Vow to renounce privileges
All lawmakers should join drive to reform Assembly The governing Saenuri Party adopted a resolution on six reform measures for the abolition of lawmakers’ privileges and benefits at the end of a two-day workshop in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province, Saturday. We applaud the ruling party’s initiative to renovate the National Assembly and urge the main […]
Defending evolution theory
Why does religion try to replace science? Koreans are no longer strangers to global attention ― both cheers and jeers ― economically and culturally. Yet the latest duel between evolutionists and creationists here and foreigners’ interest it has generated are hardly welcome, if not downright shameful. “Nature,” the global science journal, recently reported that a […]
Pakistan suffers from power shortage
Pakistan is facing severe power crisis since a decade, as against the demand of about 19000MW electricity, it produces hardly 11000 to 12000MW through its all resources including hydro power plants installed at dams and some others operating on furnace oil and gas besides two nuclear power plants. Some power plants of very small capacity […]
Children of sex workers bring honor for Bangladesh
The young Karate team from Bangladesh, achieved marvelous success in the just concluded 18th International High School Karate and Kick Boxing Champion-ship in Katmandu, Nepal. The competition was held from 24th May, 2012 to 1st June, 2012 with a total of 375 participants from eleven countries. Among the eleven participating countries, the five-member Bangladesh team […]
Chasm in South China Sea
The controversy about China’s juridical claim over the 3.5-million sq.km South China Sea is hotting up, following US defence secretary Leon Panetta’s visit to India, earlier this week. Termed as the ‘US pivot to Asia’ in which Panetta wanted India to play ‘a lynchpin’, the important Asia-Pacific region will witness the kick-start of the first-ever […]
Morshed awarded as best director in SAARC festival
Bangladeshi film mker Morshedul Islam received the best director award for his film ‘Khelaghar’ at the SAARC Film Festival-2012 held in Sri-Lanka last month. Sri-Lankan Minister of Public Administration and Home Affairs WDJ Seneviratne conferred the award to Morshedul Islam at the concluding ceremony of the 5-day festival held at National Film Corporation Cinema Hall […]
Jeong Yak-yong and Hegel
This year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest thinkers of the later Joseon period ― Dasan Jeong Yak-yong (1762-1836). Last Saturday, more than 500 worshippers visited his tomb in Namyangju, northeast of Seoul, to commemorate his death. Why does this Joseon-era political “victim” command respect from his great, great, […]
South Koreans aren’t candid about their views on unification
As every visitor to Korea knows, there are two words which have exceptionally positive connotations in modern political Korean parlance. One is ‘nation’ (minjok), and the other is ‘unification’ (t’ongil). Indeed, more or less every Korean will assure a foreign interlocutor that unification of North and South should be seen as the supreme political goal […]
“People in my apartment enjoy a friendly neighborhood”
I am living in an apartment which is more than 30 years old. People in the neighbors are all close like old friends. Some people who like to follow new trends moved out to a nearby new apartment, named ‘Palace something,’ but others are still here where they have been living for long years. They are all close and regard each other as being precious neighbors, […]
What’s in a neighborhood name?
The Seochon neighborhood that sits between Mt. Inwang and Gyeongbok Palace is no stranger to controversy. For most of the 2000s, debates over apartment-style redevelopment riled the neighborhood. In 2008, the city of Seoul stopped redevelopment plans for most of the area and began drawing up plans for preserving the remaining traditional-style Korean houses, or […]