Sept. 7, 2013 marked the first major, public wedding ceremony in South Korea for a gay couple. Film director and producer Kimjo Gwang-soo, 48, and long-time partner and film distributor Kim Seung-hwan, 28, were married near Cheonggye Stream with about 1,000 guests in attendance. The wedding was briefly interrupted when a 54-year-old man claiming to be a church elder went up on the stage, sprayed filth from a food container, and shouted, “Homosexuality is a sin. Homosexuality destroys families an

The failure of Lehman Brothers on Sept. 15, 2008 marked the beginning of the end of the world’s love affair with financialization. Financialization was one of three mega-trends that swept the world in the last 30 years ― the others being free markets and globalization. Financialization is defined as the growing importance of finance in daily activities, both at the national and global levels. Kids grow up these days wanting to be financial engineers instead of civil engineers. The effect was mas

PRINCETON ― The prospect of a U.S. military strike on Syria has dimmed following President Barack Obama’s embrace of an international initiative to take control of Syria’s chemical-weapons stockpile. The eleventh-hour U-turn on the push for military action has come against a backdrop of intensifying diplomatic pressure from the international community to avoid escalation of the violence in Syria. And that outcome is not possible without Iran.In a joint press conference with his Syrian counterpar

Emissions trading in Korea has been a long discussed agenda and now it is almost at the final stage of policy preparation. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance report, Korea is the fastest emission growing nation among OECD member states and it is now the seventh-largest greenhouse gas emitter. With a target of reducing emissions from business-as-usual scenarios by 2020, the government is implementing various measures, including a domestic emissions trading system from Jan. 1, 2015. In 2010

The archives of the Saemaul Undong (or New Community Movement) in the 1970s, which have recorded the course of Korea’s modernization, were added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register some months ago. It is the result of the international agency’s high evaluation that the movement is a successful case of the private-public cooperation as a nation development model. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has credited the Saemaul Undong as the modernization campaign

Financial markets are signaling that several major emerging economies may be approaching crisis.Morgan Stanley has named Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey and South Africa the “fragile five.” They share some common characteristics: All took in excessive short-term international financial inflows, which enticed them into accepting excessive current-account deficits for too long. High economic growth has made their governments complacent, even as rising exchange rates undermined their competitivene

The Syrian conflict is far from resolved, but with Russia finally stepping in and offering to broker a solution ― something this column has long recommended ― a stand-down now seems increasingly likely. As the world now mulls Russia’s proposal for Syria to place its chemical arsenal under international control, what have we really learned so far?― We’re living in a multipolar world where America is no longer required to take every shot. There’s nothing wrong with passing the ball once in a while

While all eyes are on Syria and on America’s response, the real economy in which most Americans live is sputtering.More than four years after the recession officially ended, 11.5 million Americans are unemployed, many of them for years. Nearly 4 million have given up looking for work altogether. If they were actively looking, today’s unemployment rate would be 9.5 percent instead of 7.3 percent.The share of the population working or seeking a job is the lowest in 35 years. The unemployment rate

In his White House address last night, President Barack Obama laid out a clear case to Americans for upholding the international taboo against the use of chemical weapons in Syria. He had the right argument ― just the wrong audience.Obama is no longer asking the U.S. Congress for an immediate vote to support missile strikes against Syria, in retaliation for the Aug. 21 sarin-gas attack that killed more than 1,400 civilians near Damascus. Now, the people who face an imminent choice on Syria don’t

STANFORD, California ― The recent trial of Bo Xilai highlighted the biggest challenge facing contemporary China: the corruption and abuse of power by some government and party officials. Until his fall, Bo, a former Politburo member and party leader of Chongqing, a megacity of 30 million people, was a potential candidate for China’s ruling seven-member Politburo Standing Committee.Bo’s trial occurred at what is a critical moment for China. Millions of rural Chinese annually flood into the countr

With the 13th summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to be held in Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, on Friday, a look back at the preceding 12 years will reveal that the SCO has progressed in leaps and bounds and made enormous achievements in the region and beyond.Since it was founded 12 years ago, when Uzbekistan joined the members of the Shanghai Five China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan and the six heads of state signed the Declaration of the Establishment of the Shang

Mark Chen, who openly called Singapore a mini-state resembling a piece of snot while he was foreign minister in 2004, has made another gaffe. Now a lawmaker, Chen called a press conference at the Legislative Yuan together with a couple of his Democratic Progressive Party colleagues last Wednesday to blast the Immigration Bureau for restoring efforts to screen people’s political thoughts and to blacklist unwelcome visitors, denying them entry to Taiwan. He said that it hurt Taiwan’s image as a de

If Syria follows through on its apparent agreement to submit its chemical weapons to international control and then destroy them, it will be a stroke of luck akin to genius for one of the more inept episodes of U.S. foreign policy.There is good reason to be skeptical of Syria’s declaration, which follows a Russian proposal, which was born of an American gaffe ― namely, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s “rhetorical” response, as his spokeswoman put it, to a reporter’s question about what Syria

WASHINGTON ― When the ancient Greek or Roman playwrights had painted themselves into a corner, plot-wise, they sometimes resorted to the device known as the deus ex machina, in which one of the gods was hoisted over the stage and dropped in to resolve the otherwise inchoate drama. Something similar happened this week with Syria. The drama had progressed into a mix of international tragedy and domestic political bathos. President Obama’s threat of military action against Syria was right in princi

The nation’s agricultural sector is facing growing pressure to recreate itself as a high-value-added export industry. It is make-or-break time for the sector as Korea is promoting free trade deals with China and other countries that will open the nation’s economy even wider.Agricultural reform requires not only a well-designed plan to support selected segments but also a different mindset among those in agro-fisheries businesses.Last week, Korea and China wrapped up their first round of negotiat

As the nation’s population is aging rapidly, so are workers at industrial plants. The graying of the industrial workforce is cause for concern in its own right. It is all the more so when coupled with a tendency among young job seekers to shun production lines.According to a survey released by the Institute for International Trade, the average age of people in employment is 44.8 this year, up from 40.3 in 2000. Aging is more pronounced among blue-collar workers, with their average age jumping fr

NEW DELHI ― In just one decade, the United States has intervened militarily in three Muslim-majority countries and overthrown their governments. Now the same coalition of American liberal interventionists and neoconservatives that promoted those wars is pushing for punitive airstrikes in Syria without reflecting on how U.S. policy has ended up strengthening Islamists and fostering anti-Americanism. Indeed, the last “humanitarian intervention” has clearly backfired, turning Libya into a breeding

Vladimir Putin may be the world’s most hypocritical leader.The debate over the Syrian chemical weapons attack has brought this into sharp focus. The Russian president has repeatedly called the idea that the Syrian government carried out the attack “absurd” and “utter nonsense.”That leaves only one alternative: Syrian rebels did it ― an idea that is absurd, utter nonsense. First of all, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is already responsible for the brutal killing of more than 100,000 of his own

PRINCETON, New Jersey ― Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King dreamed of an America that would one day deliver on its promise of equality for all of its citizens, black as well as white. Today, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has a dream, too: he wants to provide Internet access to the world’s 5 billion people who do not now have it.Zuckerberg’s vision may sound like a self-interested push to gain more Facebook users. But the world currently faces a growing technological divide, with implications

Shinzo Abe’s joy at winning the 2020 Summer Olympics for Japan must have been deeply personal. His grandfather, Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, brought the 1964 Olympics to Tokyo. That event confirmed Japan’s phoenixlike rise from defeat in World War II. Its bullet trains, avant-garde stadiums and neon-lit skyline advertised a country and an economy prepared to take the lead in Asia and indeed the world.Pundits are already predicting a similar rebirth for Abe’s Japan after two decades of deflatio