[Yoo Choon-sik] AI roadmap: consistency or complacency?

South Korea’s de facto presidential transition team has unveiled the highly anticipated blueprint of national goals and policy priorities that the administration of President Lee Jae Myung will pursue over the next five years. The blueprint was announced at the end of the nearly two-month operation of the national policy planning committee, which was established soon after Lee won the June 3 early presidential election to serve as a presidential transition team, as Lee had to start work immediat

Aug. 18, 2025

[Aziz Huq] America's national security for sale

Perhaps the least interesting thing about the reported decision by US President Donald Trump’s administration to allow Nvidia and AMD to export high-end semiconductors to China in exchange for 15 percent of revenues is that it is probably unlawful. More important is the window it opens onto how the presidency is using its national security powers not to advance the country’s interests, but for its own, narrower ambitions. To understand what’s at stake, consider Nvidia’s H20 chips, which Trump, w

Aug. 18, 2025

[Lee Byung-jong] Is Lee-Trump bromance possible?

Former President Yoon Suk Yeol, now disgraced and awaiting trial for his ill-fated martial law declaration and other charges, may still be remembered in the United States for one surprisingly warm gesture. During his 2023 state visit to the White House, Yoon famously broke into a rendition of "American Pie," the beloved US pop classic. He was no great vocalist, but the effortless way he delivered the English lyrics showed clear preparation. The performance went viral in the US, and for many Amer

Aug. 15, 2025

A wish being realized

Published in 1947, “Diary of Kim Koo,” an autobiographical writing by the independence movement leader Kim Koo, contains an addendum entitled “The Nation That I Desire” in which he laid out his vision for the newly independent Korea. “I want our nation to become the most beautiful nation in the world … I do not want our nation to become the richest and (most) powerful nation in the world. The only thing that I desire in infinite quantity is the power of a highly developed culture. This is becaus

Aug. 14, 2025

[Wang Son-taek] The power of strategic ambiguity

In diplomacy, sometimes saying less achieves more. The most effective message to an adversary may be the one they can’t quite pin down. Of course, diplomatic clarity is often praised as a virtue. Allies want to know exactly where you stand; adversaries should have no doubt about your resolve. Yet history shows that, in certain circumstances, clarity can be dangerous. The wiser course is sometimes to leave room for interpretation — to embrace what strategists call strategic ambiguity. Strategic a

Aug. 14, 2025

[Barry Eichengreen] Trump in the Falklands

US President Donald Trump’s trade war resembles nothing so much as UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Falklands War in 1982: One side deploys massive force, and the other withdraws with its tail between its legs. Of 57 countries and territories included in Trump’s “Liberation Day” list of targets for “reciprocal” tariffs, just three — Brazil, Canada and China — are credibly threatening retaliation against the United States. The Heard and McDonald Islands, populated only by penguins, were unde

Aug. 14, 2025

[Kim Seong-kon] Peace to the 'land of the morning calm'

Many political commentators these days point out that we are living in a world at war. Some say that the current situation of the world resembles that of the early 20th century when World War I broke out, and others argue that our times look more like the mid-20th century when World War II began. Either way, we are undoubtedly living in a time of unprecedented global crisis. Just a few years ago, everyone on earth desperately fought a war against the COVID-19 virus that devastated the world, lea

Aug. 13, 2025

[Mariana Mazzucato] A new economics of water

As African leaders gather in Cape Town, South Africa, for the African Water Investment Summit, there can be no equivocation: The world faces an unprecedented water crisis that demands a paradigm shift in how we value and govern our most precious resource. The scale of the challenge is staggering. Over half the world’s food production now comes from areas experiencing declining freshwater supplies. Two-thirds of the global population face water scarcity at least one month per year. More than 1,00

Aug. 12, 2025

[Grace Kao] My experience at KCON LA 2025

I just attended KCON LA 2025 last week and found it invigorating, overwhelming and confusing. Let me explain. The festival grounds during the day had a variety of performance locations, including the Artist Stage, Meet and Greet Stage, X Stage, Busking Stage and Dance Stage. The Artist Stage held what were essentially mini-concerts of five or six songs by artists such as Lee Youngji, P1Harmony and Hwasa. The X-Stage featured newer groups such as 82Major, Kik5o, HitGS and Ifeye. The Meet and Gree

Aug. 12, 2025

[Mohammad Hosseini] Dangers of White House AI plan

“America’s AI Action Plan,” unveiled by the White House on July 23, aims to accelerate the innovation of artificial intelligence by dismantling regulations and privatizing infrastructure. What the plan does is conflate innovation with deregulation and frame AI as a race to be won rather than a technology to be governed. US President Donald Trump signed three executive orders to ensure that the federal government approves data centers as quickly as possible, promote the exporting of AI models for

Aug. 11, 2025

[Lee Kyong-hee] Alliance for NE Asia nuclear-weapon-free zone

Eighty years since a nuclear Armageddon leveled two Japanese cities, ending the bloodiest armed conflict in history, nuclear anxiety is rising in this region. At the crux of this paradoxical security dilemma is the Korean Peninsula, with no end in sight to its division, imposed by the Allies upon their victory. North Korea continues to expand its nuclear stockpile as a de facto nuclear power, and big-power rivalries intensify to reshape the geopolitical landscape. North Korea’s nuclear and missi

Aug. 11, 2025

[Robert J. Fouser] Trump’s search for a Nobel Peace Prize

After long and difficult negotiations over tariffs between the US and its major trading partners, most have reached last-minute agreements with the US. The agreements, including the one with South Korea, follow a similar pattern of 15 percent tariffs on goods sent to the US, combined with promises to purchase more US goods and increase investment in the US. Among major US trading partners, deadlines have been extended for China and Mexico, but tariffs on Canadian goods not covered by the United

Aug. 8, 2025

[Wang Son-taek] Key points for a successful S. Korea-US summit

The upcoming South Korea-US summit scheduled for this month is poised to become a landmark diplomatic event in the history of the alliance — regardless of its outcome. Under President Donald Trump’s renewed leadership, the United States is aggressively redrawing the international order. The administration’s approach has discarded traditional norms of multilateral cooperation in favor of a transactional, unilateral model. At the heart of this shift is an escalating tariff war. South Korea has als

Aug. 7, 2025

[Adrian Wooldridge] Britain faces a long, hot and nervous summer

There is an ominous sense in the air in Britain -- a sense that the country is headed toward the rocks and that the captain has no idea how to steer the ship. This feeling is vague, but vague feelings can sometimes tell us more about the future than the hardest economic statistics. The two biggest rocks on the horizon are labeled "debt crisis" and "civil unrest." Blood-curdling warnings from the right are par for the course. Andrew Neil warns in the Daily Mail that “broke Britain is on the edge

Aug. 6, 2025

[Kim Seong-kon] Without care, we too, can become abusers

We tend to think there is a crystal-clear distinction between opposite things. However, it's rarely so simple. Oftentimes, things that at first glance appear contrary instead end up looking surprisingly alike or blend into one another, especially when they are pushed to the extreme. For example, the far left and far right, though technically opposites, bear an astonishing resemblance, as we see when we compare Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Similarly, we think that there is a radical difference

Aug. 6, 2025