Household debt is at an alarmingly high level. Worse still, interest payments are growing three times as fast as disposable income. But there are few signs indicating that the debt burden will shrink anytime soon. On the contrary, interest rates are rising as inflationary pressure is increasing.According to a recent report from the Bank of Korea, household debt, including purchases on credit, stoo

Those who have passed the state-run judicial examination are required to complete a two-year training course at the Judicial Research Training Institute before entering the legal profession. With the judicial examination being replaced by the Korean bar examination administered for law school graduates, the training at the institute is set to continue during a transitional period lasting until 201

MELBOURNE ― The world has watched in horror as Libya’s Colonel Muammar el-Gadhafi uses his military to attack protesters opposed to his rule, killing hundreds or possibly thousands of unarmed civilians. Many of his own men have refused to fire on their own people, instead defecting to the rebels or flying their planes to nearby Malta, so Gadhafi has called in mercenaries from neighboring countries

MUNICH ― Having already agreed to double the AAA-rated lending capacity of the European Financial Stability Facility, the special fund created by eurozone states to provide assistance to troubled member economies, European Union countries are now discussing the conditions under which the EFSF’s funds will be made available. The crucial issue is the extent to which creditors will have to participat

In recent weeks, dictators across the Middle East and North Africa must have been afflicted with a severe case of agoraphobia ― the morbid fear of open spaces. After all, the groundswell of antigovernment protests have all occurred in squares ― Tunis’ Nov. 7 Square, Cairo’s Tahrir Square and, more recently, Tripoli’s Green Square.By far, Libya’s experience has been the most tragic. On Tuesday, Col

The Justice Ministry’s Legislative Council on Feb. 15 handed Justice Minister Satsuki Eda a recommendation that the civil law be revised so that parental prerogatives can be suspended for up to two years if necessary. The proposed step will make it possible to protect children against abuse and neglect by their parents ― such as violence, molestation, refusal to give meals and medical neglect ― mo

BEIRUT ― To visit Hezbollah officials, you turn left off the airport road, just past a billboard that shows Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad coyly waving at motorists. You then enter a neighborhood known as the “southern suburbs,” which is the dense street fortress of the Shiite militia. Here lie the headquarters of the group that now forms the strongest bloc in Lebanon’s parliament. It’s an u

After an extensive tour of Africa in February 1960, Harold Macmillan, then British Prime Minister, made the famous “wind of change” speech. He said: “The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.”If the term “national consciousness” is replaced by “democratic consciousness,” the same kind of wind is blow

Kudos to the doctors at the Ajou University Hospital in Suwon who should be credited for giving the Samho Jewelry’s skipper Seok Hae-gyun a new life through their painstaking month-long treatment of his multiple gunshot wounds. And it was the 58-year-old former Navy petty officer’s strong willpower that made the medical miracle possible.“I love you, dear,” Seok said to his wife in a clear voice on

It is absurd that South Korea and the United States should bind themselves to “the principle of denuclearization” on the Korean Peninsula which was declared with North Korea 20 years ago while the North has conducted nuclear tests twice and threatens the South with a nuclear holocaust on a daily basis. Calls for the reintroduction of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons into South Korea become louder of

My recent column, “Crisis of the university English department,” drew a considerable amount of feedback from foreigners, visiting or living in Korea, who are keenly interested in the problems surrounding English education in Korea. Michael Haenel, a German documentary filmmaker who recently visited local Korean high schools for filming wrote me about his experience with the Korean students he met:

DAMASCUS, Syria ― The rise and fall of a protest demonstration here recently shows that Syrians share the yearning for dignity that’s sweeping the Arab world ― and also illustrates why President Bashar al-Assad so far hasn’t been threatened by this tide of anger. Here’s what happened on Feb. 19, according to accounts provided separately by a Western diplomat and a Syrian official: A policeman insu

Several years ago I participated in a public “debate” about the exigent matter of whether Los Angeles was better than New York or vice versa. I put “debate” in quotes because it was more like a reading followed by 20 minutes of lethargic sparring. The event was called something like “New York vs. L.A.: Which Is Better,” and people had actually shown up to watch as if they might learn something. My

Political fanaticism fosters moral relativism. That’s the lesson we should all learn from the gruesome case of Shawna Forde, the Arizona anti-immigrant vigilante who was recently convicted lof two counts of first-degree murder.Prosecutors argued that Forde and two accomplices killed 29-year-old Raul Junior Flores and his 9-year-old daughter, Brisenia, in a botched robbery attempt meant to raise mo

PARIS ― The political scholar Walter Russell Mead recently alluded to more than a half-century of American “world-order-building tasks,” a formulation that I think most Americans would accept as describing the international obligations Washington assumed in 1945-46, and the policy the United States has undertaken since 1941, when it entered the Second World War against Nazi Germany and the Japanes

Largely hidden in its attack on the federal budget, the House of Representatives has approved a key Republican campaign promise to big business: Protecting it from what the new majority argues are the handcuffs of environmental safeguards. The Republicans would cuff the Environmental Protection Agency instead.If they prevail in the Senate and overcome a White House veto, they would hobble the Clea

Target has adopted new guidelines for donations to trade associations that prohibit the use of the company’s contributions in political campaigns. The decision is a victory for gay rights activists, who objected to the retailer’s donation to a group that supported a candidate opposed to same-sex marriage. But Target’s turnaround has a wider importance. It shows that consumers and activists can hol

The nonpartisan Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has released a fascinating poll that finds that people on the West Coast are far more likely to regard their states’ budget crises as “very serious” and are increasingly open to solving them through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.Those findings suggest that circumstances and popular attitudes may be turning in favor o

A part from agreeing on a set of indicators to measure economic imbalances, the Group of 20 emerging and developed economies that met in Paris last week shared the observation that rising prices of primary industry commodities including food are becoming a risk factor for the global economy.Finance ministers and central bankers from the G20 economies agreed to analyze the causes of excessive price

It was a bleak scene that prevailed after Tuesday’s earthquake in New Zealand ― buildings and other structures were reduced to piles of rubble, including an old British-style brick church.The disaster that struck Christchurch, the largest city on the country’s South Island, has palpably demonstrated the ferocity of quakes that have their focus just below urban areas, known as near-field temblors.T