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Shim Jae-yun

Korea Times Editorial Reporter

I am now the chief editorial writer of The Korea Times. I also worked as the managing editor of the newspaper for 26 months from April 2018. Before that my stints included Politics Desk editor, Business Desk editor, City Desk editor and Culture Desk editor. As a journalist of The Korea Times, the most influential English newspaper of Korea, I have been committed to promoting 'international justice' beyond the social justice pursued by vernacular papers. My career includes working as a visiting scholar in Britain's Cambridge University from 2006-07.

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Opinion

Trump fails to deliver COVID-19 strategy

Rather than devise a bold and aggressive plan for combating the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration is surrendering. Eight months into the pandemic, a lack of leadership from the White House is continuing to endanger Americans while providing little hope that the end is near.President Donald Trump, apparently, would prefer that we ignore his nonexistent strategy. On Monday, he used Twitter to accuse the media of talking about "COVID, COVID, COVID" and wrote that such reporting "should be an election law violation."Unfortunately for the president, the United States over the weekend saw its highest number of COVID-19 cases for any two-day span since the virus arrived on our shores. This adds to the total in a nation that has one of the highest per-capita rates of infection and one of the highest per-capita death rates in the world.Equally important, the latest modeling from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that at the current trajectory, the United States will see more than 2,000 COVID-19 deaths per day by December and that

Oct 29, 2020By Shim Jae-yun
Opinion

Politics stinks when stink bugs are an escape

By Tom PurcellI'd rather focus on stink bugs. The political season is at a fever pitch. Anger at those who disagree with others' political views, the result of increasing polarization, is rampant.I don't have the stomach for what our politics and public discourse have become. So I focus on stink bugs. The brown marmorated stink bug, increasingly common in Pittsburgh, originated in East Asia.The first documented U.S. stink bug was collected in Allentown, Pa., in September 1998 after likely hitching a ride on a shipping container. Prehistoric-looking and persistent, the creature takes any opportunity to sneak into our homes each fall to survive winter's cold - and boy, does it stink.Just as I turn on a good movie and flip back my recliner to escape all things political, I see one of those buggers crawling along my crown molding - puzzled at how it got there. Then my heart sinks. According to Prevention, when threatened, a stink bug sprays a smelly fluid up to several inches toward me as I struggle to get it into a bottle.I loathe that smell - almost as much as I loathe modern politics,

Oct 25, 2020By Shim Jae-yun
Opinion

How Israel failed COVID-19 test

By Shlomo Ben-AmiTEL AVIV ― When the Jewish new year began late last month, Israel was enduring its second nationwide lockdown, after daily per capita COVID-19 infection and death rates reached some of the world's highest levels. How did a country with practically closed external borders, sophisticated technological and institutional capacities, a high-quality and efficient health-care system, and a culture of solidarity in wartime fail so spectacularly at addressing the pandemic?Although long years of neoliberal economics have certainly taken their toll on the country's welfare system, the answer lies elsewhere. Partly, it is Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's deceitful, divisive approach to managing the crisis ― and to governing more generally ― that has been laid bare. But, more fundamentally, Israel's pandemic failure reflects the deeply fragmented society and dysfunctional political system of which Netanyahu has taken advantage throughout his career.The virus has exposed Israel as a polarized federation, whose various tribes put their sectarian interests ahead of the common goo

Oct 22, 2020By Shim Jae-yun
How Israel failed COVID-19 test
Opinion

Justice in a hijacked state

By John Prendergast and Nathalia DukhanWASHINGTON, DC ― The Central African Republic (CAR), a former French colony based on an exploitative divide-and-rule system, is a textbook example of how a state can be captured, repurposed, and organized for looting, largely to the benefit of outsiders. In a country that has known only impunity, where the state is a murderous machine of plunder, is justice possible?The CAR boasts bountiful natural resources, including oil, uranium, precious timber, diamonds, and gold. But they are controlled by violent criminal networks, which are linked to local politicians, external governments, and commercial interests, and rely on desperate, heavily armed young people. This fuels territorial conflict and arms- and natural-resource trafficking.Beyond their ties to such criminal networks, the CAR's leaders enrich themselves directly through government structures, which they have fashioned solely to advance their own interests. They use the country's military ― as well as militia groups ― to protect their own power, even if it means using extreme violence.In t

Oct 22, 2020By Shim Jae-yun
Opinion

I held my nose and voted for Trump

By Richard PenningtonThere was no excuse whatsoever for my having failed to vote in the 2008, 2012 and 2016 presidential elections. The United States is a participatory democracy, and expats only have to take a few simple steps in order to cast a ballot. Thrice I did not, but it would be different in 2020. Four years ago, I was as amazed as anybody when Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for president. I assumed that he would lose badly to the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. Surely he could not win, since he was a businessman with a sleazy reputation, and he had not held any sort of office ― never on a city council, never a governor, congressman or cabinet minister. Trump ascended to the White House due to the electoral college, having received 46.1 percent of the votes, against Clinton's 48.2 percent. Unlike some of my leftist friends, I was willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he would grow into the job, I told them. A bare-bones assessment of his presidency follows. On the upside, he has slowed illegal immigration, he has confronted China over its dec

Oct 12, 2020By Shim Jae-yun
Opinion

Sanctions on North Korea ― Overused but underutilized

By Thomas BierstekerNo one likes sanctions. They restrict trade, violate human rights, complicate humanitarian relief, and often do not work. Yet sanctions are used with increasing frequency in international relations to change behavior, constrain actors, and send normative signals. While they are undoubtedly over-used as a policy tool, they are paradoxically underutilized as an instrument for strategic bargaining and negotiation.The United Nations sanctions currently being applied to North Korea are the most extensive set of restrictive measures applied by the organization since the comprehensive sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s. Other U.N. sanctions regimes are much more targeted, sanctioning only individuals, imposing arms embargoes, and restricting one or two sectors of the economy. The DPRK sanctions regime, by contrast, includes not only individual sanctions and arms embargoes, but sweeping restrictions on the country's major exports and imports. While there are a few areas that are not sanctioned, three of the U.N. sanctions ― on finance, petroleum imports, and shipping ― a

Oct 7, 2020By Shim Jae-yun
Opinion

Cuba Bar

Seen above is a basement club in southern Seoul called Cuba Bar.

Sep 29, 2020By Shim Jae-yun
Editorial

ED Moon's low-key response to NK

President should take stronger stance toward PyongyangPresident Moon Jae-in came up with an official response Monday to the death of a South Korean official who was killed by North Koreans in the North's territorial waters. Moon expressed sorrow for having failed to protect the official, but stopped short of criticizing the North for shooting him.He only asked North Korea to resume the operation of communications channels between the military authorities of the two sides. The President expressed his appreciation to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for offering an apology over the recent incident, saying it is of particular significance and calling it rare and unprecedented. He even said he could understand Kim's mind. This apparently means Moon was elated by Kim's apology and that his mindset sharply contrasts with the public uproar over the North's reckless act. He expressed hope that the tragic incident would rather result in a chance for dialogue and cooperation between the two Koreas. Moon's remarks are disappointing in that many people expected he would issue a stern warning to P

Sep 29, 2020By Shim Jae-yun
Editorial

ED Holiday health alert

Time to refrain from traveling around countryThe health authorities are on high alert over a possible resurgence of COVID-19 infections during the Sept. 30 to Oct. 4 Chuseok holiday. They cannot lower their guard against the pandemic as an increasing number of people are planning to visit tourist destinations across the country during the holiday, raising fears of another wave of coronavirus cases.The authorities plan to impose special quarantine measures across the country for two weeks from Tuesday. Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun released a statement Monday calling on people to refrain from visiting their hometowns during Chuseok. He even compared the current situation to wartime.The holiday will be a critical period that will determine the course of quarantine efforts against the coronavirus. The government has decided to control people's movements by not allowing cars to pass through highway tollgates free of charge during the holiday. It has also decided to restrict the number of train tickets available by half to reduce the number of travelers. Moreover, the administration is tr

Sep 28, 2020By Shim Jae-yun
Opinion

Wildfires and California policymaking

The influence of climate change on wildfire seasons can't be ignored, but California's leaders need to focus on more practical, near-term solutions to contain future wildfire outbreaks.As he surveyed the wreckage of a wildfire that has spread around the Northern California town of Oroville last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom warned the nation about the threat of global warming."Observe it with your own eyes," he said. "The debate is over, around climate change. This is a climate damn emergency."Climate change and one current product of it, last week's record-breaking heat wave, are certainly exacerbating California's fire problems, but there are simpler and more practical ways to deal with the latest scourge than to embrace a Green New Deal or other costly programs to address the climate of the entire Earth. In fact, many of the most promising solutions for the problems at hand are well within the purview of California officials."We keep doing overzealous fire suppression across California landscapes where the fire poses little risk to people and structures," according to a ProPublica story

Sep 17, 2020By Shim Jae-yun
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