Reported incidents of bullying nearly doubled between April and September this year, reaching 144,054 cases, compared with 70,000 cases for the entire previous school year, according to the education ministry.It might sound strange to say, but that increase may signal a certain step forward. The reasons for the huge increase in reported cases may have more to do with increased reporting, not necessarily more incidents.The real number of incidents in the past will remain unknown, but was surely u

This may or may not be coincidence, but Xi Jinping’s first meeting with foreigners as general secretary of the Communist Party of China was with foreign experts working in China. That is a great way to highlight the nation’s gratitude to overseas friends who have contributed to its pursuit of prosperity. And an ideal occasion to showcase the desire to befriend the rest of the world. Those who were invited to sit down with the new CPC chief in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday,

North Korea recently announced it would launch a long-range ballistic missile between Monday and Dec. 22 under the guise of sending a “satellite” into orbit.However hard Pyongyang insists that its plan is to launch a satellite for peaceful purposes, the mechanism used to launch a missile is the same as that used to launch a satellite. It is a clear violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution prohibiting North Korea from conducting nuclear tests and “any launch using ballistic missile technol

Globalization provokes heated debates. While anti-globalization groups highlight the problems faced by developing countries from premature trade and capital inflow liberalization, its supporters emphasize the stagnation in countries like North Korea that remain delinked from the global economy.So, does globalization help or hurt developing countries?Since globalization is a complex concept, one must disaggregate it to answer this question meaningfully. Simply stated, globalization means an incre

The recent hostilities between Israel and Hamas are a chance for the United States to think strategically. Or, better yet, rethink ― specifically the Obama administration’s “pivot to the Pacific.”The challenge was issued ― “respectfully but forcefully” ― by Paul McHale, who has been a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania (1993-99) and an assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense (2003-09), and is a retired Marine colonel whose most recent deployment was to Afghanistan in 2007.At a

WASHINGTON ― The Republican assault on Susan Rice is a fabricated scandal, attacking her for repeating CIA talking points, almost verbatim, to explain the Benghazi attacks. The U.N. ambassador’s version, even with its omissions, may turn out to be closer to the truth than some of the inflammatory GOP rhetoric. But just because Rice is being unfairly pilloried, this doesn’t mean she would be a good secretary of state. And it’s a close call on the merits: Given her friendship with President Obama,

NEW YORK ― The case of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist from India who had moved, with her husband, to Ireland, continues to reverberate around the world. Halappanavar, an expectant mother, died after her doctors, citing Ireland’s legal prohibition of abortion, refused to remove her 17-week-old fetus, despite allegedly acknowledging that the fetus was not viable and placing Halappanavar in an intensive-care unit as her condition deteriorated.Indian activists are outraged. “While there

By disregarding its passport, China has sparked a torrent of diplomatic protests. The new passport carries a map that shows China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and on its border with India.China did not need to occupy the disputed territories through invasion by the People’s Liberation Army. It did not have to fire a shot to validate its claims based solely on a map, making the whole affair a paper coup.According to Bloomberg, three separate pages in the passport include China’s “n

In the recent American presidential election, the subject of grand debate was individualism versus community: a shift of emphasis from liberty to fraternity. In the ongoing presidential election in South Korea, it is the same. Why? The two are quite different kinds of countries: America is a mature Western democratic and capitalist country and South Korea an emergent Eastern democratic and capitalist country, but they suffer from the same problem ― a conflict between individualism and collectivi

As the presidential race heats up, the two leading candidates ― Park Geun-hye of the ruling Saenuri Party and Moon Jae-in of the main opposition Democratic United Party ― are crisscrossing the nation to collect votes. And at every stop, they never fail to unveil development plans to woo residents.During the one week since the official campaigning period started on Nov. 27, they have promised a litany of projects. As there are two more weeks left before the Dec. 19 election, the list will be exte

Last week, the heads of the nation’s five business organizations pledged to make efforts to create jobs, increase exports and expand investment in a bid to help the Korean economy cope with a prolonged global economic downturn.While the business leaders will be seeking to expand corporate investment, big Korean companies remain reluctant to do so as global economic uncertainty persists. They are following the conventional wisdom that cash is a safe investment in uncertain markets.According to ne

Nothing ruins a chief executive officer’s year faster than hearing the name Carson Block. Allen Chan can attest to that. In April, he resigned from Sino-Forest Corp., the Chinese forestry company he co-founded two decades ago, after being targeted by Block’s Muddy Waters LLC. The short-selling firm shot to fame by correctly betting on declines in stocks of Chinese companies listed in North America, much in the same way that David Einhorn rose to prominence for being right on Lehman Brothers Hold

I know we’re just settling in with our popcorn for the scene where the lawyers and PR handlers transform disgrace into opportunity for the players in the David Petraeus story. Already Petraeus is on the contrition circuit, saying last week he “screwed up royally.” Why next thing you know, he will be nominated to replace Hillary Clinton at the State Department. But before we move on to “Act II: The Image Rehab,” could we clear up this business about how women get depicted when the stuff hits the

Anyone who has seen the latest James Bond film, “Skyfall,” would be hard-pressed to find any traditional espionage tradecraft. More actual spying would have meant less of Daniel Craig running around in a too-tight suit chasing bad guys. When the villain ― in this case a cyberterrorist played masterfully by Javier Bardem ― is able to turn around and say to Bond, “Why are you doing all this running around and wasting your energy?”, anyone who knows anything about real spying is tempted to yell at

BERKELEY ― The odds are now about 36 percent that the United States will be in a recession next year. The reason is entirely political: partisan polarization has reached levels never before seen, threatening to send the U.S. economy tumbling over the “fiscal cliff” ― the automatic tax increases and spending cuts that will take effect at the beginning of 2013 unless Democrats and Republicans agree otherwise.More than a century ago, during the first Gilded Age, American politics was sharply polari

Four years ago, as a high school student, I had a chance to visit POSTECH. I clearly recall one monolithic structure standing firm in the middle of the campus. It was a gray pedestal, lacking a statue to support. Someone said that it was prepared for the first Korean scientist to win a Nobel Prize in science. I hoped it would not be long until a statue was erected. However, nominees for the 2012 Nobel Prize were announced last October, and it looks like the pedestal will remain empty for a while

LOS ANGELES ― There is a good chance Rafael Cebrian is going to make it. The handsome young Spaniard is already a rock star and accomplished actor back home. Now he’s moved to Los Angeles, where his generous talent is already being recognized in Hollywood. His native tongue is even a plus in the ever burgeoning Spanish language market ― in the U.S. and globally.Like so many before him, Cebrian says, “In the U.S. there’s hope, and the feeling that you can achieve whatever you want.” Indeed, this

Most of the world’s dictators share a common fear, and it’s not of the United States, NATO, the United Nations or any outside entity. No, the force that most threatens them is social media.Originally designed as enhanced online chat forums for young Americans, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and the rest have spread around the world and are now being used as cudgels against authoritarian leaders in places like Vietnam, Russia, Belarus and Bahrain. In those states and so many others, the leaders are att

We’re officially into Christmas buying season ― when American consumers determine the fate of American retailers and, indirectly, the American economy.What’s often forgotten is that consumers are also workers, and if their pay doesn’t keep up, they can’t keep the economy going.A half-century ago America’s largest private-sector employer was General Motors, whose full-time workers earned an average hourly wage of around $50, in today’s dollars, including health and pension benefits.Today, America

BERLIN ― Until recently Turkey was a country that had to borrow from the International Monetary Fund. But positive developments over the last 10 years have led Turkey to become a country that now lends to the IMF instead.Our ability to do this is a result of policies of fiscal discipline we have implemented since our own crisis in 2001. In the past, we had debts to the IMF of $20 billion. Now, that is down to $1.7 billion. Our central bank has reserves of $115 billion.The crisis we have gone thr