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Learning for the love of it

There is something striking about how learning is approached in Korea. Whether it’s sports, art or even casual reading, the question is not “do you enjoy it” but rather “how good are you at it?” Take tennis for example. When my daughter was looking for tennis lessons, it was surprisingly difficult to find a “normal” instructor. For someone picking up a racket for the very first time, the idea was to try it out, experiment and improve gradually. Yet in Korea, there is often immediate expectation to learn “properly” — from a certified coach, a former national-level player or someone with formal credentials. The idea of casual, imperfect learning can feel almost insufficient. At first glance, this emphasis on quality and expertise seems admirable. After all, Korea is known globally for its high standards and discipline. Yet, somewhere along the way, something important got lost: the joy of learning itself. Learning is inherently a process. It’s messy, inefficient and deeply personal. But in environments that prioritize “elite” standards from the very beginning, le

3 MIN READ

Stock market gains will ultimately flow into housing

President Lee Jae Myung’s high-profile pledge to divert liquidity from Seoul’s overheated housing market to the stock market seems to have worked as the main benchmark KOSPI has soared past 9,000 points in recent weeks, driven largely by massive retail buying. On top of several policy changes over the past year aimed at mitigating the “Korea discount,” the local equity market has received a much-needed boost from the semiconductor boom, fueled by the unprecedented memory chip demand from global tech firms for artificial intelligence. Shares of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, which now account for nearly 60 percent of the country’s market capitalization, have soared to all-time highs since the beginning of the year. But some investors have become increasingly uneasy as to whether the semiconductor cycle may have peaked despite the rosy market outlook, while others have become nervous due to sharp market swings following the debut of single-stock leveraged exchange-traded funds tied to the two memory chip giants on May 27. Against such growing market volatility, many investors

3 MIN READBy Lee Hyo-sik

Time to rein in youth social media use

Smartphones and social media have become inseparable from young people's daily lives, serving as primary gateways to learning, entertainment and social interaction. But their benefits come with growing costs: addiction, anxiety, declining academic performance, cyberbullying and exposure to harmful content. Korea can no longer afford to ignore these risks. It is time to begin a serious discussion about introducing reasonable safeguards for minors' use of social media. Recent developments in the education sector underscore the growing urgency of the issue. Newly elected superintendents across the country have embraced "smartphone-free schools" as a key policy. Gyeonggi Province plans to restrict mobile phone use not only during classes but also throughout breaks and lunchtime, while Gangwon and North Jeolla provinces are rolling out smartphone-free school initiatives and digital detox programs. These are more than educational experiments. Schools have increasingly reported that excessive smartphone use disrupts learning, fuels conflicts among students and facilitates cyberbullying. Altho

3 MIN READBy Kang Seung-woo

Korea's long wait for equality law

June is Pride Month and in much of the developed world, the rainbow flag is hard to miss — draped across public buildings as well as corporate storefronts. In Korea, it is harder to find. Beyond the Seoul Queer Culture Festival and its parade, the rainbows symbolizing the LGBTQ+ community are largely absent. Even Korean companies that create Pride campaigns for their overseas markets tend to stay quiet at home, wary of the backlash that such public support can invite. That reticence reflects a deeper gap. Korea remains one of only two OECD members, alongside Japan, without a comprehensive anti-discrimination law. Rep. Son Sol of the Progressive Party introduced a bill in January, followed by Rep. Chung Choon-saeng of the Rebuilding Korea Party in February. Gender Equality Minister Won Min-kyong also pledged her support. Yet the law remains unrealized, deferred once again on the familiar grounds that society has not reached a consensus. The comparison with Korea's neighbors makes the lag sharper. Japan, the other OECD holdout, has no national equality statute either, but municipal par

3 MIN READBy Kwon Mee-yoo

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Desk Columns

Learning for the love of it

There is something striking about how learning is approached in Korea. Whether it’s sports, art or even casual reading, the question is not “do you enjoy it” but rather “how good are you at it?” Take tennis for example. When my daughter was looking for tennis lessons, it was surprisingly difficult to find a “normal” instructor. For someone picking up a racket for the very first time, the idea was to try it out, experiment and improve gradually. Yet in Korea, there is often immediate expectation to learn “properly” — from a certified coach, a former national-level player or someone with formal credentials. The idea of casual, imperfect learning can feel almost insufficient. At first glance, this emphasis on quality and expertise seems admirable. After all, Korea is known globally for its high standards and discipline. Yet, somewhere along the way, something important got lost: the joy of learning itself. Learning is inherently a process. It’s messy, inefficient and deeply personal. But in environments that prioritize “elite” standards from the very beginning, le

4h ago
Learning for the love of it
Tribune Service

The problem with building a bridge between church and state

The separation of church and state is under attack from familiar quarters. Not only does Texas require a copy of the Ten Commandments to be posted in classrooms, but it has also voted to make Protestant translations of the Bible required reading in English classes. To add insult to injury, the recently released report by the president’s Religious Liberty Commission called for a bridge between church and state rather than a wall as Thomas Jefferson once described it. The reasoning behind this movement is that America was founded on Christian principles, and, according to some, ought to adopt Christianity as its official religion. This ignores the obvious fact that the Constitution prohibits Congress from giving official status to any religion or from preventing someone from practicing the religion of their choice. Let’s ignore the Constitution for a moment and ask what the country would look like if it were a Christian nation. The first question we would have to ask is: Whose Christianity? Would it be Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican/Episcopal, Lutheran, R

7h agoBy Kenneth Seeskin
Guest Columns

Cities show how climate action makes life better

NEW YORK/BRUSSELS — In the global fight against climate change, there has been no shortage of targets and commitments. But people ultimately judge progress by what they experience in their daily lives. And nowhere is the impact of climate action more tangible than in the world’s cities. Mayors understand that the same measures that reduce greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions and strengthen climate resilience also improve people’s daily lives. Energy-efficient homes lower the families’ bills. Increased access to renewables reduces dependence on imported fossil fuels and vulnerability to spikes in oil and gas prices. Better public transport and safer cycling infrastructure give people more affordable and healthier ways to move around their communities. Trees and green spaces improve air quality, cool neighborhoods, and make cities more pleasant places to live. But climate action is also about protecting people from the already tangible effects of a warming planet. Heat waves, floods, droughts, and extreme-weather events are becoming more frequent and intense. Cities and their residents

8h agoBy Michael R. Bloomberg and Teresa Ribera
Cities show how climate action makes life better
Troy Stangarone

Maximizing Korea's AI momentum

There is a tendency to view the world through the status quo. If the economy is growing, the set expectation becomes that it will continue to do so. That mentality is already taking hold in Korea as it relates to soaring profits at Samsung Electronics and SK hynix from artificial intelligence (AI). However, if Korea is to make the most of the current AI boom, it needs to think beyond the status quo to use this moment to create new strengths in the economy rather than just buttress existing ones. Current expectations are being driven by the record corporate profits from Samsung and SK hynix for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) that is critical to the continued development of AI. Many politicians now treat these profits as a new normal, debating how to spend additional tax revenue or whether to impose excess‑profit taxes on both firms. But there is no guarantee that this future will hold. Samsung and SK hynix will continue to be highly profitable companies in the near term, but we should not expect this run to last indefinitely. The early internet era illustrates why Korea must take a broade

8h agoBy Troy Stangarone
Maximizing Korea's AI momentum
Chyung Eun-ju and Joel Cho

Who do we cheer for?

“Who are you cheering for?” It is one of the simplest questions in sports and one we are constantly hearing now that the World Cup is underway. At first glance, the answer seems obvious. You cheer for your country. The world of sports, after all, is among the few remaining institutions that require us to declare where our loyalty lies so openly. Flags hang from buildings, national anthems echo before matches, and television broadcasts divide the world into familiar categories of “us” and “them.” In doing so, sporting events transform abstract ideas of identity and belonging into something visible, shared and deeply emotional. During the matches we are keeping up with this World Cup, for 90 minutes, the complexity of modern life gives way to a simple proposition: choose a side. Yet the more we talked about it, the more we realized how difficult that question has become for many people. Defining what “your country” means is no longer a straightforward answer. Perhaps it was easier in another time. Many of our parents and grandparents spent most of their lives close to where th

1d agoBy Chyung Eun-ju (By Chyung Eun-ju and Joel Cho)
Who do we cheer for?
Desk Columns

Stock market gains will ultimately flow into housing

President Lee Jae Myung’s high-profile pledge to divert liquidity from Seoul’s overheated housing market to the stock market seems to have worked as the main benchmark KOSPI has soared past 9,000 points in recent weeks, driven largely by massive retail buying. On top of several policy changes over the past year aimed at mitigating the “Korea discount,” the local equity market has received a much-needed boost from the semiconductor boom, fueled by the unprecedented memory chip demand from global tech firms for artificial intelligence. Shares of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, which now account for nearly 60 percent of the country’s market capitalization, have soared to all-time highs since the beginning of the year. But some investors have become increasingly uneasy as to whether the semiconductor cycle may have peaked despite the rosy market outlook, while others have become nervous due to sharp market swings following the debut of single-stock leveraged exchange-traded funds tied to the two memory chip giants on May 27. Against such growing market volatility, many investors

1d agoBy Lee Hyo-sik
Stock market gains will ultimately flow into housing
Tribune Service

Restore voting rights for former prisoners

Here at Shawangunk Correctional Facility, a small maximum security prison in upstate New York, I am part of a nine-month reentry program called Project Build. Every Friday morning, we gather around long, wooden tables and talk about who we were when we committed our crimes, and who we are striving to become. Last year, I had the opportunity to attend the graduation for the 2024-2025 group. At the event, one of the speakers, who was formerly incarcerated, informed the crowd that we — the nation’s past and present prisoners — were “civilly dead.” I wasn’t familiar with the concept, but I was intrigued to learn more. Civil death ensures that prisoners and felons are stripped of basic rights, like voting, that are otherwise granted to them by the Constitution. They can live in a democracy, but cannot participate. After the Civil War, these rules were enshrined in the Constitution by way of the 14th and 15th Amendments. Slavery was over, but the yoke of racism and oppression was still intact. Although New York and other states have restored voting rights to people on parole and o

1d agoBy Rashon Venable
Guest Columns

Europe's AI Dolce Vita?

PARIS — In many respects, the European Union appears likely to become one of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution’s biggest losers, with China and the United States leaving its economies in the dust. Even if European energy policies were not already making a massive data-center buildout prohibitively expensive, its fragmented capital markets would make raising the necessary financing extraordinarily difficult. Europe’s high tax burden, in particular, makes it harder to cultivate and retain AI superstars, much less attract them from abroad. Meanwhile, its ever-expanding regulatory state discourages business formation and entrepreneurship. But even without the AI boom, Europe’s aging welfare states look increasingly unsustainable. Economic growth has been glacial—Germany, the continent’s largest economy, has effectively stalled—while rearmament is placing ever greater demands on public finances. Compounding these problems is a shortage of centrist political leaders capable of containing populist movements on both the left and the right, both of which would likely fav

1d agoBy Kenneth Rogoff
Europe's AI Dolce Vita?
Daniel Shin

Technology is a mirror: What AI reveals about rebuilding community

What if the most revolutionary use of artificial intelligence (AI) is not to make us more connected or efficient, but to force us to confront how profoundly disconnected we have become from one another? Algorithms sort us, platforms monetize us and metrics measure us. We inhabit a digitally saturated yet socially fractured world. The promise of AI is often framed in terms of productivity, optimization and growth. But beneath the commercial enthusiasm lies a deeper sociological question. Can communities, empowered by AI, meaningfully address the structural isolation and fragmentation that AI capitalism has intensified? A commercial opportunity is rather straightforward. AI can revitalize local economies, connect small producers to global markets and reduce barriers to entry for marginalized entrepreneurs. The cost of creation, promotion and distribution shall converge to zero. For example, predictive analytics can help communities allocate resources more efficiently by anticipating needs, mapping potential risks, or optimizing solutions. Cooperative platforms can leverage AI to bypass ext

2d agoBy Daniel Shin
Guest Columns

South Korea's 'middle power' moment has arrived — will it seize it?

For decades, South Korea has occupied an ambiguous position in the international order — too powerful to be dismissed as a small state, yet constrained by security dependence. The fracturing of American hegemony, the emergence of a more complex geopolitics and the growing assertiveness of non-Western nations have together created what may be the most significant opportunity for middle power diplomacy in a generation. The question is whether Seoul has the vision — and the domestic political will — to seize it. To understand South Korea’s opportunity, we must first understand the world it inhabits. Analysts routinely describe today’s international order as “fragmented” or “multipolar,” but both terms fall short. Fragmentation implies breakdown and multipolarity implies a simple distribution of power among a handful of great powers. Neither captures reality. As I have explained in my new book, "The Once and Future World Order" a more appropriate concept is multiplexity — a world of overlapping institutions, diverse actors and complex interdependencies, where no single

2d agoBy Amitav Acharya
South Korea's 'middle power' moment has arrived — will it seize it?
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