Korean conglomerates are actively tapping tax havens worldwide for the apparent purpose of reducing their income tax burdens, a development that was highlighted during the National Assembly’s audit last week.It is widely believed that, in some countries in the Caribbean, global investors can easily attain documents that could register their operations there. It is known that these sort of documents are available via brokers within several days of application.Arguments start from the point whethe

You’ve probably heard about employers that block workers’ access to personal email accounts on work computers. But now, thanks to a new Department of Labor overtime rule, some employers are blocking workers’ access to work emails after hours.Why? Because although many employers probably want employees to be able to check work email whenever they want, they don’t want to be forced to pay employees time and a half for doing so, which is what the overtime rule mandates.Under the new rule, employers

Uber now offers rides in more than 200 US cities. Rival Lyft does too.But Uber gets an estimated 60 percent of its US revenue from just five metropolitan areas (New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington), according to a new report from the research firm 7Park Data. You can see a similar regional concentration in ride-business data released this week by the Brookings Institution.Brookings senior fellows Ian Hathaway and Mark Muro gathered these numbers (and similar data on the

I was admiring the silk damask wallpaper woven in 1898 in our historic inn’s dining room at the end of a cozy family dinner when you found a way to disturb my reverie with your appalling confrontation. I try to imagine how our table looked to you. An Asian woman speaking in a slightly elevated voice to her elderly Asian grandmother in a room filled with more guests who looked like you than us. And I realize you took the opportunity to approach me only after my Caucasian husband left the dining r

Many foreigners agree that compared to other countries, Korea is a country with a lot of convenient things. Undeniably, there is some inconvenience as well, and yet convenient things easily outnumber inconvenient ones in Korea.   Recently, a foreigner living in Korea posted on the internet “Seven surprising things about Korea.” According to him, the first one is the superb public transportation system. In Seoul, for example, you can go anywhere by bus or the subway and thus you do not need a car

In a groundbreaking move, the Dutch government recently announced it is working to end all experiments on animals. The Netherlands had already passed a motion in parliament to phase out experiments on nonhuman primates, and now its goal is to be using only human-relevant, nonanimal testing methods by 2025. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals UK scientists have met with government officials and provided a 70-page document outlining areas of experimentation that can be ended immediately an

The practices and the words of relatively new president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, present a problem for the United States in its relations with that country. What he does, what he says and what may be a tendency on his part to try to play the United States off against China and Russia in East Asia could become a problem.At this point, given the long-standing although complex relationship between the Philippines, a nation of nearly 100 million, and the United States, at least two quest

Liquor smuggling was a lucrative business in the American Prohibition era of 1920-1933. A Canadian ship named “I’m Alone” was one of the vessels engaged in smuggling. In March 1929 the ship was approached by US Coast Guard cutters for inspection within the jurisdictional waters of the United States. Not surprisingly, it sped away. The Coast Guard cutters continued their chase for the next two days, and finally caught the ship on the high seas.A dispute arose between Canada and the US since the u

The controversy touched off by former Foreign Minister Song Min-soon’s memoir exposes – once again – how naive, censurable and risky the South Korean government’s policy toward North Korea has been.  Song, who served as the top diplomat under Roh Moo-hyun who succeeded Kim Dae-jung’s engagement policy toward the North, said in the memoir that Seoul sought the view of Pyongyang before abstaining from the 2007 UN vote on a resolution about the human rights infringement in the North. This promptly

As I have traveled around the world in recent weeks, I am repeatedly asked two questions: Is it conceivable that Donald Trump could win the US presidency? And how did his candidacy get this far in the first place?As for the first question, though political forecasting is even more difficult than economic forecasting, the odds are strongly in favor of Hillary Clinton. Still, the closeness of the race (at least until very recently) has been a mystery: Clinton is one of the most qualified and well-

Since we became wealthy enough not to worry about where the next meal comes from, our collective anxiety with food has moved on to its quality along the food supply chain. Among the core concerning issues are agro-chemical use, pathogen contamination, ingredient adulteration, country-of-origin deception, inferior nutrition and downgraded taste. 　However, few issues might cause a stronger jolt than the term “genetically modified organisms,” though in many cases we may not know exactly why our ala

 For two and a half decades, Pakistan has pursued a policy of inflicting on India “death by a thousand cuts” - bleeding the country through repeated terrorist attacks, rather than attempting an open military confrontation which it cannot win against India’s superior conventional forces. The logic is that India’s response to this tactic would always be tempered by its desire not to derail its ambitious economic development plans, as well as the Indian government’s unwillingness to face the risk o

Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s death was long anticipated, but it still came as a profound shock to Thailand. When it was announced, vast crowds gathered in towns and cities to weep and pay homage to their monarch, who had reigned for seven decades.Thailand’s stock market has fluctuated, and the country has entered a period of uncertainty. Most Thais have never known any other king, and Bhumibol inspired great devotion during a time of enormous political and economic change. During his reign, Th

Pop songs as literature? Bob Dylan as a Nobel laureate? What is this world coming to?　But it’s not so strange. The permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which awarded Dylan the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday, compared him to Homer and Sappho, and it’s a fact that great literature has its roots in lyrics that were set to music and transmitted from town to town and from generation to generation by a succession of minstrels, troubadours, cantors and choirs. And then records, radio and

It may be morally satisfying to demand that the US cut off its military support of the Saudis for their disastrous involvement in Yemen’s civil war. But if the goal is to end the violence and provide some humanitarian assistance -- and it should be -- then that assistance may be the best leverage the US has against Saudi Arabia’s recklessness.　The US can hardly wash its hands of the conflict, which pits Houthi rebels and their Iranian backers against Yemen’s ousted government and its Saudi-led a

Apartment prices in Seoul and other major cities have shot up over the past two years in the wake of the record-low key rate set by the central bank and the reconstruction boom.The situation is totally opposite to four to five years ago when the construction sector suffered from a mass of unsold apartments after the 2008-2009 financial crisis, which caused the insolvency of some small- and mid-sized builders.The sluggish construction industry was a fast-track opportunity for the government to bo

I’m writing to express my concern about the human rights of North Koreans responding to the article “North Korean defectors open up online,” published on Oct. 11th, 2016 by Rumy Doo.　I am a South Korean student who has been translating North Korean defectors’ testimonies for the last few months. I’ve learned that North Korean defectors are coming in to the South Korean society and feeling free to tell and share their experiences. While I was translating, I’ve gotten to know a lot about North Kor

When President Pranab Mukherjee of India visited Ghana in June, he came bearing what he thought was an irresistible gift. To symbolize the friendship between the two countries, Mukherjee gifted the University of Ghana with a statue of Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi. The Indian president assumed that the two decades Gandhi lived in South Africa a century ago would generate goodwill thousands of miles away in West Africa today.It didn’t. Last month, professors at the University of Ghan

Over the past eight years, the major central banks have increased their balance sheets to $18 trillion from $6 trillion, predominantly through the purchase of their own government’s bonds. While the Fed has ended its quantative easing program, the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan continue theirs. But those too will eventually come to an end. What happens next will determine whether the world economy is set on a path to real growth or further stagnation.　“Unwinding” these positions -- even

The last few weeks have been tumultuous for tech giant Samsung Electronics, as it has been knocked down by the battery explosions of its latest flagship smartphone Galaxy Note 7 across the globe.Samsung recalled 2.5 million Note 7 smartphones in September 2016 after a number of the units spontaneously burst into flames. Faulty batteries were blamed at first, and it issued replacement phones it claimed were safe. However, some of the new phones suffered the same problem, and the firm asked consum