Hey, check out some of the nice things that people have said lately about Barack Obama:“The president, I think, is handling this (Egypt) situation well, under the most difficult kind of circumstances.”“I really have no fault with the president, Obama, the way he’s handled this process.”“I think the administration, our administration, has handled this tense situation pretty well.”“We ought to speak

BRUSSELS ― For seasoned observers of Europe’s economy, the most recent European Union summit delivered a bizarre sense of dj vu. Little more than a decade ago, European leaders announced to great fanfare the “Lisbon Agenda,” a policy blueprint to make Europe “the most competitive, knowledge-based economy in the world.” The new “Competitiveness Pact,” proposed at the EU summit by France and Germany

In Russia two weeks ago, President Dmitry Medvedev unveiled a 33-foot-tall marble statute of Boris Yeltsin, who, as Russia’s first president, helped bring democracy to the former communist state.In Tunisia right now, I would like to see the interim government erect a marble statue, at least 33 feet tall, of Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old Tunisian vendor who immolated himself outside a governmen

At a time when corporate profits are through the roof, the Dow has reached 12,000, Wall Street paychecks are fat again, and big corporations are sitting on more than $1 trillion in cash, you’d expect jobs to be coming back. But you’d be wrong.The U.S. economy added just 36,000 jobs in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unusually bad weather may have accounted for some of the rel

North Korean ruler Kim Jong-il turns 70 today. He officially becomes 69 but chronologists know that he celebrated his 40th birthday twice in 1981 and 1982 as Pyongyang’s legend writers for the Kim family were asked to cut a year from his real age to create a precise 30-year age difference from his father (born 1912) upon his designation as the heir to the power.Kim enters his 70s at a sensitive ti

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi is expected to visit Seoul next week, three months after he canceled a visit here last November. Three days before Yang’s scheduled arrival here on Nov. 26, North Korea made an artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island in one of the worst provocations since the Korean War, killing two Marines and two civilians and destroying many homes in the fishing and farming co

During their meeting in Moscow last week, Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, discussed the bilateral territorial dispute over four islands off Hokkaido but failed to reach agreement as they reiterated their countries’ conventional stances.Japan-Russia relations have become seriously strained since Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visited one of the four isl

WASHINGTON, DC ― Hosni Mubarak’s resignation as President of Egypt marks the beginning of an important stage in that country’s transition to a new political system. But will the political transition ultimately lead to democracy?We cannot know with certainty, but, based on the history of democratic government, and the experiences of other countries ― the subject of my book, “Democracy’s Good Name:

With the passage of the bill in the National Assembly for the incorporation of Seoul National University in 2012, the SNU Department of English is under fire once again. Under the new system, all SNU departments will be reformed for greater efficiency, just like a commercial company. The English Department has much work to be done and still seems like a dinosaur: mammoth in size, hopelessly old-fa

It is annoying that the new head of the Korea Meteorological Administration is involved in a controversy over his criminal record for a drunken hit-and-run incident. Opposition members of the National Assembly’s Environment-Employment Committee demanded that Cho Suk-joon step down from his new office and blamed President Lee Myung-bak for making yet another flawed appointment to a high office.Cho,

The heavy snowfall over the eastern areas of Gangwon Province poses a serious hazard to the people’s lives in the region but it can be a blessing to PyeongChang, which is making a bid to host the Winter Olympics for the third time. A 14-member delegation from the International Olympic Committee just arrived to conduct its onsite inspection of PyeongChang and nearby venues until Friday. They came d

Surely you noticed this urgent news item over the weekend: The red swimsuit worn by Farrah Fawcett in her iconic 1976 poster has been donated to the Smithsonian’s popular culture history collection. Along for the ride were some of Fawcett’s “Charlie’s Angels” scripts, a Fawcett doll, a hairstyling kit called Farrah’s Glamour Center and, of course, the poster itself.Do such artifacts belong at the

MELBOURNE ― Many years ago, my wife and I were driving somewhere with our three young daughters in the back, when one of them suddenly asked: “Would you rather that we were clever or that we were happy?”I was reminded of that moment last month when I read Amy Chua’s Wall Street Journal article, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” which sparked more than 4,000 comments on wsj.com and over 100,000 c

For urban tenant families, the difficulty of finding a place to live at an affordable rent does not show any sign of easing. On the contrary, it is worsening as the early spring moving season is approaching. For many families with modest income, it will not be like spring at all when it has already come, as the old Chinese saying goes.The rise in rent is so steep that few hesitate to call it a cri

In a follow-up to a recent congress of its lawmakers on constitutional amendment, the ruling Grand National Party is debating a proposal to create a high-powered ad hoc committee tasked to build a favorable consensus among the public. But its advocates, mostly senior party members close to President Lee Myung-bak, are wasting what little is left of their political capital.The advocates, who had wa

From the American perspective, the transition now underway in Egypt confirms John Kenneth Galbraith’s famous appraisal of politics as a choice between “the disastrous and the unpalatable.”What the Obama administration must dread is not the prospect of Cairo repeating the disaster that was Tehran in 1979 but St. Petersburg in 1917, when one revolution ― its leadership democratic but hopelessly divi

Imagine what was going through the mind of Taiwanese Air Force private Chiang Kuo-ching as he was being led to his execution in August 1997. What a horrifyingly surreal moment it must have been for the 21-year-old man to know he was about to die for a crime he did not commit. Stomachs knot and nerves shudder when we visualize the moment Chiang was escorted into the death chamber.The story broke ju

ASEAN unity is again under strain as Cambodian and Thai troops keep up their animus over an 11th-century temple astride their common border. Ownership of the Preah Vihear Hindu temple had been determined in Cambodia’s favor by the International Court of Justice in a 9-3 vote half a century ago. Why the border squabble should have persisted to this day tells vividly how the emotive weight of histor

There are people in both Thailand and Cambodia who want their soldiers to go all the way. The problem is, even though this might bring the territorial dispute to a conclusion, it would only be for the short term. In 10 or even five years, when one side gets weaker or stronger, the conflict will flare up once again. That is absolutely certain, if force is used to settle this conflict.Diplomacy can

As the Year of the Tiger faded, a year of drama and change came to an end. The last Year of the Tiger was 1998, an unforgettable year because of the Asian financial crisis. As the tiger year faded, there was regime change in Tunisia and big demonstrations for change began in Egypt. The Year of the Wood Rabbit in a metal year means that some of the tiger volatility might remain. Surprisingly, from