Opinion - The Korea Times

N. Korea as lean startup

By Jason Lim The question foremost in everyone's mind is, “Why now?” Why has Kim Jong-un engaged in the full-court press rapprochement with his key geopolitical stakeholders at this time? What made 2018 so special to Kim? Trying to figure out North Korea using the traditional international relations analytical paradigm ― realist, internationalist and constructivist ― has largely been a failure, so what about stealing from other disciplines to see if their frameworks might fit better. I am especially intrigued by a thought experiment of looking at North Korea through the lens of the “Lean Startup.”Popularized by Eric Ries, the lean startup is a methodology for starting a business that, according to Steve Blank in the Harvard Business Review, “favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition and iterative design over traditional 'big design up front' development.” Blank summarizes three key principles of the lean startup. First, instead of delving into prolonged business planning, put your best guesses about the propos

Apr 27, 2018By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

'Your user agreement sucks'

By Jason LimDuring a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees this week, Joe Kennedy, the Republican senator from Louisiana told Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, “Your user agreement sucks. The purpose of a user agreement is to cover Facebook's rear end, not inform users of their rights." Kennedy was absolutely correct, but it was beside the point. To be fair, it's not just Facebook. After all, who reads the user acceptance agreements of apps before accepting them as fast as your fingers can click?That's because Facebook's basic business model is all about creating a personalized dossier about you from all the data that it collects and selling targeted advertising based on that dossier. In fact, this is the same basic business model shared by the providers of other “free” online platforms. As such, Facebook will always try to maximize its business model through two things: one, finding ever more intrusive ways to collect your online and offline behavioral data; and two, finding even more creative ways to slice and dice your data to offer up dossier

Apr 13, 2018By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Race, genetics and us

By Jason LimNational Geographic's Instagram account recently posted a striking picture of two girls, one white and one black; they are twin sisters. Here is the official caption: “11-year-old twins Millie (left) and Marcia (right) from Birmingham, the United Kingdom, pose for the cover of this month's special issue on Race. Their mother calls them her 'rainbow twins.' 'They're my miracles,' she says. Race is a made-up label used to define and separate us.”These girls are fraternal twins, born from a black father and white mother. And they are the perfect example of those who claim that race is a social construct made up by human beings as an expression of our tribal instincts in wanting to differentiate between groups. According to the National Geographic's article, “Historically, when humans have drawn lines of identity ― separating Us from Them ― they've often relied on skin color as a proxy for race. But the 21st-century understanding of human genetics tells us that the whole idea of race is a human invention.” Modern science confirms “that the v

Mar 30, 2018By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Men against self-driving cars

By Jason Lim The Economist's special report, “Self-driving cars will profoundly change the way people live,” explores the different foreseen and unforeseen consequences of self-driving cars to the way we live. It provides fascinating insights into how our everyday lives will change because cars will now be able to drive themselves. Most obviously, death and injuries from vehicle accidents will fall dramatically. Another obvious benefit will be all the time we can save. By the way, parking spaces will be gone as well since AVs don't need to stay still when the owners are doing something else. In fact, car owners might be a thing of the past as well since AVs can be at your beck and call whenever and wherever you need them. Why own a metal box with wheels when you can just use it whenever you need it? Less obvious but much more intriguing is the concept of AVs as a socioeconomic platform. “Toyota's e-Palette vehicles are boxes on wheels in different sizes that can be kitted out as mobile shops, offices or beauty salons.”But I hate it. I hate these AVs already. A

Mar 16, 2018By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Bionic Korea

By Jason LimStrategy and Business, a publication of the consulting giant Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), recently published a piece titled, “The Bionic Company,” to make the case that today’s businesses need to get a handle on three new forms of capital that are critical to creating value: behavior, cognitive and network capital. It cites a historical analogy: “During the heyday of the Industrial Revolution, few firms understood the intricate dynamics of financial capital ― companies that pioneered better approaches to business economics had a strong competitive advantage. “As the 20th century unfolded, two additional types of equity became important: human capital (the return gained from the appropriate development and deployment of staff and contractors), and natural capital (the manageable value of land, water, and other environmental resources). “Business success came to depend on managing these three forms of capital effectively. The first two grew exponentially, seemingly slow in the early years but doubling regularly, and thus accumulating i

Mar 2, 2018By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Whose 'future' is it anyway?

By Jason Lim There was a little confusion over names of political parties recently. Well, lots of confusion, actually. But it provides an interesting insight into the political narratives that will be in play come the June midterm elections in Korea. Ahn Cheol-soo, the former darling of the progressive left who made his name originally for standing up for the rights of the little guy, had joined forces with the remnants of the Democratic Party, who had lost an internal power struggle with President Moon’s supporters, to create the People’s Party. It was necessarily a party with popular appeal geographically constrained to southwestern and central provinces.  Ahn then pushed the People’s Party to join up with the Bareun Party, founded by the remnants of the Liberty Korea Party, who had lost an internal struggle with the former President Park Geun-hye supporters. This also was a geographically constrained party, with its appeal focused on the traditionally conservative southeastern provinces. You follow me so far? To summarize, Ahn pushed the liberal losers

Feb 18, 2018By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Me too, Korea

By Jason Lim I thought that I had misheard when Sohn Suk-hee, the renowned anchor of JTBC’s flagship news program, stated that Seo Ji-hyun, a prosecutor, was actually in the studio and willing to show her face while discussing her experience as a victim of sexual misconduct. Seriously? A currently working female prosecutor would be live in a studio to appear on the highest-rated and most-trusted news program in Korea to speak about how a senior official of the justice ministry, Ahn Tae-geun, forcibly put his hands around her waist and aggressively touched her behind repeatedly. At a funeral, no less. Even more damning, there were numerous other prosecutors and officials, including Ahn’s boss, who witnessed this abuse and didn’t speak up. This took guts. Certainly more guts than her male colleagues who went along to get along. Her story doesn’t end with the attack. Seo alleges that the head of the justice ministry’s criminal affairs bureau tried to sweep this under the rug and even engaged in retaliation against her through bad performance reviews, negati

Feb 2, 2018By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Cryptocurrency as generational narrative

It’s not an exaggeration to say that South Korea has gone gaga over cryptocurrency. For something that can’t really buy anything in real life, cryptocurrency has certainly taken on a virtual life of its own as the new gold rush where a lucky strike can result in a windfall. What’s happening in Korea with crypto investing is no longer investing in the traditional financial sense; it’s more of a social networking phenomenon. In fact, in a Business Insider article, Sara Silverstein quotes the FundStrat cofounder Tom Lee, who says: “If you build a very simple model valuing bitcoin as the square function number of users times the average transaction value, 94% of the bitcoin movement over the past four years is explained by that equation. This model is based on Metcalfe’s law, which says the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users on the network.”In other words, the value of bitcoin or other crypto currency is proportional to the number of people who invest in bitcoin. In that sense, it’s not really money. It&

Jan 19, 2018By Jason Lim

Cryptocurrency as generational narrative

Jason Lim

Your citizen score

By Jason LimOn June 14, 2014, the State Council of China published the "Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System" that contained a rather radical and disturbing proposition: that the government could rank your trustworthiness based on your behavior and custom curate public good and commercial privileges based on your ranking. This is how a WIRED article described this proposed system: “Imagine a world where many of your daily activities were constantly monitored and evaluated: what you buy at the shops and online; where you are at any given time; who your friends are and how you interact with them; how many hours you spend watching content or playing video games; and what bills and taxes you pay (or not)… imagine a system where all these behaviors are rated as either positive or negative and distilled into a single number, according to rules set by the government. That would create your Citizen Score and it would tell everyone whether or not you were trustworthy. Plus, your rating would be publicly ranked against that of the entire population and u

Jan 5, 2018By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Taxonomy of K-pop

By Jason LimKim Jong-hyun of K-pop boy band SHINee committed suicide a few days ago. While other Korean celebrities have committed suicide in the past _ most notably actress Choi Jin-sil in 2008 _ Kim’s untimely death garnered domestic and international coverage. In a macabre way, the blanket coverage of Kim’s death this week testified to the undeniable popularity of K-pop across the world, even more so than the positive media treatment of BTS’s breakout American Music Award performance a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, some mainstream media got their K-pop stars mixed up. NBC Chicago was forced to apologize because they used a B-roll of a BTS appearance on the “Ellen DeGeneres Show” in reporting the death of Kim, especially focusing on RM, the blonde-haired, English-speaking leader of the band. Needless to say, they don’t look anything alike, except for their light-blondish hair. This is what the NBC Chicago anchor said, “So yesterday we told you about the death of a popular South Korean boy band singer. Kim Jong-hyun apparently died of a suic

Dec 22, 2017By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Read more

N. Korea as lean startup

'Your user agreement sucks'

Race, genetics and us

Men against self-driving cars

Bionic Korea

Whose 'future' is it anyway?

Me too, Korea

Cryptocurrency as generational narrative

Your citizen score

Taxonomy of K-pop

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