There is a saying in English, “You cannot choose your neighbor.” Indeed, it seems luck can determine whether or not you have a good neighbor. If you are unlucky, you have to either put up with your bad neighbor or move to another place. Perhaps that is why people say, “Neighborhood is everything” when renting an apartment or purchasing a house. Like many, I have experienced living alongside a few bad neighbors in the past. When I lived in the States, for example, one of my neighbors was a colleg

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education has launched an investigation into alleged admission corruption at Younghoon International Middle School, one of the two special-purpose middle schools in Seoul set up to nurture global talent.The allegations were put forward last week by a member of the Education Committee of the Seoul Metropolitan Council. The official said that a parent told him last month that she paid the school 20 million won for her son’s admission. As the whistleblower also told

Many citizens in the industrial city of Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, are seriously thinking about relocating as they are terrified by an unending series of industrial disasters.This month alone, three industrial accidents took place, spooking the city’s 400,000 citizens. Just as a burned child dreads the fire, they are still seared by the memory of the massive hydrofluoric acid leak last September that left five dead and many more injured.On March 7, a large oil tank containing 4,000 liters

The 13-hour filibuster in the U.S. Senate carried on between noon Wednesday and early Thursday morning by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has so many fascinating angles to it, it’s hard to know where to start.There’s the fact that it was one of the few actual standing filibusters these days, and one of the longest in history. Paul openly stated his reasons for blocking a vote and talked as long as he could in service of his mission.There’s the fact that while Paul was wrongly standing in the way of Presi

HONG KONG ― Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying has been dogged by scandal from his first days in office, and his personal integrity is routinely impugned by much of the public. So it is no surprise that his popularity is plummeting.Leung has only himself to blame. He seems incapable of connecting with ordinary Hong Kong citizens, instead coming across as a shifty politician who often dodges direct questions, offers vague answers, and evades responsibility for major failings by apologizing

TOKYO ― Two years have passed since the Fukushima nuclear accident, and international interest in its impact is beginning to wane. But that impact continues to reverberate ― and not only in global public debate about the future of nuclear energy. More than a hundred thousand people remain displaced by the accident, some having lost family, homes, possessions, and even the desire to live.Japan’s nuclear industry, regulators, and government have a responsibility to explain clearly why science and

PARIS ― Is there anything people can possibly do these days to disgust or unnerve themselves? Or is the only barrier to bad behavior massive societal shunning, the likes of which isn’t noticed by those who are too engrossed with themselves to pay attention?I’m asking this because it seemed that everywhere I looked recently, I was bombarded by stunning acts of shamelessness ― to the point where shamelessness arguably WAS the major trend in the news. Let’s look at a few examples.― The “sequester”:

WASHINGTON ― Sen. Rand Paul made some dubious warnings about drone strikes on San Francisco cafes in his filibuster last week against the confirmation of John Brennan as CIA director. But his larger argument for clearer limits on drones is absolutely right.Paul’s battle shouldn’t have been with Brennan, who said that as CIA director he wouldn’t have any legal power to authorize domestic drone strikes. Brennan, who has been trying to sort out legal rules for drone warfare, deserved to be confirme

With the sequester now beginning, I find myself thinking about Robert F. Kennedy ― and 46 years ago when I was an intern in his Senate office.The nation was going through a difficult time in 1967. America was deeply split over civil rights and the Vietnam War. Many of our cities were burning. The war was escalating.But RFK was upbeat. He was also busy and intense ― drafting legislation, lining up votes, speaking to the poor, inspiring the young.I was awed by his energy and optimism, and by his o

A few days after NBC News uncovered the Obama administration’s legal justifications for killing American citizens, I was sitting in Baltimore-Washington International Airport.The infamous “white paper” lays out in tortured English the lengths to which the president will go in his war against al-Qaida. Americans who renounce their country and pledge themselves to an organization willing to slaughter the innocent do not (and should not) rank among the most sympathetic of characters. When thinking

The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has the potential to birth a dramatic change in his oil-rich country’s relationship with the United States. But it may take years to materialize, if it ever does.Much will depend on how far the Obama administration is willing to go to encourage Chavez’s successor. Before Chavez’s death Tuesday, Vice President Nicolas Maduro had implied that the United States had somehow given the president cancer.That absurd assertion contrasts with foreign policy an

NEWPORT BEACH ― After instant and seemingly coordinated fanfare in Europe and the United States, the proposal for a European Union-U.S. free-trade area has been generating little media attention. There are three reasons for this, and all three highlight broader constraints on good national economic policymaking and productive cross-border coordination.In his “State of the Union” address in February, U.S. President Barack Obama proposed a “comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partners

President Park Geun-hye’s proposal to establish new ministries and make other changes to the organization of government agencies is mired in protracted negations between the ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition Democratic United Party. Her repeated appeal to the National Assembly to promptly pass the underlying bill has fallen on deaf ears.The ruling party, with 153 seats in the 300-member National Assembly, finds itself languishing over the lack of progress in its talks with the opposit

Consumers pay a 10 percent value-added tax each time they purchase a good or a service, not directly but through the seller. A change in payment would increase the tax collections by up to 7.1 trillion won each year, according to a report from a research institute.This should be good news to President Park Geun-hye, who says she will make good on her election promise to spend an annual average 27 trillion won on her welfare programs additionally each year without any tax increases. The administr

The death of President Hugo Chavez marks the beginning of a perilous and hopeful moment for Venezuela and the Western Hemisphere. There is no denying the impact of the charismatic ex-paratrooper, a plotter and survivor of coups who demolished Venezuela’s political power structure, won three elections with wide support and used the wealth from the world’s largest oil reserves to advance, across the Andes and beyond, his home- brewed ideology of “Bolivarian socialism.” How long that incoherent ide

NEW DELHI ― As if to highlight that Asia’s biggest challenge is managing the rise of an increasingly assertive China, the Chinese government has unveiled plans to build large new dams on major rivers flowing to other countries. The decision by China’s State Council to ride roughshod over downstream countries’ concerns and proceed unilaterally shows that the main issue facing Asia is not readiness to accommodate China’s rise, but the need to persuade China’s leaders to institutionalize cooperatio

Tensions are heightening again on the Korean Peninsula as North Korea ratchets up war threats in protest against the annual U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises and imminent new U.N. Security Council sanctions for its nuclear test on Feb. 12.On Tuesday, the Supreme Command of the North Korean People’s Army declared in a statement that the armistice agreement that ended the 1950-53 Korean War would be invalid from March 11. The statement, read by Kim Yong-chol, a hard-line general suspected

E-mart, the nation’s largest discount store chain, has taken a bold step for its non-regular workers. The retail giant announced earlier this week that it would grant regular employee status to 10,000 workers currently employed by its in-house subcontractors.The retailer plans to convert the status of the large number of workers next month, entitling them to stable employment until retirement age, a 27 percent salary increase and various welfare benefits, including health insurance and education

This editorial was produced in an office, so it may be 13 percent less productive and efficient at its job than if it were written at home. Then again, if it were produced at home, away from the boss’s gaze, it might still be goofing off, collecting glib phrases and sentence fragments without cohering into anything persuasive. In the latest debate over telecommuting, sparked by Yahoo! Inc.’s announcement that all employees working from home must start showing up at the office, the two camps have

WASHINGTON ― As Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government slides toward the financial cliff, what’s the right policy for the United States? That’s becoming an urgent question, as Egypt’s financial reserves decline and the country nears a new breaking point. The economic facts are stark: Egypt’s official foreign currency reserves in February were $13.5 billion, which would cover a little less than three months of imports. But U.S. officials say that accessible, liquid reserves total only $6 billion t