The Japanese government under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is reportedly moving to permit the use of the wartime rising-sun flag ― a symbol of horror to Asian victims of Japanese colonial aggression. If a recent report by the Sankei Shimbun, a conservative Japanese daily, is true, it shows the true colors of the right-wing, revisionist Abe government again.Abe implied he was denying Japan’s imperialist aggression against its Asian neighbors when he impudently claimed that there was no established d

Brinkmanship often works in inter-Korean negotiations, as it does in other settings. This time, however, it is not Pyongyang but Seoul that has given the ultimatum. And the brinkmanship has worked.On Wednesday, South Korea authorized 280.9 billion won ($250.1 million) in insurance payments to its companies that had been forced to suspend manufacturing in the North Korean border town of Gaeseong during the past four months. The decision to make insurance payments was a thinly veiled ultimatum tow

Few words strike greater fear in the hearts of economists and politicians than “Japanization.” That specter of chronic malaise, deflation and bad debt has driven central bankers from Ben S. Bernanke in the U.S. to Mario Draghi in Europe to flood markets with liquidity in an effort to avert their own lost decades. It should worry China, then, that experts on this dreaded scenario are turning their attention to Beijing. Take Brian Reading, whose quest to understand what the world can learn from To

WASHINGTON ― History tells us that revolution often triggers counterrevolution: The spontaneous, euphoric moments of liberation are eclipsed by the forces of repression ― with reaction often dressed in uniform. The counterrevolution is gathering momentum in the Arab world, two years after the uprisings that toppled rulers in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has fought back brutally to preserve his dictatorship; Egypt’s generals ousted the Muslim Brotherhood government

Twenty years have passed since Korea introduced a real-name financial transaction system. On Aug. 12, 1993, President Kim Young-sam issued a presidential order prohibiting individuals from engaging in financial transactions in other people’s names. The ban was revolutionary at the time, as many people carried out financial transactions under borrowed names to conceal their assets. For the past two decades, the real-name system has played a significant role in making Korean society more transpare

President Park Geun-hye’s economic vision is to make Korea a “creative economy,” which is driven by creative entrepreneurship and a convergence of technologies and industries.But it is a vision difficult to attain, as it calls for a departure from the growth paradigm that Korea has been dependent on for decades.In education, Park’s vision is to cultivate creative individuals who can help the nation’s economy thrive on creative endeavors. This vision may be even more difficult to accomplish as it

Last week, Pope Francis loosed a media tsunami by dropping a pebble of sanity into an ocean of religious angst. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?” he told reporters on the flight back to Rome after his trip to Brazil.What did it mean? Was he changing church teaching? And how might it affect 1.2 billion Roman Catholics worldwide?Hundreds of news stories and thousands of blogs, tweets and commentaries later, most observers heard in Francis’ statem

NEWPORT BEACH ― August is traditionally Europe’s holiday month, with many government officials taking several weeks off. In the process, important initiatives are put on hold until the “great return” at the beginning of September.This year, there is another reason why Europe has pressed the pause button for August. With a looming election in Germany, few wish to undermine Chancellor Angela Merkel’s likely victory. After all, Germany is central to Europe’s well-being, and Merkel’s steady hand has

Almost 18 months after it roiled the Chinese political establishment, the Bo Xilai scandal is drawing to a close. The trial of the former Chongqing Communist Party chief could start as early as this week. If anything, the ignominious end of Bo ― once viewed as a shoo-in for a spot on the party’s Politburo Standing Committee, China’s top decision-making body ― is an anticlimax. Even if the trial were public, we would witness no courtroom drama. Bo, who hasn’t appeared in public since March 2012,

WASHINGTON ― It’s easy to talk about how change is good, but when it actually happens it‘s a shock. It felt that way for hundreds of Washington Post employees on Monday when we heard our boss, Donald Graham, tell us that he was selling the newspaper. To appreciate what happened this week, you have to understand how personal the owner’s relationship was with the Post. This is a CEO who kept at the entry to his office an old wooden cart used to distribute the paper when it was called The Post and

This year’s jangma is finally over after a record two-month stretch. While the rain front moved up and down the peninsula from mid-June, the nation had too much disturbing news that further annoyed people who were under nature’s merciless attack with floods, landslides, unbearable heat and humidity. Most saddening was the sacrifice of six workers ― three from China ― in the flooding of a piped water facility construction site in Seoul. Then we lost five high-school boys at a poorly supervised se

The debate in Congress about cutting the food stamp program has sparked predictable clashes between those who want to help the poor and those who want to cut government spending. But strangely missing from the arguments is a shocking fact: The public, including Congress, knows almost nothing about how the program’s $80 billion is spent.What foods are being purchased by the 47 million Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP (the official name for food stamps)?

Imagine yourself betting on the long-term survival of two types of people. One is the classic egoist, focused and ruthless. The other is more selfless, willing to help fellow humans without any evident gain. Who will be more successful? For anyone steeped in the prevailing thinking of our era, the obvious winner is the egoist. Darwinian evolution and the lore of modern capitalism tell us that only fierce competitors survive. Altruists, the game theorists teach us, are mathematically incapable of

Will Samsung Electronics be able to turn the tables on Apple Inc. even after the U.S. government’s unexpected overruling of a sales ban on some older iPhone models in the American market? That’s the question being raised as Samsung continues its legal battle against Apple. The world’s No. 1 smartphone maker disclosed Monday that it has submitted an appeal against a June ruling by the U.S. International Trade Commission that Apple was not violating some of its patents.In June, the ITC did rule th

President Park Geun-hye’s reshuffle of her secretariat, which was announced Monday, was surprising in terms of both scale and timing. Upon returning from her brief summer vacation, she replaced half of her 10 senior secretaries, including the chief of staff. Few expected such a sweeping reshuffle from a president who was inaugurated less than six months ago. Announcing the surprise shake-up, presidential press secretary Lee Jung-hyun said it was intended to “implement policies more aggressively

That 1999 Time magazine cover is finally catching up with Lawrence Summers. That was the year Summers was celebrated along with Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin as “The Committee to Save the World” for their free-market solutions to Asia’s financial crisis. The timing always struck Asians as odd, given that they were still picking up the pieces from a meltdown made worse by the trio’s ill-conceived and overbearing remedies. That baggage is but one reason many in Asia favor Janet Yellen over Summe

The same House of Representatives that just voted to speed up the end of U.S. combat missions in Afghanistan seems eager to embroil America in another war in the greater Mideast ― with Iran.In high dudgeon, House members voted, 400-20, last week for more harsh economic sanctions on Tehran ― just before the inauguration of Iran’s president-elect, Hassan Rouhani. The new Iranian leader says he wants to ease tensions with Washington, and has signaled he may be ready to limit Iran’s nuclear program.

In 16th-century England, Thomas Gresham formulated what is now known as Gresham’s law, which stipulates that bad money drives out good. Paper money tends to circulate more freely than silver, and silver more freely than gold, because people hoard whatever type of money is seen as best. It’s why we spend those torn dollar bills first. I have no problem with this. It might even be a good thing, because it expands the money supply and credit. But I do have a problem when a similar dynamic takes ove

With Seoul National University’s recent decision to designate Korean history a required subject for applicants, other universities are beginning to follow suit. There is no need to debate the importance of history education. However, a more essential and urgent question we must ask is how do we want to teach history? It is well known that secondary school history education in Korea today is seriously distorted by radical, pro-North Korea teachers who teach, for example, that the Korean War was a

The U.S. House of Representatives has a peculiar way of welcoming Iran’s new president. Just days before today’s inauguration of Hassan Rohani, who has vowed to improve relations with the outside world and bring transparency to Iran’s nuclear program, the House approved legislation that would impose the harshest sanctions to date on Iran. It’s possible to doubt both the sincerity of Rohani’s pledges (or at least his ability to follow through on them) and the value of the House’s legislation. Par