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Sat, August 24, 2019 | 00:15

Crypto craze in Korea

Korea is not normally known to be a big player in international financial markets. But there is one major exception: its trading in cryptocurrencies. Korea's importance as the world's third largest cryptocurrency market has been highlighted in recent weeks when a government threat to ban local cryptocurrency exchanges triggered a global crash in the prices of bitcoin and other digital currencies. But the cryptocurrency saga also provides insights into the sharp divisions emerging in Korea about the role of technology in society and the response of regulators to rapid change.

2018-02-05 17:17

Keep it simple, Mr. Moon

It’s no secret that there is considerable skepticism in Washington, D.C., about the durability of the inter-Korean detente that has led to North Korea agreeing to participate in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. Most U.S. analysts believe that even if the Olympic Games go ahead without a hitch, further progress will flounder in the spring as the U.S. and South Korea resume joint military exercises and North Korea conducts more missile tests. The challenge for President Moon Jae-in is to keep the spirit of reconciliation alive in the face of daunting odds and that means managing expectations. ...

2018-01-22 17:30

Grasping the olive branch

Many things divide North and South Korea. But the two appear to share the same growing fear that a possibly mentally unstable U.S. president could plunge the Korean peninsula into a horrendous conventional war and even a nuclear one.

2018-01-08 17:31

Moon's economic balancing act

This past weekend marked the 20th anniversary of Seoul’s agreement with the International Monetary Fund to expedite financial reforms and open its domestic financial markets. It was part of a $10 billion support package to help rescue the economy from the ravages of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Although the IMF measures that Korea agreed to were heavily criticized at the time by many and inflicted sharp short-term economic pain, in retrospect they made the country more resistant to many subsequent economic crises, including the 2008 global financial crisis. Seoul’s willingness to relax r...

2017-12-25 14:57

Eve of destruction

“We had to destroy the village in order to save it,” is a famous quote from the Vietnam War. It referred to the bombing of a village by the Americans in the Mekong Delta during the 1968 Tet Offensive that called into question U.S. war aims.

2017-12-11 16:23

Is North Korea a terrorist state?

This question is surprisingly being debated after President Donald Trump last week decided to restore the North to the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, which now includes Iran, Syria and Sudan. North Korea was first put on the list in 1988 for clearly recognizable terrorist activities, including a bomb attack against senior South Korean officials in Rangoon in 1983 and blowing up a Korean Air passenger jet in 1987.

2017-11-27 17:45

Korea's voice in Washington

Watching American news coverage of Donald Trump’s trip to Korea last week, the focus was naturally on what the U.S. president would say or do. But that also meant that President Moon Jae-in was assigned by the U.S. media the role of a bit player in his own country. That is one example of how Korea has had difficulty in making its voice heard in U.S. in the last few months despite the escalating tension between Washington and Pyongyang. American journalists focus almost exclusively on this dynamic while largely ignoring Seoul’s perspective. This is placing Seoul at a disadvantage in influenci...

2017-11-13 18:00

When Koreans welcome (if that is the right word) U.S. President Donald Trump next week, they will be greeting a man who has the power to unleash a destructive war on the Korean peninsula that could kill millions. Whether Trump is preparing a preventive war against North Korea has become the subject of a feverish debate in Washington. The consensus among analysts is that the U.S. faces two stark choices in dealing with North Korea’s nuclear program, either accept it and pursue a policy of containment, or engage in a catastrophic military conflict to stop it. At least in terms of rhetoric comi...

2017-10-30 17:39

When the U.S. intervened in 1950 to halt North Korea’s invasion of South Korea, it was viewed as an effort to halt the expansion of an allegedly monolithic communist bloc led by the Soviet Union and China. The effort to contain international communism and defend the “free world” initially served as justification for maintaining U.S. troops in South Korea after the Korean war ended in 1953. The U.S. decision to protect South Korea also was meant to signal that it was willing to defend friendly governments around the world as Washington sought to create a global balance of power with its commu...

2017-10-16 17:47

I can tell you what Washington policymakers and think tankers have been doing during their evenings the last two weeks. They have been watching the 10-part, 18-hour documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick on the Vietnam war, which has been airing on America’s public television stations (whose funding is under threat by proposed budget cuts by the Trump administration). The series has repeatedly come up in conversations, none more so than among those who follow North Korea. Its sobering look at the death and destruction in Vietnam and the ideological splits the war caused in the U.S. is a us...

2017-10-12 17:37

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