KoreaTimes - Columnists

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

Opinion

Columnists

21. Deauwand Myers

Korea and Taiwan

Korea and Taiwan share a lot of similarities. Both countries experienced dictatorial regimes for decades. Both countries were brutally occupied by foreign powers, specifically but not exclusively, Imperial Japan. Both countries are beset by dangerous and intractable enemies. Korea has to contend with North Korea, and Taiwan has to combat an increasingly aggressive China. They both experienced hardships, yet turned their countries into advanced, democratic, economic powerhouses, with advanced technology - especially electronics and computer chips. Taiwan is the leader in advanced computer chi...

2021-11-22 16:58

I wrote before that sometimes, experienced, older politicians like Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and current U.S. President Joseph Biden are more effective at running the federal government, setting political agendas, and passing meaningful legislation.

2021-10-25 17:00

Double standards

Recently, I wrote on Jay Park about his controversial music video: displaying guns, tattoos, and the usual tropes and stereotypes too many people associate with being a black American. I argued that the bigger problem was not cultural appropriation, as much as a reductive, narrow, boring, uncreative imagining of black American life.

2021-09-27 17:03

Black labor's role in US politics

“To be a Negro in this country [America] and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time - and in one's work…it's what's happening all around you and…in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country, and their ignorance.” - James Baldwin, from a radio interview, 1961

2021-08-30 17:00

Knowledge as virtue

My maternal grandmother had a sharp wit. At age eight, we were watching a nature program on PBS, where I learned that ants are so complex, they actually display altruism, have universal healthcare and can even sense when it will rain. I exclaimed to her, “I didn't know that.” She replied, “What you don't know could make a world.”

2021-08-02 17:05

K-pop after George Floyd

Rarely have I gotten into a Facebook discussion on some sociopolitical issue. But I did recently tell a Korean friend, one who always pronounces my name wrong, that the brouhaha over Jay Park's remixed video and calls of racism and discrimination from fans and foes alike was odd, and probably wrong.

2021-07-05 17:00

How democracy dies

Many Americans think democracy is durable; that the United States, bloody and genocidal in its past, has been expanding the franchise to women and people of color and sexual minorities throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

2021-06-07 17:22

Biden in the Asia Pacific

The terms of Korean presidents are an oddity in advanced democracies. To curb the faux-presidential dictatorships of past presidents - like Park Chung-hee - the Korean Constitution only allows for one five-year fixed term.

2021-05-10 17:38

Democrats deliver

“A great democracy has got to be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy,” is a prescient excerpt from the “New Nationalism Speech” by Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States.

2021-04-12 17:15

Moon and his neighbors

Literally, for centuries, Korea has been geographically and geopolitically stuck between implacable nation-states: adversarial and powerful. Whether it be the Mongolians, the Chinese, the Japanese or more recently North Korea, Korean society has endured being rolled over by wars and the rumor of wars for most of its existence.

2021-03-15 16:52

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