The government is rushing to formulate its strategy for the Arctic as the nation now has a say on the future of the northern polar region as a permanent observer of the Arctic Council.Korea won observer status to the council in May. Led by the eight Arctic countries including Russia, Canada and Norway, the council is an international forum that lays down the main policies for the polar region.Last week, the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries outlined the three goals of its Arctic policy ― building

In the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Korea, SGR-1 robots are on patrol, equipped with cameras and radar to detect intruders as well as speakers to warn them off. If that fails, they also carry machine guns and grenade launchers. In the U.S., the Home Exploring Robotic Butler can retrieve a book from a shelf, a meal from a microwave or a drink from the kitchen. It can even separate an Oreo cookie. In Japan, a seal-like robot called Paro provides companionship for seniors ― and seems

Anyone who doubts the dangerous consequences of White House waffling on Syria should note some startling statements by U.S. officials in recent days.Let’s start at the top. After two years of insistence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must go, the White House started publicly hedging last week. No doubt that was a reaction to the fact that Assad, armed and aided by Russia, Iran, and the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, has been scoring major victories against the Syrian rebels.The new W

Washington being Washington, the hottest relationship in town doesn’t revolve around sex or even the next presidential election: it’s the political courtship of old antagonists, Barack Obama and John McCain. Political relationships, especially those involving the president, are the sustenance of the American capital. Sometimes they are poisonous: President Lyndon Johnson and Robert F. Kennedy, as captured in the latest volume of Robert Caro’s biography of LBJ. At other times, they are lopsided,

Still-smoldering protests from Egypt to Brazil have set off a race among scholars and journalists to identify the roots of this summer of discontent in the emerging world. Each major theory starts at the bottom, with the protesters on the street, and notes a common thread: young, Twitter-savvy members of a rising middle class. In this telling, the protests represent the perils of success, as growing wealth creates a class of people who have the time and financial wherewithal to demand from their

Last week, Mexican authorities arrested Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, the leader of the Zetas, Mexico’s deadliest and most feared drug cartel. In Mexico, the news was met with relief, although there is also apprehension that his arrest will lead to a convulsion of violence; historically, taking out cartel kingpins has meant power struggles within organized crime groups, schisms that leave many dead in their wake.Trevino Morales, known as Z-40, was apprehended ― along with a bodyguard and a third

One way to view Detroit’s bankruptcy ― the largest bankruptcy of any American city in history ― is as a failure of political negotiations over how financial sacrifices should be divided among the city’s creditors, city workers and municipal retirees, requiring a court to decide instead. It could also be seen as the inevitable culmination of decades of union agreements offering unaffordable pension and health benefits to city workers.But there’s a more basic story here, and it’s being replicated

It is a shame that the ruling Saenuri Party and the main opposition Democratic Party have been spending all their time quarreling over an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with improving people’s livelihoods or creating jobs.The two parties have been embroiled in futile political strife over the allegations that former President Roh Moo-hyun offered to make a concession regarding the Western maritime border to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during their 2007 summit in Pyongyang.To establi

Korea’s financial regulatory system is likely to undergo another major change next year as the government has decided to separate the consumer protection function of the Financial Supervisory Service and expand it into an independent agency.The reform plan is intended to bolster protection for citizens and small firms as a series of financial scandals in recent years, including the savings bank debacle in 2011, showed that the nation’s regulatory system had much room for improvement in terms of

WASHINGTON ― Two qualities rarely associated with modern secretaries of state are patience and keeping your mouth shut in public. But in his first six months, John Kerry has demonstrated both ― and his stubborn silence appears to have brought him to the door of renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. “The best way to give these negotiations a chance is to keep them private,” Kerry insisted last Friday in Amman while announcing an agreement to resume direct final-status talks after a thre

China has evicted more than 400,000 Tibetans from their homelands over the last several years.These forced relocations, sometimes hundreds of miles away, all fall under a program deceptively named “Comfortable Housing.”Part of the unstated reasoning is China’s resolve to pull Tibetans and other minorities out of their semi-autonomous regions and integrate them into the larger Chinese society. But another unspoken motivation, Human Rights Watch says in a new report, is the determination to exploi

One of the most important economic stories of the era is unfolding in China, and every American should hope for a happy ending.The world’s second-largest economy is slowing down from its 30-year dash. A formula based on exports, cheap credit, heavy manufacturing and infrastructure investment has run its course ― after, it should be noted, helping to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.China’s economy grew 7.5 percent in the second quarter this year, far below the double-digit gain

NEW HAVEN ― You might think that we have been living in a post-bubble world since the collapse in 2006 of the biggest-ever worldwide real-estate bubble and the end of a major worldwide stock-market bubble the following year. But talk of bubbles keeps reappearing ― new or continuing housing bubbles in many countries, a new global stock-market bubble, a long-term bond-market bubble in the United States and other countries, an oil-price bubble, a gold bubble, and so on.Nevertheless, I was not expec

Russian President Vladimir Putin cares a lot about what you think ― about NSA contractor-turned-defector and Russian asylum seeker Edward Snowden, and pretty much everything else ― to the point of spending $300 million of state funds last year on the external audiovisual service RT, designed primarily to spoonfeed the Kremlin worldview to a global audience. And unearthed records show that’s just the tip of a much more insidious iceberg.Why, you might ask, would an iron-fisted authoritarian care

RIMINI, Italy ― You think we have it bad, caught between a stagnant economy and gridlocked politics? Then take a trip to Europe, where the economy is going not sideways but backward ― and the politics are too.Europe’s numbers should be familiar by now, but they’re still awful. In the United States, President Obama’s much-derided stimulus package helped end our recession in 2009; in Europe, with no comparable stimulus, the recession isn’t over. Unemployment in the 17 countries that share the euro

The southwestern provincial city of Gwangju has been chosen to host the world swimming championships in 2019. For the city, it is definitely a matter for congratulation. The biennial swimming competition will give the city, which has already been selected as the venue of the 2015 Summer Universiade, another major chance to promote itself abroad as an attractive investment and tourist destination.Yet the city’s achievement has lost much of its luster as its officials face an investigation for all

The government has decided to lower the tax rates on home purchases indefinitely to stimulate the depressed housing market. In principle, the decision is a step in the right direction; it will boost housing transactions to some degree by alleviating the tax burden on home buyers.But the problem is that home acquisition taxes account for a large portion of the tax income of local governments. Any cut in the tax rates would translate into a reduction in provincial governments’ tax revenues. Offici

French mathematician Blaise Pascal once apologized to the recipient of his letter for its length by saying “I did not have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.” It was Mark Twain who said, “If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.” They were trying to say how difficult it is to write short but precise statements. Interestingly, this very statement of Twain was quoted

The new federal guidelines for how colleges should handle sexual-harassment cases aren’t just unreasonable. They’re hostile to reasonableness in principle. The Justice Department and the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights set forth the rules in a letter they sent in May. The letter was addressed to the University of Montana but says it should serve as “a blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country.” The letter criticized the university for defining “sexual harassme

The seizure in Panama of the Chong Chon Gang, a rusty old North Korean ship carrying last century’s Soviet-era weapons from Cuba hidden under 250,000 sacks of brown sugar, may seem to have the wacky trappings of a “Gilligan’s Island” episode with a Cold War flashback that includes a rioting crew and a captain threatening to kill himself when Panamanian soldiers boarded his ship.But as the ship’s containers begin to be cleared of the 100-pound bags of sugar and the weapons systems are exposed and