If you take the subway, you will notice that people are either dozing off ― quite an art form in Korea! ― or looking at their smartphones. Women, men, young and old are looking at their smartphones and nowadays playing smartphone games.And not just any game. The game de rigueur is Anipang. Anipang is a compound word ― “ani” comes from the first syllable of animal and “pang” is the onomatopoeic sound for an explosion. It’s a very simple game. All you have to do is align, either vertically or hori

The first debate between incumbent U.S. President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney was widely judged to have gone in the latter’s favor. He came across as more focused, personable and yes, presidential, than the unusually tepid performance by Obama. No sooner had pundits declared the clash between the two vice-presidential candidates last week a draw, and minds were already focusing on the next big showdown between their respective bosses on Tuesday. Thus has the U.S. presi

As she fights for her life in hospital, Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban for demanding that she and other girls go to school, is rightly becoming the icon for 32 million girls worldwide who are out of primary school.Today, the girl from the Swat valley of Pakistan, who was forced to flee her village when the Taliban forced the closure of her school, should be adopted by the world. As she fights the Taliban, who labeled her campaign for girls’ education an “obscenity,” her

The Jeongsu Scholarship Foundation is again haunting the Saenuri Party’s presidential candidate Park Geun-hye. According to news reports, the foundation has decided to sell off its stake in Munhwa Broadcasting Corp. and the Busan Ilbo, the largest daily in Busan, and use the sales proceeds for welfare projects in Busan and its surrounding South Gyeongsang Province.The foundation’s president Choe Phil-lip recently met MBC officials and agreed to sell its 30 percent stake in the broadcaster to the

Recently, chaebol business groups have been slammed for encroaching upon business areas considered more suitable for small-business people, such as bakeries, pizza shops and restaurants. One more item needs to be added to the list ― tobacco retail.Lotte Group, the nation’s fifth largest chaebol with presence in diverse business fields including distribution, is under fire for using illegal means to earn profits from tobacco sales. Under the law, only shop operators who directly sell cigarettes t

PRINCETON ― My grandmother was one of the first women to study mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna. When she graduated, in 1905, the university nominated her for its highest distinction, an award marked by the presentation of a ring engraved with the initials of the emperor. But no woman had previously been nominated for such an honor, and Emperor Franz Joseph refused to bestow the award upon one.More than a century later, one might have thought that by now we would have overcome

Salman Rushdie just published his memoir about his years under the “fatwa” by Ayatollah Khomeini. It is named “Joseph Anton” after the alias he used in those years. He was interviewed by Patt Morrison for an article that recently appeared in the Los Angeles Times. ― Ed.Q: In the new book you write that the protagonist ― you ― chooses ethics and the universality of freedom over fundamentalist religion and moral relativism. Is this the defining conflict of the epoch?A: I think so. I really wanted

TEL AVIV ― A drone recently penetrated Israel’s airspace from the Mediterranean. It was allowed to fly for about half an hour over southern Israel before being shot down by the Israeli air force over a sparsely populated area. It is still not known who dispatched the drone and from where, but it is now assumed that it was launched from Lebanon, either by Hezbollah, acting in Iran’s service, or by forces of the Iranian regime itself.If that is indeed the case, the episode should not be regarded a

CAIRO ― Like other commentators, I found many echoes of Barack Obama’s Middle East policy in Mitt Romney’s supposedly tough critique of it at Virginia Military Institute on Monday. I suppose that’s reassuring ― that Romney generally sees the same set of problems that Obama does, and in many cases would take pretty much the same action, though girded in “no apology” rhetoric. I also found many points in the speech that made sense. The one anomaly in the speech was the way Romney lavished praise o

In the 1930s, Fortune magazine called weddings a “depression-proof” business; these days, the term is “recession resistant.” That isn’t exactly true, but there’s no denying that the U.S. wedding industry is big business today: Even in a sluggish economy, the average cost of a wedding in 2011 was $26,501, according to a Brides magazine survey. Much of the debt incurred by marriage-bound couples and their families stems directly from a desire to follow tradition ― to purchase the goods and service

The first time I met Raghuram Rajan, the Indian economist couldn’t sit still. It was over coffee in Bangkok in November 2008, less than two months after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. imploded and almost took the global financial system down with it. Rajan had become a big draw by then, having warned as early as 2005 that a crash was coming. On that day in Thailand, he had a more local crisis on his hands: The hotel’s WiFi was out. “I’ll be back ― I need to make a call and make sure the world eco

Most people have experienced receiving an uncanny phone call from an excessively loquacious person ― only to discover, usually after a few moments, that one is listening to an automated voice advertising some product. In his essay “On the Psychology of the Uncanny” from 1906, the German psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch suggested that feelings of anxiety often emerge in cases where we have difficulties discerning whether an entity is an automaton or human consciousness. “The life-size machines that per

Which side is telling the truth, the ruling Saenuri Party or the main opposition Democratic United Party? The two parties are confronting each other over the allegations that former President Roh Moo-hyun made remarks gravely detrimental to national interests during his summit with Kim Jong-il on Oct. 3, 2007.The allegations were put forward by Chung Moon-hun, a Saenuri lawmaker who worked at Cheong Wa Dae as presidential secretary for unification affairs between 2009 and 2010.During a parliamen

Myanmar President Thein Sein’s visit to Seoul earlier this week highlighted the importance the Southeast Asian country attached to expanding its ties with South Korea. The Myanmar leader came here to reciprocate President Lee Myung-bak’s visit to Naypyidaw in May. The top leaders’ exchange of visits indicates deepening relations between the countries ― a development that must be painful to North Korea, as Myanmar has long been one of Pyongyang’s allies.Myanmar embarked on a path of political and

Hugo Chavez is something of a challenge to the worldview of many rich-country observers. His election victory this week has given him, health permitting, a new six-year term as Venezuela’s president. He’s the leading elected autocrat in Latin America and maybe the world. “Elected autocrat” is a confusing category. According to the model that prevailed for decades after 1945, there are really just two kinds of state: free and unfree. Democracy, good. Autocracy, bad. Chavez represents a third way,

ALEPPO, Syria ― Leading the fight in Sakhour on the eastern side of this embattled city is the Tawafuk Battalion of the Free Syrian Army. It reports to a new coordinating body known as the Military Council, according to Mustafa Shabaan, the acting commander of Tawafuk. But wait a minute: A young fighter named Thaer tells me there are six or seven other battalions fighting in Sakhour, too, in what many claim is the decisive battle for Aleppo. Who commands these disparate fighters? And what about

NEW YORK ― Central banks on both sides of the Atlantic took extraordinary monetary-policy measures in September: the long awaited “QE3” (the third dose of quantitative easing by the United States Federal Reserve), and the European Central Bank’s announcement that it will purchase unlimited volumes of troubled eurozone members’ government bonds. Markets responded euphorically, with stock prices in the U.S., for example, reaching post-recession highs.Others, especially on the political right, worr

ALEPPO, Syria ― A red-faced fighter named Faisal arrives at the forward headquarters of the Free Syrian Army pleading for weapons. He’s just come from the front line in a neighborhood called Sakhour, which has been under attack by the government’s forces for three weeks. As he shouts at his superiors, you can hear the thunder of incoming artillery about a half mile away. Faisal rages that his men are dying and he needs rocket-propelled grenades to fight the tanks of President Bashar al-Assad’s a

WASHINGTON, DC ― More than any of the previous events in the Arab Spring, Syria’s turmoil has presented serious difficulties for Western policymakers. Just as Syria comprises a more complex society than the other Arab countries currently in the throes of political transition, so, too, are its external relations more complex. As a result, any attempt at decisive military intervention would be not only difficult, but also extremely risky.Syria’s leading role in Lebanon, even after withdrawing its

Where is the ruling Saenuri Party headed? Looking at the suicidal in-party fighting, many supporters of the conservative party must be feeling that it is on the path to defeat in the December presidential election. One factor fueling the worsening conflicts is resentment among the party’s lawmakers who are not included in the campaign team for its presidential candidate, Park Geun-hye.The recent drop in Park’s approval ratings led a group of young lawmakers to demand an overhaul of the party’s l