[Kim Seong-kon] Korea needs wisdom, strength and courage

To survive and thrive in the vortex of international crises, it is imperative that we are wise, strong and courageous. We tend to think that wise men are not strong or courageous, and strong and courageous men are not wise. That is not so. Wisdom, strength and courage are closely interrelated and intertwined. Indeed, wisdom without strength and courage is problematic, and so is strength and courage without wisdom. It is appropriate that, in Greek myth, Athena is the goddess not only of wisdom bu

Sept. 24, 2025

[Martin Schram] An offer they feared to refuse

The lines read as if they wouldn’t be spoken until Marlon Brando finished stuffing that cotton in his mouth so he’d sound just right when “The Godfather” cameras rolled. But this time they sounded unmistakably clear. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” a clear-speaking, cotton-free figure said, quite ominously. “Companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” This wasn’t Brando doing his Hollywoo

Sept. 24, 2025

[Editorial] Pricing out talent

It is one thing to put a price on opportunity, quite another to place it beyond reach. By signing a proclamation last Friday to raise the H-1B visa fee from $1,000 to an eye-watering $100,000, US President Donald Trump has turned what was a bureaucratic formality into an economic moat. A gateway for global talent has been recast as a tollbooth designed less to collect revenue than to block passage altogether. The move is more than fiscal bravado. It is the clearest signal yet that the Trump admi

Sept. 24, 2025

[Noah Feldman] Blaming violence on free speech is a very old trick

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the Trump administration is following a very specific, very old script. It argues that political speech causes political violence, and that this speech must therefore be punished. It is imperative that all defenders of free speech — whether on the left, right or in the center — reject this narrative from the outset. For more than a century, the American understanding of free speech has been that political expression may only be punished when it incite

Sept. 23, 2025

[Paola Subacchi] Renminbi debt in dollar world

When governments borrow on international markets, they do so overwhelmingly in US dollars. Roughly two-thirds of international debt issuance is denominated in foreign currencies, of which nearly half is in dollars and about 40 percent is in euros. The rest is spread across other currencies, including the Chinese renminbi. While borrowing in hard currency is especially important for developing countries, many advanced economies also benefit from tapping deeper, more liquid markets and a broader p

Sept. 23, 2025

[Editorial] Raise productivity

The government is pushing for legislation of a 4.5-day workweek this year. The Ministry of Government Legislation on Wednesday said that it will submit a new bill to support working hours reduction to the National Assembly this year as one of 123 legislative tasks of the government. The Ministry of Employment and Labor on Thursday said that it had set aside a related budget and that it plans to revise the law on working hours this year. Current statutory working hours are 40 hours per week, and

Sept. 23, 2025

[Editorial] Cybersecurity red flags

Once dismissed as the acts of foreign governments, obscure start-ups or the occasional reckless teenager, cyberattacks have become an immediate domestic threat. South Korea’s largest telecoms, leading card issuers and major insurers have all seen their systems breached, customer data exposed and reputations shredded. The breaches at KT, Lotte Card and SK Telecom are not anomalies but symptoms of a systemic national vulnerability. The numbers tell their own story. More than 7,000 corporate breach

Sept. 22, 2025

[Lee Kyong-hee] Trumpian America’s day of disgrace

Sept. 4, 2025, will be remembered as a day of shame in the seven-decade Korea-US alliance. The image of hundreds of Korean workers, handcuffed and shackled as they were herded onto buses in Georgia, stunned the nation. US authorities boasted it was “the largest single-site raid” ever carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. How did it come to this? For an alliance often hailed as one of history’s most successful, why subject the people of a loyal partner to such humiliation? Why tramp

Sept. 22, 2025

[Contribution] Cooperation, not confrontation, vital for East Asia

The 2025 International Forum on Regional Cooperation and Development of China, Japan and South Korea was co-held by Beijing Foreign Studies University and China Daily in Beijing on Sept 19. Below are excerpts from the speeches delivered by five of the experts who participated in the forum. The views expressed here are the writers' own. — Ed. Governance system needs reform By Liu Tiewa The global governance system faces a complex crisis, exacerbated by multiple overlapping pressures including the

Sept. 21, 2025

[Editorial] Losing traction

A Hyundai sedan that once undercut Toyota’s Corolla by thousands of dollars in the US is now, courtesy of Washington, the pricier option. On Sept. 16, US tariffs on Japanese cars were cut to 15 percent, while Korean vehicles remain saddled with 25 percent. What was once an advantage has turned into a brake on competitiveness. The flagship auto sector, long a pillar of South Korea’s economy, now finds itself boxed in by geopolitics, domestic discord and new competitors. The numbers show how quick

Sept. 19, 2025

[Robert J. Fouser] Korea-US trade beyond Trump

Relations between South Korea and the US have dipped to their lowest point in years. On Sept. 4, US immigration officials detained about 300 Korean workers, mostly engineers, at a multibillion-dollar electric vehicle battery factory being built by LG Energy Solution and Hyundai in Georgia. After eight days in detention, all but one of the workers had returned home, but the fallout from the incident continues. As The Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial on Sept. 12, “Immigration and Customs

Sept. 19, 2025

[Editorial] A spider's web of regulations

Every previous government attempted to abolish or ease regulations. It is true of the current government, too. President Lee Jae Myung presided over the first "strategy meeting to rationalize core regulations" on Monday. He emphasized that his government's goal is to clear away a cobweb of regulations that impede corporate innovation and growth. Lee vowed efforts to ensure this does not become empty rhetoric, saying that it must be very hard to run a business. He also pledged to change unnecessa

Sept. 18, 2025

[Wang Son-taek] Trump can protect the Korea-US alliance

A recent incident in which US authorities arrested and detained about 300 Korean workers using harsh, demeaning procedures left a deep scar on the Korea-US alliance. Koreans, who are acutely sensitive to humiliation, were shocked to watch their only treaty ally treat them like criminals — handcuffed, shackled and herded away. That it happened at a factory in Ellabell, Georgia — widely seen as a symbol of bilateral economic cooperation between the wonderful allies — magnified the embarrassment, d

Sept. 18, 2025

[Lisa Jarvis] This crackdown on drug ads is long overdue

The Trump administration’s crackdown on pharmaceutical ads is a welcome step toward lessening Big Pharma’s influence over conversations between patients and their doctors. Americans are among the few people in the world bombarded with advertisements for medications most of us don’t need — New Zealand is the only other country that allows direct-to-consumer drug advertising. These policies have given pharmaceutical companies significant influence over consumer behavior when it comes to health. Th

Sept. 18, 2025

[Kim Seong-kon] Things foreigners should know about Korea

The late eminent literary and cultural critic Lee O-young once told me an intriguing thing about a popular song that enchanted Koreans in the 1970s called “The Man in A Yellow Shirt.” He pointed out that the title of the song should have been “Somehow, I like him” because the whole point of the song centers on the phrase “somehow, I like him,” not on his “yellow shirt.” According to Lee, “somehow, I like him” reflects a uniquely Korean sentiment. The lyrics of “The Man in A Yellow shirt,” sung b

Sept. 17, 2025