[Lee Byung-jong] Culture wars in the US and Korea

Anyone who grew up watching Disney’s classic animated film Snow White might find its recent live-action remake jarring. The fair-skinned Snow White of the original has been replaced by Rachel Zegler, a Latina actress with a darker complexion. The princess is no longer a passive damsel awaiting rescue by a prince but an assertive heroine who fights the Evil Queen and forges her own destiny. These changes have sparked a heated debate in the US. Some praise the remake for promoting racial diversity

March 28, 2025

[Wang Son-taek] Return of Han Duck-soo as acting president

The Constitutional Court's rejection of Prime Minister Han Duck-soo's impeachment on Monday presents much to consider. That kind of deliberation on whether to confirm the impeachment of an acting president was unprecedented, and it is also linked to suspended President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment trial. Some guidelines have been clearly established on the legal status of acting presidents, while others provide a glimpse into the Constitutional Court's perception of the case of Yoon. There is als

March 27, 2025

[Kim Seong-kon] What does South Korea need now?

Anyone who cares about South Korea would agree that the Korean people should pursue two things to overcome her current domestic disturbances and international crises. First, they should stop factional political brawls immediately and seek a third alternative instead. Second, they should see the future of South Korea in a global, not a provincial, perspective and act swiftly to make the nation safe and sound. Indeed, it is imperative for us to seek a third way to overcome the binary opposition me

March 26, 2025

[Grace Kao] How Germany’s Kraftwerk inspired K-pop

As a fan of popular music spanning from the British Invasion of the 1960s to contemporary K-pop, I ardently believe that pop music from seemingly unrelated genres and groups can, in fact, be linked. The association between Kraftwerk and aespa is one such example. Two weeks ago, I attended Kraftwerk’s concert in Boston. This year marks the 50th anniversary of their first US tour, so they are even older than me. Kraftwerk was formed in 1970 in Dusseldorf, Germany, and one of its original founders,

March 25, 2025

[Lim Woong] The price of perfection: South Korea’s early education crisis

Many young families in South Korea face a harsh reality: Immense financial and emotional pressures due to the unreasonably high costs of private education for their children. A recent report has it that nearly half of all young children are enrolled in private educational programs (hagwons), most notably English-language kindergartens. The competition is so fierce that people joke about toddlers taking entrance exams in diapers just to secure spots at prestigious kindergartens — viewed as essent

March 25, 2025

[Lee Kyong-hee] Low fertility: Reverse course or vanish

South Korea is the only international aid recipient that has become an aid donor. That is regularly noted when describing its postwar transformation into the 12th-largest economy in the world. But the widely praised “miracle” has been paid with a demographic IOU. Now the debt is due — and the penalty rate is escalating. The postwar 1950s was all about survival. The nation had to rebuild quickly. Grueling workweeks were required. In the following decades, South Korea urbanized and became a powerh

March 24, 2025

[Robert J. Fouser] A 'welcomeness consensus' for migrants

Earlier this week, the “Dong-A Ilbo” ran a story on how local governments in South Korea are repurposing abandoned public facilities to revive local economies. The article mentioned that Yeongyang-gun in North Gyeongsang Province, in cooperation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), is planning to accept 40 refugees from Myanmar later this year. The county plans to repurpose an abandoned school to create a resettlement facility. Across the country, other local governmen

March 21, 2025

[Frank Pasquale] Accelerationism in America

In 2008, Chris Anderson published “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete.” Prophesying our current age of AI, it was one of those rare magazine articles that launched serious scholarly debates. Anderson’s thesis was straightforward: in an era of “big data,” scientific quests to find the ultimate causes of things were outdated. Instead, we can throw data at our problems, training machines to gradually discern what courses of action lead to better outcomes. Whethe

March 20, 2025

[Wang Son-taek] South Korea as a ‘sensitive country’

In an unexpected move, the US Department of Energy recently designated South Korea as a “sensitive country,” placing it alongside adversaries such as China, Russia and North Korea. This decision not only damages South Korea's international reputation but also raises serious questions about the state of diplomatic coordination between Seoul and Washington. How did one of America's closest allies end up on this list, and what should be done to reverse this designation? For years, South Korea culti

March 20, 2025

[Florian Juergens-Grant, Luca Pellerano] Future-proofing social protection

Since their inception in late-19th-century Europe, social protection programs have been financed primarily through payroll contributions by workers and employers. These schemes maintain people’s standard of living when old age, illness, child-rearing or unemployment affect their capacity to earn an income. The recent confluence of global crises — from the COVID-19 pandemic and the skyrocketing cost of living to the climate emergency and wars in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa — has highlight

March 19, 2025

[Kim Seong-kon] Standing between paper and electronic books

No one would deny that books are one of the great inventions of human civilization. From books, we learn about other people and other cultures, and we can indirectly experience a world we have never seen. By reading books, we can obtain invaluable information and knowledge, experience epiphanies and profound realizations. Books also broaden the horizon of our minds and quench our thirst for the unknown. In that sense, “A book is a gift you can open again and again,” as Garrison Keillor put it. S

March 19, 2025

[Lee Jae-min] Everything everywhere all at once

Let’s look at the Earth from afar. As of now, the global community consists of 197 sovereign states. They cooperate. They trade. Sometimes they fight. These 197 states exercise their sovereign authority within their respective territories — called the “territoriality” principle in legal jargon. And there are two ways this principle manifests itself. The first is an easy one: someone or something is within the territory of a country and the country can exercise its sovereign jurisdiction over the

March 18, 2025

[Chung Chan-seung] Answer to South Korea’s crisis lies in social stress

"I’ve decided not to have children. I love children, but I can’t bear the thought of bringing one into a world where they would have to endure the same relentless struggles I have faced. The pressure, the competition, the exhaustion — it’s too much." This was the confession of a female patient, a marketing executive, who had recently married. She had worked diligently after graduating from college, earning recognition in her workplace. Yet, having grown up in an environment of relentless competi

March 18, 2025

[Grace Kao] BTS J-Hope’s New York concert

As our civil liberties dissipate in the US, music has continued to lift my spirits. On March 13, I attended BTS’ J-Hope’s concert “Hope on the Stage” in Brooklyn, New York, at the Barclays Center. He had two sold-out dates at this venue, which seats about 17,000. J-Hope was perfection personified, and I wanted to share my experience attending this concert. As all the members have completed or are in the midst of their mandatory military service, fans have been desperate to see them live. Of cour

March 18, 2025

[Antara Haldar] Why global governance is failing

The United Nations was established in 1945, succeeding the failed League of Nations, to pull humanity back from the brink of self-destruction. It was a bold experiment in collective security, designed to prevent another world war and manage conflicts through diplomacy rather than violence. Yet, 80 years later, we find ourselves back on the precipice of disaster. Global temperatures have breached the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold that scientists see as a Rubicon for reining in climate change over

March 17, 2025