Since June, the Prime Minister’s Office has sought to mediate a conflict between the prosecution and the police over criminal investigation rights. But the office could not come up with a compromise that was satisfactory to both sides. To resolve the long drawn-out dispute once and for all, it had to invoke its authority to force a compromise on them.On Wednesday, the PMO announced its final answer to the knotty problem in the form of a draft to revise the relevant presidential ordinance. The dr

Despite the government’s opposition, a plan to collect more taxes from the very wealthy to increase welfare spending is gaining traction among lawmakers of the ruling Grand National Party.In an about-face, GNP leader Hong Joon-pyo expressed on Tuesday his support for the scheme, which is being promoted by Rep. Chung Doo-un, head of the Youido Institute, the party’s think tank. Hong stressed the need to impose a higher income tax on the super-rich. Under the current tax system, he said, people ea

NEWPORT BEACH ― The sense of uncertainty prevailing in the West is palpable, and rightly so. People are worried about their futures, with a record number now fearing that their children may end up worse off than them. Unfortunately, things will become even more unsettling in the months ahead.The United States is having difficulties returning its economy to the path of high growth and vigorous job creation. Thousands of people have taken to the streets of U.S. cities, and thousands of others in E

In today’s information society businesses are becoming globalized and interlinked with each other on the Internet. In addition, companies are handling larger amounts of data and managing confidential information. This obviously increases the potential risks of cyber security and privacy on the Internet for businesses.According to a survey in 2010 from the Korea Internet & Security Agency, Korean businesses seem in grave danger of information security vulnerabilities because of hidden risks. Firs

NEW DELHI ― Following the death of Libya’s Muammar el-Gadhafi, Libya’s interim government announced the “liberation” of the country. It also declared that a system based on sharia (Islamic law), including polygamy, would replace the secular dictatorship that Gadhafi ran for 42 years. Swapping one form of authoritarianism for another seems a cruel letdown after seven months of NATO airstrikes in the name of democracy.In fact, the Western powers that brought about regime change in Libya have made

The forthcoming Durban conference comes at a major crossroads in international relations, with continuing economic malaise in the West being counterpoised with the increasingly rapid shift of power to emerging economies. Mirroring this structural change is a fundamental shift in the center of gravity of the global climate change debate that few have yet to recognize. While the outlook for Durban is highly uncertain, a critical mass of countries are currently advancing landmark domestic climate c

MANILA ― In 1980, my father arrived in the United States to undergo a heart bypass, due to the rigors of his imprisonment by the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. The dictatorship offered him a reprieve, but, true to its nature, one dependent on its whims. Having already been condemned by a kangaroo court to death by musketry, my father refused to hoist a white flag. “The Filipino,” he insisted, “is worth dying for.”Three years later, my father went home, not to die, but to infuse new life into

You’ve probably never heard of Taunus Corp., but according to the Federal Reserve, it’s the U.S.’s eighth-largest bank holding company. Taunus, it turns out, is the North American subsidiary of Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG, with assets of just over $380 billion. Deutsche Bank holds a large amount of European government and bank debt; it also has considerable exposure to lingering real estate problems in the U.S. The bank, therefore, could become a conduit for risk between the two economies. But wh

One area where the U.S. indisputably leads the world is incarceration. There are 2.3 million people behind bars, almost one in every 100 Americans. The federal prison population has more than doubled over the past 15 years, and one in nine black children has a parent in jail. Proportionally, the U.S. has four times as many prisoners as Israel, six times more than Canada or China, eight times more than Germany and 13 times more than Japan. With just a little more than 4 percent of the world’s pop

Despite what the Supreme Court and Mitt Romney say, corporations aren’t people. (I’ll believe they are when Georgia and Texas start executing them.)The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations should be treated no differently than people who have First Amendment rights to spend money on politics. That was the majority’s view in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ― a case that’s opened the floodgates to big money in the upcoming election.Romney agrees corporations are people, and doe

Germany, with the help of the European Central Bank, has achieved a level of dominance in Europe it hasn’t enjoyed since World War II. It is to that period, and a bit earlier, that it might look for lessons on how to save a troubled European project. The rapid fall of euro-area governments in recent days demonstrates the enormous influence Germany and the ECB have gained over sovereign nations. By withholding the money needed to restore confidence in struggling countries’ finances, they have hel

These days the Democratic Party of South Korea is again engaged in obstructing the halls, conference rooms and podiums of the National Assembly. These politicians and their Internet bloggers are whipping the Korean public into a frenzy against the KORUS Free Trade Agreement. This time the issues revolve around the impact of the investor-state dispute (ISD) settlement clause. And again politicians and the Internet demagogues are spreading fear and panic, hyping the alleged imminent takeover of So

Jamie has felt terrible pain in his stomach for a few weeks. So he squeezes some time out of his hectic schedule and knocks on the door of the regular clinic near his place. After undergoing 20 minute-long endoscopy, he staggers to a seat opposite the doc, and find himself hearing the words, the very words breaking his dizzy body into tiny splinters ... “You have gastric cancer, I’m sorry, it’s terminal...”After that, Jamie’s battle for life begins, leaving no stone unturned to catch even the la

Soaring student debt is a problem that only Congress can answer. Until it acts, students and their families will keep falling deeper into debt.For years, state support of higher education has dropped drastically, pushing tuitions up. At the same time, most American families have seen their incomes shrink, forcing them to borrow more and more if they want to send their kids to college. It’s no wonder the total amount of money Americans owe for higher education is now more than what we owe on cred

The White House decision to back a California-based maker of advanced solar panels with a $535 million loan guarantee in 2009 looks seedier by the day. By all appearances, this deal and subsequent debacle had more to do with campaign cash and hoodwinking voters than it did with green energy.Solyndra Inc. burned through its loans in just two years, filed for bankruptcy and threw its employees on the street.If the story stopped there, it would be bad enough. But a trail of emails trickling out ove

Samantha Power used to be best known for her tour-de-force book, “A Problem From Hell,” in which she correctly accused the United States of willfully ignoring genocide in Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia and elsewhere.“Despite graphic media coverage,” she wrote, “American policymakers” are “extremely slow to muster the imagination to reckon with evil.”Now Power sits in the Obama White House, a senior staffer on the National Security Council. She’s watching along with everyone else in Washington as Syria

“Meok-twi” meaning “eat and run” in the soju table language is often used to describe foreign investors making hefty profits before closing their operations in Korea. The new coined word appears in newspaper headlines and Internet blogs these days pointing at the Lone Star Fund over its sale of the Korea Exchange Bank after a long court battle and tussle with financial regulators.Lone Star, a Texas-based private equity fund, landed in Korea along with some other foreign buyout capitals during th

While the political arena is touch-and-go over the Korea-U.S. FTA bill, an independent lawmaker is creating a farce by suing a comedian for defaming lawmakers in general in a popular TV program. Rep. Kang Yong-suk, 41, elected from Mapo, Seoul, has a convoluted reason for filing a criminal complaint with the Seoul prosecution against Choe Hyo-jong last week. The legal action came immediately after he was found guilty of “collective libel” by the Seoul Appellate Court for his remarks concerning w

RIYADH ― Over this past year of Arab Spring revolt, Saudi Arabia has increasingly replaced the United States as the key status-quo power in the Middle East ― a role that seems likely to expand even more in coming years as the Saudis boost their military and economic spending. Saudis describe the kingdom’s growing role as a reaction, in part, to the diminished clout of the United States. They still regard the U.S.-Saudi relationship as valuable, but it’s no longer seen as a guarantor of their sec

During the worldwide depression of the mid-1930s, the poet and Islamic modernist Muhammad Iqbal, often called Pakistan’s spiritual founder, wrote a poem dramatizing the inadequacies of Western political and economic systems. Democracy and capitalism had empowered a privileged elite in the name of the people, Iqbal felt. But he was not much fonder of Marxism, which was then coming into vogue among anti-colonial activists across South Asia and the Middle East: But what’s the answer to the mischief