As the general election is set to be held in April, rival political parties, as well as President Yoon Suk Yeol, are ditching normal political strategies in favor of misguided and intensely confrontational tactics -- a sorry sight that raises voters' eyebrows. On Friday, a whirlwind of significant political developments played out at a fast pace. The initial blow was delivered by Yoon, who accepted the resignation offer of Lee Dong-kwan, chief of the Korea Communications Commission. For tho

Sam Altman’s dismissal and rapid reinstatement as CEO of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, confirms that the future of AI is firmly in the hands of people focused on speed and profits, at the expense of all else. This elite will now impose their vision for technology on the rest of humanity. Most of us will not enjoy the consequences. The founders of OpenAI claimed to be creating a philanthropic organization that would benefit all of humanity or at least protect it from potential harm. OpenA

The court issued a first-trial ruling on Wednesday in a high-profile case in which former President Moon Jae-in's Cheong Wa Dae intervened in the June 2018 election for mayor of Ulsan. It sentenced former Ulsan Mayor Song Cheol-ho to three years in prison for violating the election law and former Ulsan police chief, and current opposition lawmaker Hwang Un-ha to two years behind bars for violating the election law and six months in jail on charges of abuse of power. Also, two former preside

The Modern Language Association recently released its survey of second language enrollment at US universities as of the fall 2021 semester. Founded in 1883, the MLA is the most prominent organization of college and university second language educators in the county. The survey has been conducted every three or four years since 1958 and offers a window into the state of second language education in the US. The most notable change in the latest survey is the rise of Korean. For the first time ever

The Korea-China-Japan foreign ministers' meeting was recently held in Busan, with considerable expectations at home and abroad. At the first meeting in four years, the ministers reaffirmed trilateral cooperation and held in-depth discussions on cooperation measures. It is a welcome diplomatic achievement that the three major countries in Northeast Asia met and discussed peace and prosperity amid anxiety over the wars in Europe and the Middle East. However, it is also necessary to point out

The South Korean government plans to allow a record 165,000 nonprofessional migrant workers in 2024, in a bid to tackle the growing labor shortage across various industrial sectors. But the expansion should be implemented together with proper measures to minimize side effects. The Ministry of Employment and Labor announced the plan based on the Employment Permit System on Monday in response to the deepening labor shortage problems in a wide range of fields. Under the plan, the government will ex

A new analysis from researchers at the American Cancer Society suggests that the distressing disparity in outcomes for Black and white colon cancer patients could narrow if hospitals simply treated all patients with the same level of high-quality care. The disparity in rates and deaths from colorectal cancer among Black people has been a longstanding problem in cancer care. Black individuals are 20 percent more likely to be diagnosed with colon cancer and 40 percent more likely to die from it. T

South Korea is a country where conservatism and socialism/progressivism have been at war for the past eight decades. Unfortunately, this means that there has been no room for liberalism in the Korean political arena. Surely, there are many liberals, and yet they are invisible in the whirlwind of ideological warfare between conservatives and socialists/progressivists. Watching the chronic war, one might have the impression that the Korean people do not seem to correctly perceive the definition of

The foreign ministers of South Korea, Japan and China held a meeting in Busan on Sunday to discuss the matter of holding a trilateral summit, but ultimately failed to agree even on a rough schedule. This shows the reality of relations between the three countries. Their meeting was held about four years and three months after the last one in China in August 2019. Its symbolic significance is not small, considering heightened security concerns in Northeast Asia in the wake of North Korea's la

Congressional dysfunction took a dangerous turn this month. In the House, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy allegedly elbowed Rep. Tim Burchett in the kidney (McCarthy denied the claim). Not to be outdone, Sen. Markwayne Mullin challenged the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union, Sean O’Brien, to a fight, with the two men exchanging insults. For those inclined to believe that these childish provocations auger the end of the republic, please consider life in the US Cong

The South Korean government said Saturday the disruptions that had paralyzed its major administrative network a week earlier were caused by a faulty router port among the network equipment. The government’s conclusion strongly suggests that a mechanical flaw -- rather than mishandling of gear by public officials involved -- is to blame for the breakdown of the state-run network services. It is, however, hard to take the government’s explanation at face value. After all, it had alread

At their recent summit in San Francisco, US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed on a few important issues. Notably, the two countries will resume military-to-military communication, thereby reducing the chances of an accidental conflict, and China will do more to restrict the export of chemicals used to make the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl -- a major cause of death in the United States. But there is one crucial area where progress remained elusive: tariffs. In 2018

As the Google antitrust trial winds down, corporate opposition to antitrust reform in the United States is winding up -- and not by coincidence. With the trial having once again revealed the prevalence of anticompetitive behavior in the tech industry, big corporations are turning to the US Congress to block the two federal agencies tasked with antitrust enforcement, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, from ramping up their efforts after decades of neglect. In the Google t

North Korea ripped up the Sept. 19, 2018, military confidence-building deal with South Korea on Thursday. It was a reaction to South Korea’s partial retreat from the accord in response to the North’s launch of a spy satellite. Seoul had said it would suspend some of the measures in the accord and step up surveillance along the military demarcation line after the North launched its first satellite whose apparent use was military reconnaissance. The North said that it would restore all

At the first reports of a massacre of Israeli civilians, I shuddered, fearing the worst was yet to come. Sadly, I was right. Before sundown on Oct. 7, Israel was being blamed for Hamas’ killings, mutilations and kidnappings of Israeli civilians. As a historian, I know only too well the common denominator of thousands of years of my people’s experience: Jews are blamed for whatever calamity humanity suffers. That is true even when Jews are the victims. Eighty-five years ago, Nazi mobs

The Yoon Suk Yeol administration’s plan to increase the annual enrollment quota for medical schools to deal with a chronic shortage of doctors is a hot-button issue, particularly for doctors who fiercely oppose such a change. In the battle over the quota that involves a host of stakeholders and vested interests, the government has secured an important ally: universities calling for an increase in the quota for their medical schools. Even with the help of universities in favor of a quota hi

At their recent summit in San Francisco, US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping made progress in a few key areas. Notably, they agreed to resume direct military-to-military communications -- which China had suspended last year, following a visit by then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan -- in order to reduce the chances of accidental conflict. But neither leader was negotiating from a particularly strong position: as Biden struggles with low approval

In my military career, I was frequently deployed on the US Navy’s massive nuclear-powered aircraft carriers into combat and on more routine peacetime missions. I embarked in the USS Abraham Lincoln as a commodore in the late 1990s, and I sailed around South America in the USS Eisenhower as a four-star admiral in command of US Southern Command in 2009. These are fearsome machines of war, apex predators at sea with significant land-attack powers as well. But in many ways, the most satisfying

The main opposition Democratic Party of Korea eliminated the entire government budget to build the nation's nuclear power ecosystem in a related standing committee on Monday. The Yoon Suk Yeol administration planned to run seven programs on a budget of 181.4 billion won ($140 million) next year. The party removed all of them. There is no reason for this other than the fact that the Yoon administration placed a high priority on the revival of nuclear power industry. The party's removal

In a world beset by wars in Gaza and Ukraine, it's good news when two superpowers step back from frictions that increased the danger of another war in Asia. That's what happened last week when President Joe Biden met with China's Xi Jinping at a country estate in the ridges west of Silicon Valley. The two presidents met after a year of frosty noncommunication, touched off by China's suspected espionage balloon that wandered across US airspace last winter, by aggressive Chines