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East Asia
South Korea: Daegu skate punk band set for British invasion
Although Seoul is often seen as the central hub for culture in Korea, U.K. indie label Damnably has now signed two acts from outside the capital. Daegu-based skatepunk band Drinking Boys & Girls Choir (DBGC), formed in 2012, signed recently to Damnably, which already counts Busan’s Say Sue Me on its…
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East Asia
Naver, Kakao fleeing to Japan for new businesses
Naver and Kakao are fleeing to Japan and other countries to start new businesses because of growing regulatory risks here amid conflicts with existing players, industry officials said Monday. The moves reflect the latest trend that not only manufacturing but also services companies are increasingly leaving Asia’s fourth largest economy…
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East Asia
Koreans well educated but underperforming
Rigid labor, education hinder human development South Korea has been locked in an “education paradox” with the country spending huge amounts on educating and training young people only to see their global competitiveness getting left behind year after year. Simply put, they are highly-educated but ill-equipped to bring value to the…
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East Asia
Seoul-Tokyo radar row risks derailing military cooperation
An ongoing military spat between Seoul and Tokyo is casting a shadow on bilateral exchanges. According to Japanese media reports, Tokyo is likely cancel the planned dispatch of a Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer to Busan for a joint maritime exercise in April. Japan planned to deploy the MSDFS Izumo to take…
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East Asia
Why foreigners buying Korean stocks in 2019
Foreign investors have been rushing to buy Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and other stocks since the beginning of the year as global funds shift to emerging markets on the easing of U.S.-China trade tensions and other favorable conditions. Stock prices have yet to rise above certain levels predicted by brokerages…
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East Asia
South Korea: Shareholder activism unnerves chaebol
KCGI seeks to force Cho out of Hanjin management Shareholder activism has emerged as the centerpiece of the nation’s capital market. A growing number of shareholders at large Korean companies or chaebol are trying to have a bigger say in their management and to influence the owner families’ behavior by exercising…
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East Asia
South Korea: cellphone exports fall to 16-year low
Korea’s exports of mobile phones hit a 16-year low in 2018 after falling 23.2 percent year-on-year amid mounting competition from Chinese phone makers, data showed Sunday. Cellphones have been a major export item along with semiconductors. But the business has suffered a continued decline because of the slow global smartphone…
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East Asia
China’s Political Economy Under the Microscope
The “red swan” that gives this book its title refers to China’s Communist Party-state policy-making process, and is a play on the “black swan” of the induction fallacy, popularized by the former Wall Street trader and finance professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Sebastian Heilmann’s policy-centric work is a blend of…
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East Asia
North Korea slams UN rapporteur over human rights comment
North Korea’s party organ Rodong Sinmun on Monday criticized the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur of human rights Tomas Ojea Quintana’s recent visit to South Korea, saying it triggered unnecessary conflict between the two Koreas. “The U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of…
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East Asia
The Appalling Cost of Western Hubris
Given the vast literature on the Indochina wars, whether the French colonial conflict of 1945 to 1954 or the US war with North Vietnam of 1954 to 1975, it might be asked why the need for another study of a familiar subject. The value of this new, magisterial account, which…
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