Of the many news reports last week, the following three items were particularly painful:The launch of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle-1 was postponed indefinitely due to a glitch in the fuel system. It was the third attempt to put a satellite into earth’s orbit after two failures in 2009 and 2010, the first a malfunction of the fairing device and the second a mid-air explosion because of a still unknown cause.Suh Nam-pyo announced he would resign as KAIST president in February 2013, a year and a

The parallels are inescapable. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, they stoned fornicators, demolished shrines they considered idolatrous, and gave sanctuary to foreign jihadists. The Islamic extremists in control of northern Mali are doing the same things. The fear that rebel-held northern Mali has become the new Afghanistan figured in the last presidential debate, in which Mitt Romney said the country’s name four times. The deteriorating situation has provoked calls for swift military action,

NEW YORK ― A country’s economic success depends on the education, skills, and health of its population. When its young people are healthy and well educated, they can find gainful employment, achieve dignity, and succeed in adjusting to the fluctuations of the global labor market. Businesses invest more, knowing that their workers will be productive. Yet many societies around the world do not meet the challenge of ensuring basic health and a decent education for each generation of children.Why is

Australia’s Asian century white paper, released on Sunday, has sent an unmistakable message to the outside world that it wants to shift away from the “old countries” of Europe toward broader and deeper engagement with its neighbors in Asia, especially China and India. Given Asia’s rising significance in the world’s economic and security landscape, it is no surprise that the biggest country in the Southern Hemisphere seeks to benefit more from Asia’s economic and social progress. In fact, Canberr

I used to say, during doctoral examinations in theoretical physics, that the stakes were a bit more relaxed than passing or failing a medical student. After all, granting a doctorate was unlikely to result in life or death for anyone.Well, an Italian court decided this week that I was wrong. Six scientists were convicted of manslaughter because their data did not allow them to predict a 6.3-magnitude temblor in the city of L’Aquila in 2009 with enough certainty to issue a safety warning. More th

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the senator and Harvard University professor, observed that academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. This year, U.S. politics feel that way, too. The issues don’t seem as seminal as those facing the nation during the Cold War or the civil-rights movement; the partisanship is worse. Nonetheless, this presidential election has important policy implications. If either party wins the White House and control of both houses of Congress there

Recently, I have met many Koreans who were very proud of their country’s remarkable economic growth and cultural popularity overseas. In Seoul, a young Korean woman from overseas told me, “I am so impressed by Korea’s astonishing development and tremendous social change. I feel like I’m in a truly advanced country.” In Washington, D.C. a Korean-American told me, “When I went to watch a baseball game the other day, I saw the cheerleaders and the audience dance Psy’s ‘Horse Dance’ together after t

As international cereal prices continue to rise, the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has come up with a plan to increase the production of winter cereals, such as wheat and barley, and coarse fodders. The ministry’s response calls for increasing the sown areas of winter grains and roughage from 250,000 hectares last year to around 300,000 hectares this year using farmland that lies idle in winter.The ministry seeks to boost the self-sufficiency rate of wheat from 2 percent

A recent report of the Korea Development Institute has again called for reform of the Basic Old-age Pension plan.The pension is intended to provide income support to elders who were unable to prepare for a comfortable life in their old age. It grants the bottom 70 percent of people aged 65 or older a monthly fixed benefit of up to 94,600 won ($86).Yet the KDI report has found that the program pays benefits to many wealthy seniors who do not need them, while excluding a large number of elders who

The U.S. Congress is on an extended election hiatus, yet there has been no noticeable decline in its productivity. As polarization and legislative gridlock have worsened in recent years, the nation’s great legislative body has withered, losing not only popular support but the ability to exercise its constitutional powers. The result has been a troubling expansion of executive and judicial power. An example is President Barack Obama’s decision in June to end the deportation of some illegal immigr

MUNICH ― The motto of the United States of America is: “E pluribus unum” (Out of many, one). The European Union’s motto is “In varietate concordia,” which is officially translated as “United in diversity.” It is difficult to express the differences between the U.S. and the European model any more clearly than this. The U.S. is a melting pot, whereas Europe is a mosaic of different peoples and cultures that has developed over the course of its long history.That difference raises the question of w

The free trade agreement between Korea and the EU was signed on Oct. 15, 2009, and came into force on July 1, 2011. Under the FTA, the EU agreed to eliminate or phase out tariffs on 96 percent of goods, and Korea for 99 percent of goods, within three years. Within five years, 98.7 percent of imports would be tariff-free. Beside tariff reduction, the FTA brings reductions in non-tariff barriers to market access, including elimination of quotas, standardization of product specifications, agreement

It’s no secret that some Korean public officials have misused overseas training programs, financed with precious taxes, by enjoying them as their freebie tours abroad. Those programs, thanks to such accumulative scandals over time, now tend to be considered a waste of government money. Had it not been for those few who neglected their duties and responsibilities as civil servants, overseas training programs could be welcomed or even encouraged as valuable opportunities to learn exemplary cases f

PARIS ― To evaluate an American president’s foreign-policy performance after one term is challenging, given the complex diplomatic and strategic environment and significant domestic constraints that confront every U.S. president. Nevertheless, in advance of November’s presidential election, it is important to distinguish the forces that have shaped Barack Obama’s foreign policy, and to assess his handling of them.Obama kept his promise to withdraw American forces from Iraq during his first term.

PARIS ― There’s a good chance that American voters will screw up the presidential election.“How could you say such a thing when in a democracy the people are, by definition, correct?” you ask.Because there’s no such thing as collective intelligence, that’s why. Sure, there are individuals within a given society who happen to be informed and intelligent ― but it requires work to overcome the sort of inertia that has so many other people in that society pinned to their recliners watching “Dancing

We’re closing in on Election Day, but the questions about what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would do if elected are only growing larger. Rarely before in American history has a presidential ticket campaigned on such a blank slate.Yet, paradoxically, not a day goes by that we don’t hear Romney, Ryan or some other exponent of the GOP claim that businesses aren’t creating more jobs because they’re uncertain about the future. And the source of that uncertainty, they say, is President Obama ― especially

My late father taught me that what defines a principle is the willingness to adhere to it even when that adherence hurts. Maybe that’s why the newfound appreciation of the Electoral College among many of my friends on the left has struck me as a weirdly compelling spectacle. After the 2000 election, when George W. Bush lost the popular vote but (after the Florida debacle) won a majority of Electoral College votes, liberal commentators spent years calling for the direct election of the president.

The third presidential debate, concerned mainly with foreign policy, was frustrating for many commentators because it gave them little to chew on. What’s to debate when there’s so much agreement ― or the semblance of it, at least? Our frustration is quite the opposite: There is genuine agreement between Democrats and Republicans on some issues and yet that consensus fails to drive action. We see this playing out especially on immigration. The larger immigration picture certainly remains contenti

Alternative scenarios have always exercised a particularly strong grip on the modern imagination; countless of books and novels have outlined counterfactual versions of almost any crucial event in history. Past events generally emit an aura of inevitability, that these events were destined to unfold the way they did; alternative versions remind us that events are often the outcome of arbitrary, contingent circumstances ― for example, a moment’s sudden impulse whose consequences we live with, per

NEW YORK ― After the second debate between U.S. President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, Obama’s supporters chorused in near-unison, “He’s back!” The languid, disengaged, and lackluster performer of the first debate had disappeared, and the impressive, beloved figure of the victorious 2008 campaign had reappeared. As the commentator Andrew Sullivan put it, “I saw the person I first saw...I saw the president I thought I knew.”To my eye, however, the old Obama was not bac