Kim Ji-soo
Korea Times Editorial Reporter
Kim Ji-soo joined The Korea Times in 2006, and worked on such desks as culture and politics and is currently a member of the Editorial Board. Previous workplaces include The Korea Herald and the Korea JoongAng Daily.
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GaryLui, BrianRhoads, SCMP
Tagahou, tajazhou and hello from your friends from SMCP.It is our pleasure and honor to congratulate The Korea Times on its 70th anniversary.Seventy years of news coverage. From your newspaper's founding, during the Korean War, through South Korea's transition from a dictatorship to the thriving democracy it is today. That is certainly worth celebrating.And this milestone comes at a time when journalism from Asia is needed around the world more than ever before. The impact and affairs from our region are accelerating in critical importance. We must work together to build a future where our collective voice is a global voice because Asia matters. SCMP is proud to be partners with you. We are cheering you on and watching your digital transformation with great interest and anticipation.We look forward to witnessing the new great age of The Korea Times. We wish you success for another 70 years and beyond. Gary Liu, CEO of SCMP and Brian Rhoads, managing editor of SCMP
YooJaesuk
First, let me offer my congratulations to The Korea Times on its 70th anniversary.As the longest continuously published English newspaper in the country, The Korea Times has been steadily serving its role as a beacon on Korean affairs and news to the world. Having started out as the first English newspaper The Korea Times' content has been cited by other leading global media outlets, and so I would like to once again extend congratulations to your publication. Korea has become a country watched and consumed with utmost attention by people across the world.The attention focuses not only on the global K-pop group BTS and hallyu; it extends to all things Korean including the state of the economy and the country's medical system.As the world increasingly integrates online in the era of digitization, I think The Korea Times has a chance to play a bigger more vital role in letting the world know about Korea. I hope the Korea Times will continue to offer new visions and challenges for the next seven decades. Once again, I extend my celebratory greetings on the occasion of the 70th anniversa
Apologia for the past
By William R. JonesOn its Oct. 9 edition, The Korea Times posted Peter Yoonsuk Paik's “Mass man” and the destruction of the West's civilization heritage. It was a nice, thoughtful article and gives a bit of clarity to the issue. He cites Jose Ortega y Gasset, a philosopher from Spain, who attempts to provide an answer for the fury of youth today and their attack on our past. For all Ortega's reasoning he was only half-right for he neglected the moral, ethical, virtuous, righteous, and noble standards that many have thrown out the window. Concerning “the white supremacist hierarchy of the South”: I proclaim and declare, not only the South! There was repressive history of all people everywhere. Fury against statues and other symbols of the past and destruction is not the answer. There are innumerable reminders of the past. Are we to erase all? So many do not have conception of the true history and of its how and why. They are not willing to do the study and full research of it.There is racial inequality, in particular, the uneven treatment of minorities concerning arrest issues. Howeve
Korea-Laos friendship through medicinal goods
Korea Love Sharing Community Chairman Lee Eun-deok, sixth from left, poses with Laotian Ambassador to Korea Thieng Boupha, after the two agreed that Seoul would send medicinal products and other daily necessities to Laos once or twice a year at the Korea Laos Friendship Association office in the capital, Wednesday. A total of $680,000 worth of medicine was sent to Laos this time. Officials from the association, the Global Warm Society and Kyungwoo System were also there as partners in the program. / Courtesy of KOLOS
China's human rights abuses slammed in key UN committees
By John J. MetzlerBeijing's widening human rights and political crackdowns in both Xinjiang Province and Hong Kong have underscored the People's Republic of China's Pavlovian reaction involving any opposition towards the ruling communist regime. Though suppressing religious and political dissent is nothing new on the Chinese mainland, its scope and intensity has deepened under Chairman Xi Jinping's hardline “personalist” rule.Now a disparate and diverse group of 39 countries have pushed back in the U.N.'s Third Committee (Humanitarian); Germany's Ambassador Christoph Heusgen who sponsored the statement added emphatically, “We are gravely concerned about the human rights situation in Xinjiang and the recent developments in Hong Kong.” Earlier this year a similar statement gained only 23 signatory nations.The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom joined the condemnation along with much of the European Union such as Austria, Croatia, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Poland, Slovakia and Sweden. Other European states included Albania and Bosnia/Herzegovina. In the Asia/Pacific reg
ED Naver's foul play
Biggest search engine in credibility crisis for manipulating algorithm Naver, the nation's biggest search engine, has been dealt a heavy blow by the government's antitrust agency for allegedly manipulating search algorithms in favor of the company's online shopping site. The Korea Fair Trade Commission said Tuesday it had discovered Naver made such algorithmic changes at least six times between 2012 and 2015 and imposed a fine of 26.7 billion won ($22.9 million) on the company along with a correction order. According to the commission, Naver manipulated search algorithms that lowered the rankings of goods sold by competitors in February 2012, two months before the company launched its online shopping service. In June 2015, Naver also tweaked its algorithms to show more search results for goods and services when linked to the company's payment service, KFTC said. As a result of these acts, Naver's shopping platform's market share soared to 21.1percent in 2018 from 4.9 percent in 2015.Given KFTC's allegations are true, Naver will likely be unable to avoid a serious credibility crisis b
Two months to US election
By Jesse C. NelsonWith under two months remaining before the U.S. presidential election, it's quite interesting to visit YouTube and type three simple words: “black,” “support,” and “Trump.” You'll find video after video of Black Americans speaking in support of the president and against the Democrats. The likes that these videos garner and comments in the comment section are revealing. While certainly not a majority, a sizable percentage of blacks in the U.S. no longer buy the “Trump is a racist” mythology.In an allegedly tight presidential race, this voting bloc, once a given for Democrats, can and will make a difference. What the left media called a lighthearted jest made by Joe Biden back in May, when he said, “if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black,” is no joke to many in the black community. Picking Kamala Harris as his vice-president doesn't remedy what some perceive as Biden's decades in public office representing little more than lip service to the black community, in contrast to concrete actions taken by Trump in only three a
Best/worst day
By William R. JonesRecently, I heard someone say, “It was the best day of my life.” I wondered, what was the worst day of that person's life? Then, I thought, what really was my best and worst day?Charles Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …” I suppose that it could be both at the same time for someone somewhere. It reminds me of one of the “laws of physics”: two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. That is a half-truth, over-simplified explanation. Identical bosons, a fifth state of matter can flow or pass through each other. Some will say bosons are not objects; it is about interpretation.Long ago, Isaac Asimov, proposed that one solid object could pass through another solid object without damaging either. Something about the bonds of matter breaking temporarily and then coming back together again. That is hard to imagine as possible.Nevertheless, I have seen twice what you call a “ghost” pass through a solid wall. Whether the “human forms” were solid or not, I don't know. I think that they are made up of a combination of elements
ED Viability of New Deal fund
Gov't needs to lessen its hand in envisioned fundAs part of a plan to finance its New Deal projects, the government unveiled a 20 trillion won ($17 billion) Korean New Deal fund to attract retail investors to massive projects and support investment from the private sector. The government and state institutions will invest 7 trillion won, while the private sector will put up 13 trillion won. The Korean New Deal fund is part of a 190 trillion won plan to draw 100 trillion won from public finance and 70 trillion won from private institutions to finance the country's transformation to a digitized and greener economy.With excess money in the market estimated at around 1,100 trillion won, the fund can serve as a conduit to absorb the liquidity away from the red-hot real estate market. The ambitious plan by President Moon Jae-in evokes reminiscence of the state-controlled funds in previous administrations. There was the Green Growth Fund during the Lee Myung-bak administration and the Unification Fund in the Park Geun-hye government, which largely fizzled out in tandem with those administra