• South Asia

    African presence in Sindh

    Prof. Adams B. Bodomo, hailing from Ghana, who headed the Department of African Studies at University of Hong Kong and University of Vienna, Austria, and also a visiting professor at Ansted University, Malaysia, rightly said over a decade ago during a lecture that despite not-so-tenuous historical, cultural and linguistic connections…

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  • Siding with big tobacco

    Korea’s first tobacco litigation ended up in smokers’ defeat Thursday, running counter to the global trends of punishing the rogue industry. Wrapping up the 15-year-long damage suit, the Supreme Court ruled ― quite regrettably ― the link between tobacco and “non-specific cancers” was difficult to prove. It also said the…

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  • New Global Coalition on Surveillance sought

    The following article is quoted from the Human Rights Watch Homepage -Editor’s note- Governments Urged to Keep Invasive Technologies in Check (Brussels, April 4, 2014) – World leaders should make a commitment to keep invasive surveillance systems and technologies out of the hands of dictators and oppressive regimes, a new…

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  • Silence is not necessarily golden: a message to Korean reporters

    U.S. President Barack Obama offered a chance for Korean reporters to comment or to ask questions at the G20 Seoul conference in 2010. The Seoul conference was an opportunity to boost the morale of the Korean people and burnish the image of Korea to the world. I don’t know the…

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  • Korea must legislate plain language act

    Last week, spokespersons of government agencies agreed to use plain language in their documents and statements, with the help of the National Institute of the Korean Language. On Hangeul Day (Korean Alphabet Day) on Oct. 9, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) will award government agencies that use…

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  • Stop the brain drain

    When an unprecedented currency crisis hit Asia and Korea in 1997, domestic businesses first trimmed their R&D manpower, as they were of little use in making quick profits. Kim Jong-hoon, a Korean-American IT expert nominated by President Park as her first minister of future planning and science, gave up the…

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  • Hatred among NE Asians

    Mutual hatred between Korean, Japanese and Chinese people has risen to a worrisome level recently. This is no doubt a cause for concern, not only for those who strive for peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia, but for anyone who wants this world to be free from additional troubles. According…

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  • Save the whales, 2014

    It was widely known for many years that Japan’s “scientific whaling” program was a sham, designed to get around the international moratorium on hunting whales. Almost no research on the animals came from Japanese scientists; instead, whale meat kept showing up in restaurants and school lunches. Finally, Australia, a whaling…

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  • Disrupted by drones

    It’s time to calm down, check defense preparedness Three small, crashed drones presumably sent by North Korea have touched off a noisy but inconclusive controversy in the South. Tracing back the course of debate over recently found unmanned aerial vehicles, however, reveals big holes in the nation’s defense posture and…

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  • Human rights body’s fall

    Seoul must take swift steps to avoid further disgrace Korea’s human rights organization, once the object of envoy among new democracies, has become a disgrace to the nation. The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRC), which barely limped along during the past seven years under successive conservative governments, is…

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