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Opinion

Columnists

Thu, October 17, 2019 | 09:54

Talks on Korea behind Korea

It is not clear if Chinese leader Xi said that the Korean Peninsula “actually used to be a part of China.” What’s clear is that it was quoted by President Trump in an interview, and not a verbatim account of Xi’s explanation about Korea. And that the two spoke through interpreters. The White House did not make a clarification after this story belatedly went viral in Korea. Often Western media find the cause of widespread outrage among Koreans either in the undiplomatic expression of statements or in the Koreans themselves, who are particularly sensitive to external conditions amid heightened...

2017-05-05 17:21

Alexa and robot journalism

Alexa came to my house today. I have to wonder, how many of my Korea Times readers know her or not? Alexa is a “smart-machine servant,” programmed with artificial intelligence (AI), residing inside a simple wireless stand-alone speaker-like cylinder. She answers almost any question you can ask, after you simply call her name “Alexa.” I was impressed by her answers that extended beyond the usual simple retrieval of embedded information. When I asked “Alexa, who is the wife of the President of the United States?” she said “The first lady of the United States is Melania Trump.”

2017-04-07 17:36

Ontology for daily life

There are two kinds of people on this earth -- those who know about ontology and those who don't. Meanwhile, world history will soon be remembered as “before the internet” and “after the internet.” The two statements, presented in totally different vocabularies, describe the same world; however, it is no longer the same one we used to know. Machines have begun to understand what people speak or instruct, thanks to the many years of steady tutoring by humans. Terms like semantic web, digital data, autonomous learning, artificial intelligence (AI), and knowledge-sharing have been developed to ...

2017-03-10 17:58

Post-crisis prophecy of unification

“As for the future, your task is not to foresee, but to enable it,” said French novelist Saint-Exupery in his 1948 book The Wisdom of the Sands. But human beings want to know the future by nature, especially when that future seems quite uncertain. At present, the global community seems to be threatened by many new risks. Not only in Korea but in the United States, Europe, China and North Korea, the future is by no means clear.

2017-02-10 17:38

A Korean horse-story

“Do you ride horses?” I asked the man next to me, to break the ice. A group of Olympic leaders were on a tour of European cities to promote the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics, about a year before the games, and an after-dinner performance of dressage was just about to start for the guests of honor from Korea. The performer sitting on horseback just then was the daughter of the host, a German businessman, and the Olympic-standard riding ground could be viewed through a glass wall from the audience seats inside the dining hall. The young woman was a dressage athlete hoping to compete in the coming...

2017-01-13 16:07

As first conference interpreter

"You have to learn English to learn Western without going through Japan." This was the advice Kim Ok-gyun gave Yoon Chi-ho in 1881 when they met in Tokyo.

2016-12-16 17:04

President problem or woman problem?

The ancient Chinese believed, according to feng-shui (pungsu in Korean, geomancy) philosophy, that the world changes in three sexagesimal cycles, every 180 years; Koreans also accepted this system. They termed these cycles in temporal order, as the upper cycle, followed by the middle cycle and then the lower cycle.

2016-11-18 17:09

Recording history in paintings

A professor at the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS) suddenly realized one day that twelve mural-sized oil paintings had always been hanging on the walls of the auditorium, library and other school buildings in AKS, but were totally ignored by people.

2016-10-21 17:19

Gyeongju's bridge and earthquake

The May 2008 issue of National Geographic featured an article on the Dong ethnic group who live in an enclave nestled in the luxuriant mountains of Guizhou Province, China. Headlined “Village on the Edge of Time,” novelist Amy Tan's narrative of her journey to this remote and poor corner almost read like poetry.

2016-09-23 17:00

Schedule for death

Not because of my age or any health problem, I find myself spending quite a bit of time thinking about death these days. People often “die hard.” There are some over-100 seniors around me. They honestly tell that their lives are boring, and too long. Nothing pleases them, they complain. It is like a life-sentenced prisoner waiting for the day of judgment without knowing their verdict.

2016-08-26 16:17

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