Prosecutors have launched an investigation into allegations that thousands of government officials working in Sejong City have illegally resold their ownership rights in apartments in the city to earn undue gains.　Investigators have raided six large real estate agencies in the city and seized their transaction files and records. The probe was prompted by a request from the city government, which has confirmed the involvement of realtors in the alleged illegal property deals by public officials.　

Donald Trump, who has called one opponent “Lyin’ Ted” and another “Crooked Hillary,” has gotten away with more falsehoods and fabrications than any politician in memory. He’s at it again.The subject is his tax returns. First he said he’d release them, as every Republican and Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominee has done since 1980. Then this week he told the Associated Press he probably wouldn‘t, at least not before an Internal Revenue Service audit was complete (which may or ma

Last summer, a cabbage white butterfly laid its eggs on an arugula I was growing. Before long, the plant was swarming with green caterpillars, well disguised against the green leaves. I had other arugula plants, some distance away, that would give me plenty of leaves for our salads, and I didn’t want to use an insecticide, so I just left the caterpillars alone. Soon, every leaf was eaten down to the stalk. With nothing left to eat, the caterpillars, not ready to begin the next stage of their lif

The contests to decide the nominees of America’s two main political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, for the presidential election are all but over. That leaves both parties facing the challenge of reuniting for the fall campaign -- a feat that will be much harder to pull off this year than it was in most other presidential election years.Though it is mathematically impossible for Bernie Sanders to win enough pledged delegates to capture the Democratic nomination, he is staying in the

The tension between Silicon Valley and the federal government over digital privacy has taken a bizarre twist: Twitter has reportedly barred the analytics firm Dataminr, which scans the Twitterverse for breaking news and trends, from selling its services to U.S. intelligence agencies. Twitter seems to have no good reason for standing in the way of national security -- beyond advancing its own public relations strategy.　While the details remain hazy, U.S. intelligence agencies and Dataminr are sai

For 200 years, there have been two schools of thought about what determines the distribution of income -- and how the economy functions. One, emanating from Adam Smith and nineteenth-century liberal economists, focuses on competitive markets. The other, cognizant of how Smith’s brand of liberalism leads to rapid concentration of wealth and income, takes as its starting point unfettered markets’ tendency toward monopoly. It is important to understand both, because our views about government polic

The government has poured more than 3 trillion won ($2.5 billion) into the air quality control sector over the past decade. However, a revelation from the Board of Audit and Inspection indicated that the ministry had failed to identify the main pollutants causing air pollution and erroneously measured the amount of fine dust in the air.The fine dust that swept over the Seoul metropolitan area and some major cities over the past two months came mostly from China and Mongolia’s sand storms. But a

The antitrust regulator has just issued a kind of verbal warning to the nation’s eight major duty-free operators for cartel behavior, without handing down any fines.The duty-free shops were found to have engaged in price-fixing by setting irregular foreign exchange rates for 63 months from 2008 to 2012. The players are Shilla, Walkerhill, Dongwha, the Korea Tourism Organization and four Lotte affiliates.Given that the Fair Trade Commission looked into the case for about four years, it is not sat

Governments around the world are taking draconian steps to suppress civil-society organizations, with measures ranging from restrictive laws and bureaucratic burdens to smear campaigns, censorship, and outright repression by intelligence agencies or police. Whatever the means, governments are striving to interfere with the work of political, social, and environmental activists to an extent not seen since before communism collapsed in Europe a quarter-century ago.Of course, governments cite all s

When Prince Alfred of Liechtenstein, chairman of the advisory board of the Vienna-based International Peace Foundation, decided to make his first trip to Pyongyang last October, his friends and family started worrying that he might not make it back.“They told me not to go because it would be dangerous and I might end up in jail. They were worried because I always speak my mind and that would get me into trouble,” recalled Prince Alfred, who noted that the general perception of North Korea is oft

One thing the Panama Papers have made very clear is that there is a large system for concealing and moving money into and out of Pakistan, and this system is used more by businesses and high net worth individuals than it is by public figures. Of the 259 Pakistani names revealed thus far in the second release of the data, only a fraction are political figures. The rest are all connected with business.Why do so many people in the world of business feel the need to maintain an offshore company? The

Is a vote for presidential frontrunner Rodrigo Duterte a protest vote? No question. As observers have noted, six years of failures and frustrations generated by the incumbent administration have made a large part of the electorate predisposed to a radical prospect: a tough-talking mayor from outside Imperial Manila who appears to have no patience for the usual political niceties, and has vowed to smash the fraying conventions and institutions of the old guard — from shuttering Congress should it

Critiquing Donald Trump’s policy pronouncements for being implausible feels a bit like belittling bathroom graffiti for its weak use of metaphor and inappropriate deployment of the conditional rather than the subjunctive. Sure, you may be technically correct, but you’ve failed to grapple with the essentials of the form. And neither the author nor his audience is likely to take your criticisms to heart.But what can we pundits do? The man is now the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republic

In March last year, the National Assembly passed a drastic bill aimed at rooting out corruption among public officials. The bill was considered so draconian that lawmakers delayed its implementation to September this year to give people enough time to prepare for it.The legislation, commonly called the Kim Young-ran Act, is basically intended to plug a big loophole in existing laws. Currently, it is difficult to punish public officials who have received large amounts of money from businessmen if

The government’s push to introduce a performance-based pay system at public institutions is facing growing resistance from trade unions.As part of its campaign to reform the public sector, the government has been pressuring 120 public institutions to introduce performance-based pay by the end of this year.   But progress has been slow. The Ministry of Strategy and Finance said Monday has said that only 53 institutions have adopted merit-based pay and promotion systems so far. 　Resistance to meri

In their efforts to stimulate demand by pursuing increasingly aggressive monetary policies, advanced economies have been imposing risks on emerging-market countries such as India. Indeed, one day we face surging capital inflows, as investors go into “risk-on” mode, and outflows the next as they switch risk off.India has responded to this external volatility by trying to create a domestic platform of macroeconomic stability on which to build growth. India’s latest central budget emphasizes fiscal

Donald Trump wants to turn the 28,500 members of the U.S. Forces in Korea into mercenaries. He demands that the Korean government pay 100 percent of the cost for stationing U.S. troops here because he believes they are here solely to benefit Koreans. What an affront to the young American men and women who are proud to stand for the U.S. commitment to global peace and freedom!Korea and the United States split the USFK bill roughly half and half because Seoul and Washington are aware that their de

Few who read this will have had the experience of living in fear. But the same cannot be said of North Korean defectors in China.“There are many North Korean defectors in China who are living under the fear of arrest. Many women end up being the victims of human trafficking, and their children become vulnerable and deprived of maternal care and basic education. Our job is to help and support these people,” said Tim Peters, a prominent social activist living in Seoul.Mr. Peters was speaking to my

WASHINGTON -- Early in his tenure as director of national intelligence, James Clapper could sometimes be heard complaining “I’m too old for this (expletive)!” He has now served almost six years as America’s top intelligence official, and when I asked him this week how much longer he would be in harness, he consulted his calendar and answered with relief, “265 days!”   Clapper, 75, has worked in intelligence for 53 years, starting when he joined the Air Force in 1963. He’s a crusty, sometimes cra

An acquaintance I recently made in Tokyo has opened a new business. It’s called the Japan Industry News, and its service is as straightforward as its name. The main idea is to offer an English platform for Japanese newspapers so they can introduce their content to English-speaking consumers. I mention the name outright not because I am wowed by the originality of the idea -- this is not the first such attempt made in a non-English-speaking place like Japan -- but because I want to applaud the au