The world was shocked by North Korea leader Kim Jong-un.The North’s great heir made a sudden announcement last weekend, warning of a “pre-emptive nuclear strike” on the United States. The next day, he issued a statement declaring that the North-South relations will be entering the state of war.Let’s think about it. If North Korea attacks the U.S. and causes the outbreak of the second Korean War, it will then be a Northeast Asia war. Of course, China, Russia and Japan would not just watch with fo

Will the new rules banning government officials from squandering public money on banquets and pretentious activities work to the satisfaction of the general public? Will they be able to shift officials’ attention to the problems that residents urgently need them to solve? The country’s new leaders undoubtedly expected that the answers would be in the affirmative when they endorsed these rules immediately after they took office. They set a good example by not sealing off the roads for their convo

There is a vigorous war of words going on between North Korea on one side and the United States and South Korea on the other, and it shows no signs of letting up. Anyone who likes trash talk should be amply entertained. But we shouldn’t ignore the actual risk all this entails.The North Korean government threatened to hit the U.S. with nuclear armed missiles, and the U.S. had strategic bombers fly practice runs in South Korea. Pyongyang staged a mass rally with citizens urging “Death to the U.S.

The most important determinant of educational quality is teacher quality. Yet, as a recent study of school principals’ permissiveness in teacher evaluations and a cheating scandal in Atlanta show, this performance is difficult to measure. The best way forward is to move the evaluation of teachers outside the schools entirely, with standardized tests administered by an independent agency. This would be supplemented by classroom assessments based on unobtrusive videotaping, also judged by outsider

The approval rating of President Park Geun-hye has dropped to around 40 percent, which is dangerously low compared to the figures recorded by her predecessors in their first few months in office. Obviously, what cuts back on the rate is the sloppy manner with which she has chosen members of her Cabinet and heads of some key agencies. Yet, is that all that has turned so many people away from the new president when it is still too early to test her policies?People are uneasy about the government a

In a rare move, the top leaders of the ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition Democratic United Party have agreed to meet regularly for cooperation in translating their common election pledges into action and addressing other pending issues. Participating in the high-profile talks will be the chairmen, floor leaders and chief policymakers of the two parties. The six top leaders are expected to hold their inaugural meeting this week.On Monday, the two parties’ chief policymakers met to set

The government’s comprehensive housing policy package announced on Monday elicited a favorable market response, raising hopes that it could inject life into the moribund real estate market. Now attention shifts to the National Assembly, as whether or not the package lifts the housing market from stagnation depends to a large degree on how lawmakers handle it. In this regard, they are advised to amend the relevant laws as early as possible for a swift implementation of the proposed measures. Time

As Haruhiko Kuroda walks into his first policy meeting as Bank of Japan governor, he must be in a Mario Draghi state of mind. Think of Kuroda’s predecessor, Masaaki Shirakawa, as Japan’s equivalent of former European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet. Shirakawa was a respected economist whose doctrinaire ways caused him to stumble when unexpected things happened, such as the financial crisis in 2008. Just as Trichet’s worldview was out of sync with the times (he actually raised interest

Two spats of cyber attacks shut down, though momentarily, websites of major banks and broadcasters of the country, reminding people of similar attacks in 2009 and 2011. The source of the attacks is not clear yet, but they showed that the information infrastructure remains vulnerable to outside attacks. As Korea is one of the most wired countries in the world with almost all sorts of social services provided over the Internet, any disruption of the information network is particularly detrimental

NEW YORK ― Why add to something that is not supposed to exist?The something in question is the Unites States’ prison in Guantanamo Bay, for which the Pentagon recently requested $49 million in extra funding. Despite Barack Obama’s promise in 2009 ― one of his first as President ― to shut down “Gitmo,” the U.S. evidently has no intention of doing so anytime soon. In fact, the only thing concerning Gitmo that the Obama administration has shut down is the office of the special envoy, Daniel Fried,

Today, Istanbul is a city of Muslims. Before the mid-15th century, however, it was a Christian city of the Byzantine Empire called Constantinople. In 1453, Constantinople was conquered by Sultan Mehmed II of the Ottoman Turk Empire, signaling the end of Christianity and Western civilization in the glorious city. Later, the city was renamed Istanbul by the Turks. Ever since, Istanbul has become a curiously fascinating city where the East and the West, Islam and Christianity, and tradition and inn

TAMPA ― The emblem of the U.S. Special Operations Command pointedly illustrates its mission: It shows the tip of a spear. Now SOCOM is expanding this arsenal to create a global network that can project power even as America’s armies withdraw from the battlefields of the last decade. Adm. William McRaven, the SOCOM commander, has been developing this ambitious new role at his headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base here. McRaven is among the nation’s most celebrated warriors. He planned the operat

Who do they think they are, these upstart economies, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa? That might sum up the feeling in the U.S., Europe and Japan as the BRICS nations consider a new development bank that might challenge the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The move brings to mind Alice Amsden, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist who died last year, and her 2001 book, “The Rise of ‘the Rest.’” The richest nations can stew about this turn of events, as thos

Ernest Hemingway pieced together the quintessence of the Spanish Civil War in his captivating novel “For whom the bell tolls?” The novel’s protagonist, a young American, gets embroiled in the war while serving in the International Brigade, chronicling senseless inhumanity of man to man as society’s fabric is shredded.One of the most memorable passages of the novel is “For what are we born if not to aid one another?” The novel has many themes, and one is the dependency of society’s individuals on

The substantive case against gay marriage collapsed in the Supreme Court last week. Legally, Supreme Court watchers say, advocates won’t win the sweeping victory they once anticipated as they made arguments last week. The court is likely to overturn a California law that precludes same-sex marriage, on technical grounds. The 17-year-old federal Defense of Marriage Act defining marriage as between a man and woman, and thus denying federal spousal benefits to gays and lesbians, almost certainly wi

Today is the 22nd anniversary of the Korea International Cooperation Agency, the implementing organization of Korea’s official development assistance. KOICA has earned a good reputation by transferring Korea’s development experience to developing countries around the world. It has also dispatched more than 10,000 volunteer workers abroad. ODA is classified into two types ― grants and loans. Grants are provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and KOICA while loans are offered by the Ministry o

We’re still legislating and regulating private morality, while at the same time ignoring the much larger crisis of public morality in America.In recent weeks Republican state legislators have decided to thwart the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which gave women the right to have an abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, usually around 24 weeks into pregnancy.Legislators in North Dakota passed a bill banning abortions after six weeks or after a fetal heartbeat had bee

PARIS ― The Internet went crazy last week over what was described in hyperventilating tweets as NATO’s plan to kill hackers. “NATO-Commissioned Report Says Killing Hackers Is Basically OK,” blared one tech blog headline, nicely reinforcing the paranoia. That makes it sound as if the governments of NATO countries are looking for any excuse to vaporize anyone with a computer, doesn’t it? The more irrationally jumpy among us might imagine that these governments are just waiting for the guy beside u

The fifth summit of the BRICS countries, which concluded in Durban, South Africa on Wednesday, has sent positive signals of solidarity, partnership and win-win cooperation. With their pledge to enhance cooperation and coordination in such fields as international politics, economy, finance, trade and development, the group is poised to play a bigger role on the world stage, which should be interpreted as a good trend. Among the many initiatives that were approved by leaders of the BRICS countries

Taiwan’s Ministry of Education moved last week to amend existing regulations that would block an application by renowned baker Wu Pao-chun for the country’s Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) program.The MOE’s uncharacteristically rapid response came after President Ma Ying-jeou publicly instructed the government to keep Wu in Taiwan by all means necessary. Wu was contemplating further education to boost his business skills but was reportedly put off by Taiwanese regulations, whi