 2017-21, the proportion of the state pension fund’s investments that are made in global stocks will rise to around 25 percent in 2021 from 13.7 percent in 2015. The overseas bond portfolio will also increase to 5 percent from 4.3 percent over the period.The

Are Americans as stupid as the rest of the world thinks we are?Two conversations — one with a colleague and one with my daughter — left me pondering that question recently.The colleague told me about a visit to our newsroom last summer by a group of foreign journalists and government officials. Why isn’t the American press covering Donald Trump more seriously? they asked. This guy could be your next president.No way, we all thought back then. He’s just a reality TV star. We aren’t that stupid. T

Even by European Union standards, the response to the refugee crisis is a mess. This seems to defy logic: While the crisis is certainly a challenge, human rights -- and, indeed, refugee protection -- is embedded in Europe’s DNA. Moreover, the EU’s aging and demographically challenged member states need immigrants. Yet, instead of spurring solutions, the current crisis has been bringing out all that is ugly, feckless, and dysfunctional about the European project. What happened?As is so often the

Recently, I’ve been rereading “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” In this political season, William L. Shirer’s mammoth history of Hitler’s Germany seems a useful guide to how a skilled demagogue can seize and destroy a great nation.Hitler’s rise, as narrated by Shirer, was the triumph of an unlikely messiah -- “the man with the Charlie Chaplin mustache, who had been a down-and-out tramp in Vienna in his youth, an unknown soldier, the somewhat comical leader of the Beer Hall Putsch, this spe

For a long time, it looked like Apple had found the key to unlock the Chinese market. A world-famous brand, extensive factories in China and cooperation with the government’s demands led to booming sales of iPhones and other Apple products.Recently, however, the company has discovered that even the best-behaved of Western multinationals may not be able to hold the government’s favor for long. The Chinese government just shut down two of Apple’s key service products, the iBooks Store and iTunes M

The political earthquake now shaking the pillars of the Republican Party throws into stark relief what is unique about campaign 2016 — that the fault line is not the typical polar clash of left vs. right, but a far more fundamental up-down cleavage between rank-and-file Americans and the power elite.In both major parties, the primary campaign has unearthed a mass mutiny against the powers that be, reflecting a profound rift in American society with ramifications far beyond this year’s election.F

South Korea is known for its cutting-edge technology. Strangely, however, despite the pervasiveness of innovative technology in most spheres of life here, electronic books are not thriving in Korea. Publishers are reluctant to invest in e-books because they still consider print to be a cash cow. Artificial intelligence is another thing that Koreans are not accustomed to yet. When a Korean Go master was defeated by AI a few weeks ago, the public took it as a sudden, serious threat, as if AI had a

A few years ago Afghanistan became the longest war in United States history. This month, President Barack Obama passed all other presidents for being at war longer than any other.That sad date was May 6. Obama still has eight months left before he finishes his second term.Obama had pledged to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and close the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when he was elected in 2008 as the first African-American president in U.S. history. He has been able to accomp

A recent environmental survey released by Yale University and Columbia University shocked us by showing that Korea is one of the most polluted countries in the world.The 2016 Environmental Performance Index places Korea near the bottom of the world in terms of air quality -- 173rd out of the 180 countries surveyed. Korea scored 45.51 out of 100.The index evaluates how countries of the world protect ecosystems and human health from environmental harm based on 20 indicators, including air quality,

This week is a make-or-break time for Hyundai Merchant Marine, Korea’s second-largest shipper. To stay afloat, the troubled company has to successfully complete its negotiations with foreign ship owners on cutting charter fees.　Last month, creditors agreed to restructure HMM’s debt on condition that the struggling shipper persuaded its ship owners to reduce charter fees by up to 30 percent. The deadline for the negotiations is Friday.  HMM operates a total of 116 vessels, of which 83 have been l

Seoul has undergone dramatic changes over the past decade. It has become one of the most popular destinations in Asia. City streets are filled with tourists and foreign students flock to Seoul’s universities to spend a semester or year or just to stay for the summer. Well, looking back on the past several years there is also one noticeable change, on the negative side. The air quality in the city has deteriorated significantly in a short time frame, and we have reached the point where checking t

Everyone won’t agree on this, by any means, but I’m glad that President Barack Obama will be making a stop at Hiroshima during his imminent trip to Japan.I’m less concerned about whether such a visit would look like an apology to Japan than I am about our willingness to use the brutal deaths of many thousands of people as part of an argument, 71 years later, about who was right and who was wrong.That fact is, the mass destruction of a large civilian population, such as the one that occurred at H

The Blue House appointments President Park Geun-hye made Sunday are more evidence that she will not be swayed by the ruling party’s defeat in the April 16 parliamentary election. Park had already expressed her reluctance to admit her wrongdoing -- that she and her associates interfered with the candidate nominations for the election -- and take due steps, such as a sizable shakeup of the Cabinet and the Blue House. Accordingly, the appointment of Lee Won-jong, chief of the Presidential Commissio

The ruling Saenuri Party plans to hold a national committee Tuesday to launch two panels that will lead reform efforts in the party that have been necessitated by the devastating defeat in the April 16 parliamentary election. The national committee is expected to endorse the launch of an “emergency” leadership body to be headed by floor leader Chung Jin-suk and a reform committee to be headed by Kim Yong-tae, a three-term lawmakers from western Seoul. Party officials say the caretaker leadership

It has been a triumph of democracy in the Philippines, more specifically the victory of the Aquino legacy that was bequeathed to the country exactly 30 years ago (February 1986). Yet in the moment of almost euphoric celebrations, there is a whiff of cynicism across the nation not least because of the President-designate, Rodrigo Duterte’s reckless bombast and direly controversial utterances on emotive, even personal, matters, most particularly his remarks on sex and expressed pledges to kill cri

ATLANTA -- Conventional wisdom lays much of the blame for the rise of Donald Trump on angry American voters, who have allowed him to break every rule in the political playbook without paying a price. But more responsibility arguably lies with the American broadcast journalists who amplified his schoolyard name-calling and bizarre policy views.All along Trump’s march to becoming the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, partisan commentators spun and re-spun his countless outrageous statements

Money makes the world go round, so you would have thought that economists understand what money is all about. The former governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King, has just published a book called “The End of Alchemy,” which made a startling claim that “for over two centuries, economists have struggled to provide rigorous theoretical basis for the role of money, and have largely failed.” This is a serious accusation from a distinguished academic turned central banker.  Alchemy is defined as th

According to custom, the government and opposition benches in the British House of Commons are separated by a length equivalent to “two swords and one inch.”The practice harks back to a time when members of Parliament regularly carried blades.Presumably, the distance was meant to guard against the possibility that verbal sparring could easily erupt into physical confrontation -- an event that wasn’t unknown on the floor of the U.S. House in past centuries, either.The tradition remains intact tod

Mexicans have silently begun a campaign to debunk presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s bigotry, xenophobia and economic isolationism in an area where he is most vulnerable: the realm of accurate facts and figures.To confront Trump’s daily Mexico-bashing, the Mexican government will launch a U.S. public-relations campaign in early June. Meantime, a group of Mexican-American businesspeople is launching a lobbying group named American Mexico Public Affairs Committee, modeled a

The Friday meeting between President Park Geun-hye and the new floor leaders and chief policymakers of the three major political parties was a welcome first step toward collaboration in dealing with state affairs.　At the meeting, Park offered to meet with heads of the three parties every quarter, an overture that showed her attitude toward the opposition camp has changed following the ruling Saenuri Party’s humiliating defeat in the April 13 general election.　The president also demonstrated her