On the eve of the second anniversary of his enthronement, North Korea’s young leader Kim Jong-un faces the biggest test of whether he will be able to consolidate his one-man rule. On Friday, the North executed Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle who has long been regarded as the No. 2 man, for committing treason, mismanaging the economy, engaging in factionalism and indulging in corruption. Jang’s execution came just four days after he was removed from all his positions and expelled from the Workers’ P

The government is under fire from two sides in response to its latest investment revitalization package, which includes a plan to allow hospitals to establish subsidiaries to engage in incidental businesses. Hospitals can already engage in some businesses incidental to medical services. For instance, they can operate funeral parlors, parking lots or facilities for medical care and welfare for the elderly.The government’s plan, to be implemented in the first half of next year, is to allow a hospi

The Justice Department has just obtained documents showing that JPMorgan Chase, Wall Street’s biggest bank, has been hiring the children of China’s ruling elite in order to secure “existing and potential business opportunities” from Chinese government-run companies. “You all know I have always been a big believer of the Sons and Daughters program,” says one JPMorgan executive in an e-mail, because “it almost has a linear relationship” to winning assignments to advise Chinese companies. The docum

What’s so wrong with palm oil, from the palm trees that bear fruit, not coconuts?Well, if you listen to environmentalists and animal-rights advocates along with nutrition and health experts, they’ll tell you it’s something close to poison.Once the United States and other Western countries began condemning and banning trans-fat oils a few years ago, palm oil became a popular substitute. You can find it in shampoo, lipstick, soap and a host of snack and other foods, including some ketchups, margar

MOSCOW ― Russian President Vladimir Putin has been compared to many strongmen of the past ― Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev, and Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, to name a few. But, after nearly 14 years in power, perhaps the best comparison now may be a transgender cross between the former Argentine leader Juan Peron and his legendary wife, Eva (“Evita”).In the early 1940s, Colonel Peron, as minister of labor and secretary of war, was a “gray cardinal” to Argentina’s rulers. Before communism collapsed

There are times when those who can’t control themselves are held in high esteem and become our leaders. Here are two recent instances of this in the U.S. and Korea. The mayor of San Diego was arrested on the morning of Dec. 10 and now has to wear an electric ankle bracelet for the rest of his life. He was brought in on charges of sexually harassing 19 women in the city government. Of course, he resigned from office and appeared on TV to apologize to the women he wronged as well as to the citizen

From 2009 to 2012, the U.S. experienced a significant economic recovery, in which average real income growth jumped by 6 percent. That’s the good news. The bad news is that almost all of that increase ― 95 percent ― was enjoyed by those in the top 1 percent of the income distribution.To appreciate this remarkable finding, set out in an important paper by University of California economist Emmanuel Saez, we need to add some context. From 2007 to 2009, the recession produced a 17.4 percent decline

ABU DHABI ― This has been a year when America re-embraced diplomacy after a frustrating decade of war, displaying a relentlessly pragmatic approach that recalls the days of such deal-making former secretaries of state as Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker III. The secret diplomatic machinations have been dizzying, and sometimes disorienting. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have opened doors and created opportunities for settling intractable conflicts. But the administration’s t

PARIS ― When U.S. President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, it marked the first time that a local “community organizer” had risen to the highest office on the planet. I wasn’t entirely optimistic. Granted, the geopolitical competition (Russia) is also led by a community organizer of sorts, Vladimir Putin, except that the community he was organizing was the Russian domestic intelligence service.At the time, it was hard to see how Obama’s community-organizing background could bode well for Ameri

LAHORE, Pakistan ― Pakistani institutions are evolving rapidly. With executive authority increasingly in the hands of elected representatives, rather than dispersed among various competing institutions, the political establishment has been revitalized ― and it has taken three important steps toward strengthening democracy and the rule of law. Is Pakistan, a country long prone to military coups, finally developing a well-functioning political system?On Nov. 27, Pakistani President Mamnoon Hussain

Many Southeast Asians and others around the world owe their thanks to the Coca-Cola Company.No, I’m not expressing gratitude for the sugary drinks that can help make people fat. But to make those drinks, Coke is one of the world’s largest sugar consumers. The company buys sugar from distributors all over the world.Well, it happens that some of the largest growers and distributors are in Thailand and Cambodia. And as a recent lawsuit made clear, much of the Cambodian sugar is grown on large plant

The rail workers’ strike enters its fourth day today, showing no signs of coming to an early end. The walkout is likely to continue as the more than 4,000 workers of Korea Railroad Corp. vow to fight indefinitely until their demands are met.The workers went on strike to prevent the state rail operator from creating a subsidiary for the management of a new Seoul-Busan KTX high-speed train service that departs from Suseo Station in southern Seoul, separate from the existing one that departs from S

North Korea’s young leader Kim Jong-un marks the second anniversary of his enthronement on Dec. 17. As if to demonstrate that he has secured a firm grip on power, he recently purged Jang Song-thaek, his uncle, and the man who was once regarded as the power behind the throne.Jang, vice chairman of the paramount National Defense Commission, was sacked in an unprecedented way. He was not only accused of “anti-party, counter-revolutionary sectarianism” but was charged with mismanaging the economy an

PRINCETON, New Jersey ― Last month, Faisal bin Ali Jaber traveled from his home in Yemen to Washington, D.C., to ask why a United States drone had fired missiles at, and killed, his brother-in-law, a cleric who had spoken out against al-Qaida. Also killed in the attack was Jaber’s nephew, a policeman who had come to offer protection to his uncle.Congressional representatives and government officials met Jaber and expressed their condolences, but provided no explanations. Nor has the U.S. admitte

The standardized tests known as the Program for International Student Assessment are considered so important that when the latest results were released last week, the U.S. Department of Education participated in a so-called PISA Day.The leaders of the nation’s teachers unions immediately fired off news releases asserting that the mediocre PISA scores of American students showed that more than a decade of testing-based reform had failed our schools. Prominent reform leaders, by contrast, conclude

Has John F. Kerry turned into the unexpected star of President Barack Obama’s second term?He was Obama’s second choice as secretary of state (after Susan Rice). He’s the same windy, stiff Bostonian who ran unsuccessfully for president a decade ago. And he has taken on a list of assignments that looked distinctly unpromising: nuclear negotiations with Iran, peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the civil war in Syria.But in 10 months, Kerry has embarked on a whirlwind of diplomacy. He helped

A couple of weeks ago, accosted on the street by paparazzi, MSNBC talk show host Alec Baldwin spontaneously uncorked a homophobic slur. The result: The network kicked him off the air, for good.About the same time, another MSNBC host, Martin Bashir, delivered a scripted on-air commentary in which he said that somebody should urinate and defecate in Sarah Palin’s mouth. The result: He had to apologize.Last year, Rush Limbaugh called a young woman who testified to a congressional committee in suppo

Joe Biden’s trip to northeast Asia has left some in Japan feeling abandoned. By not demanding that China roll back its new “air defense identification zone,” the U.S. vice president tacitly accepted the controversial zone as a fait accompli.Yet a tougher stance would have led nowhere. China is not about to retract the zone under U.S. pressure. To lay down that red line would only keep emotions in the region at fever pitch. Leaders should instead look to lower tensions and begin rational discussi

Women in Japan are used to being underutilized, condescended to and exploited. Must they play a role in Newt Gingrich’s cheap Washington partisanship, too?The U.S. news media are gleefully running a video from Joe Biden’s visit to Tokyo that supposedly depicts the U.S. vice president as an out-of-touch sexist. On Dec. 3, Biden and Caroline Kennedy, the first female U.S. ambassador to Japan, visited DeNA Co., a Japanese Internet company founded by a woman that does a better job than most of takin

Nelson Mandela sold out black South Africans. Now there’s a sentence you won’t have heard in the days since his death and that you won’t be hearing at his memorial tomorrow. Yet it’s incontrovertibly true that after centuries of being robbed of possibly the greatest mineral wealth the world has ever known, not to mention decades of being repressed by apartheid, black South Africans got almost no compensation for what should rightfully have been theirs when the old regime was swept away for the n