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Thu, November 15, 2018 | 04:40

Opinion > Columnists > Jason Lim >

Where are the Moms?

Korea has recently been horrified by a spate of CCTV footages that show child care providers punch, slap, and hit small children left in their care. As is wont in these cases, there is a social outrage followed by collective handwringing about what’s wrong with Korean society that allows such crimes to happen. Most of the outrage seems to be aimed at the individual childcare providers who were caught abusing the children, which is only right. These perpetrators should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Nothing can excuse the horrific behavior against helpless children who were e...

Jason Lim | 2015-01-23 16:52

Je suis Charlie

I am Charlie today, as should everyone who values the freedom to say what you want when you want and how you want to say it. Note that I didn’t say where since I believe that each people and country have the right to define what constitutes acceptable speech for them according to their traditions, cultural sensibilities, and political maturity. However, in a liberal democracy where freedom of speech is enshrined, no one has the right to threaten or intimidate others for expressing their thoughts, however distasteful, disrespectful, and downright offensive.

Jason Lim | 2015-01-09 17:02

Living as a Buddhist-Christian

As a child, I was ashamed of being a Buddhist when I lived in Paraguay because everyone I knew was a Christian. My parents were the sole exception, remaining staunchly Buddhist even when there was no Buddhist temple to be found. In one of our rooms, they built an altar with a large, framed poster of the Buddha in front of which they bowed 108 times every morning.

Jason Lim | 2015-01-02 17:26

What if Cho Hyun-ah were a man?

The privileged scion of a conglomerate that runs the Korean Air becomes enraged against over some triviality about the proper way of serving macadamia nuts to first class passengers. Even as the plane begins to move away from the gate on its way from New York to Seoul, she orders the pilot to take the plane back to the gate and sends off the chief flight attendant for not knowing his regulations. Throughout this episode, she apparently shouts curses and abuses at the involved flight attendants, creating a huge scene.

Jason Lim | 2014-12-12 17:02

Harvard discriminates against Asians?

Growing up, there was one overriding narrative that all Korean American youngsters were supposed to buy into to succeed in mainstream America. Parents come to the U.S. from Korea to work hard and sacrifice to give their children an opportunity to succeed, which they do by excelling academically to get into Stuyvesant or Bronx Science on their way to an Ivy League school to become a doctor, lawyer or banker. If you fail, you take over your parents' store, to your everlasting shame.

Jason Lim | 2014-11-28 17:02

Korea's cultural recipe for failure

By Jason LimHierarchical bureaucracy was a social invention created as an efficient means to organize human activities for specific ends. It originated with governments but began to expand rapidly during the Industrial Age to define how work was done in any large organization and firmly took hold as the default power structure for corporations.As I wrote before, bureaucratic hierarchies excel in coordinating and controlling resources across relatively stable systems. When objectives are clear within a consistent environment, coordination through hierarchy has been the preferred method of org...

Jason Lim | 2014-11-14 17:00

The story of Rene's face

At first, I thought it was a prank. When social media started erupting with Rene Zellweger's before and after photos a few weeks ago, I thought it was some clever prank gone viral. Until it wasn't.

Jason Lim | 2014-10-31 16:29

Creatively destroying economy

Recognizing that Korea has reached the limits of its export-driven economic model, President Park has been championing the expansion of a “creative economy” in Korea based on innovation and entrepreneurship. A key element of this strategy is to create an ecosystem that encourages and nurtures risk-taking for start-up, which is especially challengingin Korea where the huge conglomerates called "chaebol" dominate the playing field.

Jason Lim | 2014-10-17 15:49

Are Asian men undesirable?

To its credit, Google has been very transparent about its diversity issues - 70 percent of Google's employees are male while 62 percent of its U.S. employees are white while 30 percent are Asian - and has carefully examined its hiring process and implemented unconscious bias training for its employees.

Jason Lim | 2014-10-03 15:08

Korea's marshmallow society

Pamela Druckman of the New York Times recently recounted a legendary experiment run by Columbia University psychology professor Walter Mischel 50 years ago where he offered a group of five-year olds irresistible treats such as marshmallows, cookies, or candies with a catch; they would get two of the treats if they could resist what was in front of them for 15 minutes.

Jason Lim | 2014-09-19 16:25

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Choking on worsening air pollution