In his bid for re-election, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has dispensed with all shame. Vote for me, he has essentially declared, or Malaysia will suffer “catastrophic ruin” and an “Arab Winter” of the kind that has undone economies from Egypt to Libya. Both warnings are ludicrous ― signs of how worried Najib’s National Front coalition is of losing power for the first time since 1957. They speak to the desperation of a government that has come to serve itself, not Malaysia’s 29 million pe

After the United Nations imposed stronger sanctions on North Korea last month, Pyongyang began all kinds of provocations against the U.S. and South Korea. The style and contents of North Korea’s invectives and provocations are more vicious but very familiar to us.If we examine the demands North Korea has been making since negotiations on denuclearization began in 1993, we can find a peaceful solution to the problem. During the six-party talks, the North Korean delegation said that it would rathe

Even if no one ever tells him so, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has the right to remain silent. And even if he never utters another word, there is probably more than enough evidence to convict him. So all the concern about whether authorities gave him a Miranda warning, informing him of his right to remain silent and to have a lawyer, is sort of beside the point. Sort of ― but not entirely. Tsarnaev is a suspected criminal, not an enemy combatant, as the Justice Department properly acknowledged by charging

Three and a half years ago the new South Korean graduate law schools opened for business. These new schools dramatically changed how one became a lawyer in South Korea. Before this new system, any individual could take the bar exam. Successful applicants were then trained in one institute, the Judicial Research and Training Center, for two years. This system created many problems, chief among them the strong connections between lawyers, judges and prosecutors that came from attending one institu

The debate over immigration reform has raised a question that’s almost as challenging: What should we call the approximately 11 million people who are in the United States illegally?The term illegal immigrants has been used routinely and often considered neutral. News organizations, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, have used it for years to describe people by their actions. But there is a case to be made that it dehumanizes a class of people by suggesting that they themselves are somehow aga

The great psychologist William James was Gertrude Stein’s teacher and mentor. As legend tells it, James once posed a single question on a final examination: “What is risk?” Stein wrote, “This is,” walked out of the examination room, and went about her business. Supposedly James gave Stein an A. After a tragedy such as the one last week in Boston, people have a heightened sense of risk. If a flood, an earthquake, a violent crime or a terrorist attack has occurred in the recent past, people tend t

While media coverage of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s inauguration on Friday centered on the contested April 14 election results, a dramatic escalation of government human rights violations since the election has gone virtually unnoticed.International human rights groups and Venezuelan opposition leaders say that in recent days the Maduro government has carried out a de facto takeover of Congress and is suppressing freedom of speech and assembly throughout the nation.“The dispute over th

Recently, I was asked to write a blurb for the Korean translation of Thomas C. Foster’s book, “Twenty-five Books That Shaped America,” published by Random House Korea. As a professor of American literature, I immensely enjoyed reading the book originally published by Harper Collins in 2011. And I was equally impressed by the author’s profound insight into and powerful criticism of American culture and society, not to mention his erudite knowledge of American literature. In this impressive book,

Five years after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, developing nations confront a nasty pair of threats: an excruciatingly slow global recovery, and the tsunami of easy money that rich-world central bankers have unleashed as they try to revive their own economies. The problems are interrelated and no one should fear them more ― or be more open to suggested remedies ― than Xi Jinping. China’s new president knows he needs better than 8 percent growth to maintain social stability

For several hours each year on the third Monday of April, the 600 block of Boylston Street in Boston is the most surveilled place on Earth. Television crews, news and commercial photographers, Web videographers, friends, family, tourists ― and, not incidentally, law enforcement ― all have their electronic eyes trained on the finish line of the Boston Marathon. This partly explains the whiplash speed of the investigation into this week’s bombings. With so much information, a break in the case was

In a capitalist economy, the stock market is expected to play a central role in financing corporate investment and monitoring companies’ performance. But in Korea, this has not been the case. Here, the bourse has ceased to be a source of capital and has instead become a playground for stock speculators and manipulators.The Korea Exchange has recently released data showing how serious the problem is. According to the bourse operator, the number of stocks that were improperly traded last year amou

Hyundai Motor Group set a good example for others to follow when it decided last week to reduce inter-subsidiary logistics and advertising deals worth 600 billion won a year in order to offer new business opportunities to outside firms, especially small and medium enterprises. The auto giant’s move is welcome, but it needs to go further by doing the same in other business fields.The plan will reduce the revenue of Hyundai Glovis, a company that ships Hyundai and Kia cars around the world, by 480

The world, in all its tangled webs, will be read into the Boston bombing suspects. For some, the Tsarnaev brothers are Chechen avengers, young men seared by the long war in Russia’s “southern backyard.” For Vladimir Putin and his regime, this deed of terror in an American city is, doubtless, a vindication of the iron fist with which the Russians fought their long war against Chechnya, proof of the malignancy of the Islamist menace. Foes of immigration can be expected to offer the Tsarnaev brothe

It’s no wonder it took so long. The bipartisan immigration bill introduced this week in the U.S. Senate is a hefty, voluminous achievement. It weighs in at almost 900 pages; given its complex political calibrations, it will need a strong binding to withstand the onslaught to come. The bill lays out a rough, but realistic, road to citizenship for the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. They will have to pay a series of phased- in fines adding up to $2,000, demonstrate a k

WASHINGTON ― For an example of how the U.S. government can work at cross-purposes in dealing with terrorism, take a look at the failed effort to release Afghan prisoners from Guantanamo. It shows how an incorrect analysis ― that the Taliban and al-Qaida pose the same threat ― can lead to a cascade of bad policy that has undermined U.S. interests. The false premise that the Taliban and al-Qaida were equally dangerous was actually enacted into law by Congress in 2010. This confusion complicated th

The attack on the Boston Marathon is a reminder of the adage that terror is theater. Yes, terror is horror. Yes, terror is murder. Yes, terror is reprehensible. But it is theater, too, played out on a grand stage before an audience of tens of millions. We sit riveted in front of the television or computer screen, demanding the latest updates. We don’t need to know who did it to understand the malevolent brilliance of the staging: an attack on the audience at a sporting event where the crowd is u

As North Korea’s Kim Dynasty takes the world to the brink yet again, let’s keep our eyes on the endgame. While Beijing may not be able to tell Pyongyang what to do and it’s clear the two sides aren’t as chummy as most outsiders think, Beijing can pull the plug. And that’s what it must do. North Korea is a criminal enterprise that denies its people the most basic rights and stays afloat largely thanks to weapons exports to fellow bad actors, sales of natural resources to China at below-world-mark

Who says American politics is gridlocked? A tidal wave of politicians from both sides of the aisle who just a few years ago opposed same-sex marriage are now coming around to support it.Elected officials who had been against allowing undocumented immigrants to become American citizens now want to “chart a path” for them.Even those who were staunch gun advocates are now sounding more reasonable about background checks.It’s nice to think logic and reason are finally catching up with our elected re

Only three seats of the 300-member National Assembly will be up for grabs when the parliamentary by-elections are held on Wednesday. Still, they are drawing much more public attention than they deserve.There are two reasons. One is that the elections are the first to be held since Park Geun-hye was elected president in December. The other is that Ahn Cheol-soo, an independent, who was once Park’s formidable adversary in the presidential race, is now running in one of the electoral districts.Barr

President Park Geun-hye completed her Cabinet lineup on her 52nd day in office when she presented letters of appointment to the maritime and science ministers, along with the communications commission chairman and the prosecutor-general, on Wednesday. But the problem was that Chae Dong-wook, prosecutor-general, was the only one among the four that had won approval from the National Assembly.The most controversial among the appointments was that of Yoon Jin-sook as minister of oceans and fisherie