• East Asia

    Tom cruise to become honorary Busan citizen

    Hollywood star Tom Cruise is becoming an honorary citizen of Busan, city officials said Tuesday. The actor, who will be in the southern port city this week to promote action movie “Jack Reacher,” will be awarded a certificate of honorary citizenship by Busan Mayor Hur Nam-sik at the Busan Cinema…

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  • East Asia

    Energy myths

    Which of the following statements is true? The United States now has a 100-year supply of natural gas, thanks to the miracle of shale gas. By 2017 it will once again be the world’s biggest oil producer. By 2035 it will be entirely “energy-independent,” and free in particular from its…

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  • East Asia

    Korean as second language (KSL)

    I have decided to write a couple of columns regarding what I think should be the priority list for President-elect Park Geun-hye. Topping my list is the introduction of a Korean-language learning program a la ESL (English as a second language) or JSL (Japanese as a second language). I promised…

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  • East Asia

    70% of mentally ill at suicide risk

    Proper counseling, treatment required to tackle problem Over 70 percent of people with mental disorders have thought about killing or attempted to kill themselves, according to a report, Tuesday. With some 3.68 million people in Korea having experienced mental problems at least once in their lifetime, the country needs to…

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  • East Asia

    Samsung posts record profit of W8.8 trillion in Q4

    Samsung Electronics posted a record operating profit of 8.8 trillion won ($8.3 billion) in the fourth quarter of last year on the back of brisk sales of smartphones. It also surpassed the 200 trillion won mark in annual revenue for the first time. In its preliminary earnings estimation, the world’s…

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  • East Asia

    Korea vs. aging

    Last year, I and several colleagues from the foreign correspondents’ community interviewed President Lee Myung-bak. A color photograph of the tableau ― the serious-looking president surrounded by several busily scribbling overseas reporters ― duly appeared in a vernacular daily. A friend pointed out something curious about this picture. Although he…

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  • East Asia

    Korea is not Korean enough

    Dear Madam President-elect, Like any other President, you hope to make the people of Korea happier. There are too many lonely, unhappy people in Korea today, not all of them old or handicapped although many are. When you were born, in February 1952, Korea was in the midst of terrible…

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  • East Asia

    ‘Black consumers’ to be shown no mercy

    Law enforcement authorities and courts are increasingly getting tough on the so-called “black consumers” or charlatans who make international inappropriate complaints of products in order to coerce compensation from manufacturers. On Monday, the Seoul Southern District Court slapped a 15 million won fine on a 28-year-old man, surnamed Kim, for…

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  • East Asia

    Park needs sophisticated ‘envoy diplomacy’ for China ties

    BEIJING – The incoming Park Geun-hye administration should adopt a pretty sophisticated “envoy diplomacy” to patch up strained ties with China, while continuing to carefully steer Seoul’s alliance with the United States, said Shin Gi-wook, the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. “The first…

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  • East Asia

    Chinese woman who loves Korea so much

    Without any notice in advance, anybody would think that she is a Korean ― Cui Penghua, an ethnic Han Chinese, not merely speaks perfect Korean but also looks like an ordinary Korean. She majored in Japanese in Beijing International Studies University but opted to head toward Korea in 2002, affected…

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