The Philippines sent a special envoy to Taipei on Monday to explain away a misunderstanding in regard to its deportation of 14 Taiwanese nationals to China rather than Taiwan for trial on fraud charges. Manuel Roxas, a former senator and confidant of Filipino President Benigno Aquino III, refused to apologize on Wednesday for what Manila calls a regrettable incident. It all started right after 24

Labor shortage, previously felt in some of China’s economically developed regions, is becoming a reality in the rest of the country now. This became evident again when some inland provinces entered into a fierce battle with eastern and coastal areas for laborers shortly after lunar New Year. The supply of abundant and cheap labor, called “demographic dividend” by many, is considered one of the mos

The two recently fallen dictators in the Middle East, Zine al Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s dictator-president of 23 years, and Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s autocratic president of 30 years, sternly reminds us that liberty is worth fighting for. A political cataclysm is now reverberating in the region and beyond. Libya’s brutal dictator for 42 years, Moammar Gadhafi, too, is at a tipping point. So is Yemen

The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class ― pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.By splitting working America along these lines, Rep

According to a recent newspaper opinion poll, 44.7 percent of the respondents approved of President Lee Myung-bak’s performance in the past three years of his presidency. On the other hand, the rate of disapproval stood at 51.4 percent.Responses to another poll, this one commissioned by a business daily, were far less favorable. More than 54 percent of the respondents said they were worse off now

Fear of a bank run is subsiding after the five savings banks whose capital adequacy ratios are lower than the 5 percent mark, and three other insolvent ones, were forced to suspend operations during the past two months. But the financial regulators still have much work to do before they declare the crisis over.The latest case involved a Chuncheon-based savings bank, which the Financial Services Co

It’s good to see the boys of summer back on the baseball field. It will be even better if more players take the field without a pinch of chewing tobacco tucked under their lower lips.Sure, that puffed-out jaw of Lenny “Nails” Dykstra will live in the memory of every Philadelphia Phillies’ fan who ever watched him tear up the base paths. And ballplayers’ chewing habit goes back more than a century,

The expanded Kansai regional alliance, which has the promise of becoming the first such organization to achieve efficient administration beyond prefectural boundaries, is hard at work.In this connection, there is no need to be obsessed with prefectural administrative borders in effect since the Meiji era (1868-1912). Transport conditions and the communications environment have changed drastically

China has taken giant strides toward economic and social development. This has expedited its transformation from the previous class structure of workers, farmers, cadres and intellectuals to a more complicated one that comprises more classes and groups. To find the best way to handle and coordinate the interests of all classes and groups in today’s changed and pluralistic society and form a vigoro

A foreign government suing Yale University? That is an odd combination of opponents in a legal dispute. But that is what is happening in the U.S. federal court in Washington, D.C. In December 2008, the Peruvian government filed a complaint against Yale to reclaim Machu Picchu cultural artifacts from the Peabody Museum of Natural History of Yale University. The artifacts are pottery, textiles and b

Across the Middle East and beyond, kings and dictators are quaking in their castles, afraid their people will throw them from power. All except one, that is.In Cambodia, long-time dictator Hun Sen, like his fellow potentates around the world, watched the news and figured out his own strategy. He decided to give a speech and threaten his people.“I would like to tell you that if you want to strike a

A 50-strong Indonesian government and business delegation visited Seoul for three days last week to promote trade and cooperation in defense industry projects. The group, which included defense, industry, trade, economic planning and investment ministers, came here under an agreement between President Lee Myung-bak and Susilo Yudhoyono in Bali last December.They made a courtesy call on the Blue Ho

Moammar Gadhafi of Libya looked firmly in control when popular protests brought down the autocratic ruler in Tunisia to the west and toppled another long-running regime in Egypt to the east weeks ago. Even when angry residents of some Libyan cities stormed into the construction sites of Korean firms, injuring workers and destroying furniture, it was seen as a simple outburst of discontent at the g

LONDON ― A little more than three years ago, just as the financial crisis was getting into full swing, I published a guide to the international system of financial regulation, “Global Financial Regulation: The Essential Guide.” It described an elaborate spider’s web of committees, councils, and agencies with overlapping responsibilities, unrepresentative memberships, and inadequate enforcement pow

President Obama’s new budget contains no serious proposal for solving two of the biggest fiscal problems facing the federal government: Medicare and Social Security. And though Republican leaders in Congress are happy to take swipes at his proposals, they haven’t come up with a serious plan of their own to fix those popular programs either.But one potential Republican presidential candidate recent

Perhaps the late U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright would never have known, but he changed my life completely. Had it not been for a Fulbright Scholarship which was awarded to me in 1977, I could not have studied overseas, and consequently, could not have become a professor at Seoul National University. Instead, I may have ended up a high school English teacher and been retired by now, unable to co

While the six-party denuclearization talks have been in recess for two years now with no sign that North Korea will return to the negotiating table anytime soon, calls for South Korea to set up its own nuclear armament are rising, mostly from conservatives. The proponents, including politicians and media commentators, argue that the South’s nuclear development will be the best means of pressure no

After the ouster of autocratic leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, pro-democracy uprisings are rapidly spreading in North Africa and the Middle East, with bloodshed reported in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria and Djibouti. The world community is now directing attention to countries in other continents under dictatorships, with many hoping to see similar popular protests will bring changes to the fates of

House Republicans are using a bill to fund the government through Sept. 30 as a vehicle to roll back spending on many programs favored by Democrats. But it’s easy for lawmakers to cut spending on someone else’s priorities. The real test of fiscal discipline is the scrutiny they give their own.For Republicans, that means the Defense Department ― by far the largest federal program funded through ann

The Chinese audience will soon bid farewell to radio and TV broadcasts of the BBC and Voice of America in the Chinese language. VOA is the second mainstream Western media to announce plans to end its radio broadcasts in Chinese. Earlier, the BBC World Service decided to cancel a number of foreign-language services, including Chinese. The cut in the major Western media organizations’ Chinese langua