An increasing number of young people are so obsessed with using smartphones and computers that their health and schoolwork are being undermined. Prompt measures should be taken at school and home to deal with this problem.According to a recent survey by a Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry research team, about 520,000 middle and high school students are addicted to the Internet, particularly for online gaming and e-mailing.The survey shows that 9 percent of middle school students and 14 percent

The intensifying hostility between China and Japan and the increasing mutual distrust between their peoples will have serious ramifications for ASEAN.For the past three decades, the two Asian giants’ stable relations have helped generate huge volumes of trade and investment and propelled the region’s economic progress. So if the current trend in East Asia continues, ASEAN’s ambitious plan to build a community of 630 million people with a single production base will suffer.A recent survey conduct

The new regime of Chinese President Xi Jinping is turning up the heat on corruption there, and is making sure you can read all about it. Stories of graft, official excess and corporate malfeasance abound, not only in foreign news outlets but also in China’s emboldened domestic publications and social media.Xi, who took office in March, has responded aggressively to public complaints about official misconduct. He has denounced corruption as a threat to the existence of his ruling Communist Party.

WASHINGTON ― Watching Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf states line up behind the bloody counterrevolution in Egypt, you can’t help suspecting that these conservative monarchies are ready to fight to the last Egyptian against the Muslim Brotherhood ― waging what amounts to a proxy war against the regional threat of Islamist extremism. The events of the past few weeks have been the culmination of a trend building since February 2011, when President Hosni Mubarak was pushed from power in what ma

Climate change presents two distinct problems. The first is linear: A little more warming causes a little more damage. The second is nonlinear: A little more warming pushes some part of the climate system past a tipping point and the damage becomes catastrophic.We need smart climate policies that address both problems, so we can slow incremental damage while also taking out an insurance policy against the growing risk of catastrophic damage.The Arctic is a prime example of a potential tipping po

The benefits of technology are pervasive. We are flooded with the fruits of technological progress ― the iPad, iPod, electronic gadgets like smartphones, smart TVs, etc. The spread of technical progress is like a double-edged sword, creating winners and losers. The Schumpeterian perspective on technological progress under capitalism is well discussed in economics where it endangers creative destruction. Recently, in a book by Evgeny Morozov named “To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Tec

The dog days of 2013 have gone and the traditional calendar declares “cheoseo,” the withdrawal of heat, on Aug. 23. Koreans who struggled under record-high temperatures hovering near 40 degrees Celsius from the south coast to the DMZ now deserve to be able to relax in the cool air of the early morning and evening hours.A little busier than others will be police, prosecutors and judges who now have to serve justice on the many people who have been arraigned for crimes related to the heat. Of cour

Education is said to be a project that requires a far-sighted plan spanning at least a hundred years. Unfortunately, in Korea, education has been a very hit-and-miss affair. Policy flip-flops have been frequent, confusing students, parents and teachers.The latest case in point involves autonomous private high schools, which are, together with Meister vocational high schools, symbolic of the preceding Lee Myung-bak government’s educational policy.Autonomous private schools refer to private school

Only two days are left before the parliamentary probe into the National Intelligence Service’s alleged intervention in the December presidential election comes to an end. Yet there are few signs that the long drawn-out political standoff is thawing.If anything, partisan gridlock is likely to deepen as the main opposition Democratic Party is threatening to step up its fight for NIS reform even after the parliamentary investigation ends.Some DP lawmakers are calling for the appointment of an indep

Of all the reporting trips I made in my Washington days, flying with Lawrence Summers to Beijing so he could kiss Zhu Rongji’s ring ranks among the most fascinating. Anyone who has spent inside of five minutes with Summers knows he’s not the groveling type. But this was in January 1998, when Summers was deputy secretary of the U.S. Treasury, and Bill Clinton’s White House feared China would devalue the yuan and toss more fuel onto Asia’s already blazing crisis. As we landed in Beijing, Zhu, Chin

In the heat of the welfare-enhancing policy exploration, at the earliest starting from next year, workers may have one more day off if a public holiday falls on Saturday or Sunday. There are 15 official public holidays in Korea at the moment, and each year 3-4 days on average fall on weekends with no compensatory days off given. Under this system of “letting the chips fall where they may,” the actual number of holidays changes every year and having the full benefit of 15 holidays becomes quite u

By any standard Pope Francis’ Brazil trip was a great success. Enthusiastic crowds clogged the routes of the papal motorcade and reportedly more than a million people were present for the pope’s final Mass on Copacabana beach. The media no less than Catholic pilgrims seemed enchanted by the new pontiff and his appeals for dialogue, conciliation and social justice.For this pope, who presents himself above all else as a pastor and teacher, the achievements of this first international foray must be

Americans are well known to seek clinical therapy when they encounter psychological problems. In fact, American culture, as well as the social system, encourages people to seek therapy for all kinds of issues. For example, if you have an uncontrollable temper, you may be directed to anger management classes. If you have issues with your spouse, you and your spouse will be advised to try marriage counseling. If you are a widow or widower grieving over a deceased spouse, you may be told to try the

It’s nothing short of heartbreaking to remember those heady moments of early 2011, when hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of Egyptians converged on Tahrir Square and stunned even themselves by ending a three-decade-old dictatorship.Gone are the illusions of unity and brotherhood. Gone are the dreams of a smooth, relatively peaceful transition to a democratic system that would make Egyptians proud of their country and command admiration from the rest of the world.Today, the blood-soaked str

“Mind if I vape?” The question may become more common as electronic cigarettes become more popular. The answer, however, remains elusive. Etiquette aside, the health effects of inhaling nicotine vapor (hence the term) are largely unknown. More research is clearly needed, but in the meantime, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has to start regulating e-cigarettes. U.S. consumers will spend $1 billion on battery-powered smokes this year, 10 times more than they did four years ago. Are e-cigaret

There’s a grade-school-level international game being played. It’s like the one you played as a kid when you would have a friend punch you as hard as possible in the stomach to see how long you could keep a fake smile plastered on your face. “Oh, THAT didn’t hurt AT ALL! Hit me harder, you wimp!” That, right now, is America ― and it needs to stop.Let’s take two recent beneficiaries of the goodies-for-abuse program: Russia and Pakistan.Russia apparently doesn’t feel that granting asylum to Nation

North Carolina is channeling Alabama and South Carolina when it comes to the best economic, social and political model for a U.S. Southern state. For more than half a century, North Carolina has been progressive on education and public investments, and pro-business ― witness the celebrated Research Triangle between Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill and the financial center in Charlotte ― with less racial strife than other Southern states. As Republicans took full control of the state government in

This year the two Koreas have celebrated the 60th anniversary of the armistice of the Korean War for different reasons and different purposes.The countries that made military and nonmilitary contributions to the U.N. Command, particularly South Korea and the U.S., wanted to remind the international community that their participation in the Korean War was the first international effort to make the U.N. a true collective security body and to affirm that the use of force by any individual state or

A spate of one-day strikes by fast-food workers has renewed the focus on the abysmal pay for so many at the bottom of the U.S. labor market. Amid all the discussion, a theme keeps cropping up: Labor’s share of national income has plunged while corporate profits have climbed to record highs.The numbers are telling. After peaking in the early 1980s at about 66 percent, U.S. workers have seen their share of the national pie decline to about 58 percent, the lowest since at least the end of World War

LONDON ― After a year of unexplained delay, the trial of Bo Xilai, the former Communist Party secretary of Chongqing municipality, is finally about to begin. Bo faces three charges: corruption, bribery, and abuse of power. But his real offense is that he challenged the Chinese Communist Party’s way of doing things. Moreover, his wife’s conviction of the widely publicized murder of British businessman Neil Heywood has severely embarrassed the CCP.When the court finally convicts Bo ― and he is cer