Opinion - The Korea Times

Who's the real Captain Kirk?

By Jason LimTim Urban recently published a fascinating piece in WaitButWhy.com titled “You are not your brain or your body,” exploring the various ways we attempt to define what “me” means. He goes through several prevailing theories that make for interesting thought experiments.The first is the body theory, in which the physical body is equated with the sense of me. In short, I am my body. However, this theory falls apart fairly quickly when you bring up the fact that most human cells are replaced regularly as we age. Sure, there are some specialized cells that are never replaced, but, by and large, the cells that you are born with are not the cells that you have today. And if we are made up of cells, and they are replaced, does it follow that I am no longer fully me when I shed my skin cells? The second is the brain theory, in which the brain is equated with the sense of me. Since all cognitive processing and memories that give rise to my personality, quirks and habits are housed in the brain, then my brain must be me. Sounds reasonable until Urban

Sep 18, 2015By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Why Angela but not Abe?

By Jason Lim Last year marked the 70th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion on D-Day, widely considered the beginning of the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allied forces. Eighteen world leaders attended the ceremony, including the American President, French President, Queen of England, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.The remarkable things about Merkel’s attendance was how natural it seemed that the current German leader would attend a ceremony marking an invasion against her nation. The separation between today’s Germany and Nazi Germany is so complete that it actually feels awkward, and even wrong, to identify the Nazi’s with today’s Germany, although they are, in fact, one and the same nation.Contrast that with the controversies surrounding this week’s celebration by China of what’s officially called, “Commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of Victory of Chinese People’s Resistance against Japanese Aggression and World Anti-Fascist War.”It’s certainly a mouthful, which I noticed often happens when you try t

Sep 4, 2015By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Amnesty International and sex work

By Jason Lim Prostitution is a huge industry in Korea. Although accurate figures are not available because of the underground nature of the trade, prostitution and related businesses (prostitution also channels significant economic activities to motels, beauty parlors, public baths, and bars) are estimated to employ up to 1 million people, about 4 percent of the economically active population in Korea. The sex trade was estimated to have an annual economic output of up to $24 billion dollars, 4.1 percent of Korea’s GDP in 2002.When the government began a serious crackdown on the sex trade in the fall of 2004, the Ministry of Finance and Economy at the time expected to slash about 1 percent of GDP for 2005, which translated into $7 billion. I am not sure whether that figure proved accurate.However, what proved accurate were the warnings that a crackdown would push the sex trade underground and create new social issues to be dealt with in the near future. Driven out from its traditionally protected locations, the business of prostitution expanded into formerly taboo resident

Aug 21, 2015By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

What is Japan to Korea?

By Jason LimImagine you were poor and hungry, growing up in a backward rural village. One day, there was this nouveau riche family who came from a far-away city, bullying and abusing everyone in the village on the back of their power and connections. In collusion with authorities, they would confiscate the land, raze everything in the name of development, treat everyone like slaves and terrorize with impunity.Especially notorious was their spoiled brat, who made it his daily business to bully and abuse other kids, especially you. Not a day went by that he did not seek you out to humiliate, curse, and beat you up. He got his father to kick your dad off his land and your sister from the school. You wished him dead countless times. It was not just the physical pain, it was the injustice of it all; and your helplessness in the face of it.Time passed. You left the village to look for opportunities. Through hard work, luck and the kindness of people, you became fairly wealthy and respected. Then, one day, you run into a familiar face. It is the bully boy from your youth, the one who made y

Aug 7, 2015By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Big data lessons from Ashley Madison

By Jason LimAshley Madison was hacked last week, with the hackers threatening to post its membership list unless they were paid. But what got lost in the collective hand-wringing was that membership of a cheating site actually doesn’t necessarily mean you are cheating. People could have joined for curiosity, novelty, research, companionship, conversation partners, and any other host of reasons that could ― but also might not ― lead to actual sex between people.The point I am trying to make is that membership in a cheating site is not necessarily an accurate proxy metric for actual cheating. There are much more accurate ways to tell whether someone is having an affair.Let’s take a scenario that is going on regularly in Korea. Pretty much everyone in Korea uses Kakaotalk to communicate. It’s become an absolutely essential part of everyday life. Kakao also recently launched an Uber-like taxi service, which has taken off like a rocket. The same company also offers Pay service as well as wire transfer service. Then you have Daum, the second largest portal site in Korea t

Jul 24, 2015By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Leadership lesson of Megachurches

By Jason Lim Should a highly successful and effective leader adhere to an equally high level of personal ethics and morality? In other words, does leadership success justify, or at least excuse, certain personal ethical failings? Or, do you have to match your words with your own actions to become a truly effective and authentic leader? These were some of the questions that confronted me yesterday when I arrived in Seoul for the first time in a few years. As we drove past somewhere in Gangnam, my colleague pointed out a huge, modern super structure: “That’s the new Sarang Church. Isn’t it huge?” Huge was an understatement. It was more than the sheer size, but the modern, in-your-face grandiosity that was more striking. Its very presence shouted out wealth and power from every piece of brick, glass and Italian marble tile.The Sarang Church is not unique. Its story is not unlike those of other megachurches everywhere that usually goes like this.The founder creates an organization ― selling his own brand of religious or spiritual vision ― and makes it su

Jul 10, 2015By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Black, Hispanic, Jewish Korean American

By Jason LimI grew up in the Bronx, which means that I grew up with more black and Hispanic kids than many African Americans that I know and work with today. I also went to school with largely Jewish kids, having attended more Bar Mitzvahs that I can remember. Also, I spent two-and-a-half years of my childhood in Asuncion, Paraguay, playing soccer with the indigenous Guarani Indian kids and shouting with the best of them in bastardized Spanish.Does that make me a Black, Hispanic, Jewish Korean American?Writing about Rachel Dolezal ― the white woman who passed for black while serving as the president of the local Spokane chapter of NAACP ― in The New York Times, Allyson Hobbs states that race “is a fiction, a social construct based in culture, not biology. It must be made from what people believe and do. Race is performative. It is the memories that bind us, the stories passed down to us, the experiences we share, the social forces that surround us.”But if race is entirely a social construct, then shouldn’t it be more plastic than it has been shown to be by the Rache

Jun 26, 2015By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Korea's national image epidemic

By Jason Lim In an emergency National Assembly hearing on the Park administration’s crisis management failures over the MERS epidemic, members of both parties repeatedly suggested to Moon Hyeong-pyo, Minister of Health and Welfare, that the government raise its disease alert level from “watch” to “warning” due to the increasingly serious nature of the outbreak. According to reports, Minister Moon demurred, responding that raising the alert level to “warning” would have a negative impact on Korea’s national image.No, seriously, he did. This is not an Onion article.A few days earlier, Korea’s Foreign Ministry announced it had already launched a task force composed of related bureaus and departments to keep the MERS outbreak from negatively impacting the national image that could lead to, according to Yonhap, “reducing the number of foreign tourists, fueling anti-Korean sentiment, and adversely affecting the nation’s credit rating.”Now, why didn’t I think of that? When faced with a potentially disastrous

Jun 12, 2015By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

A black man named Eddie Murphy

By Jason Lim When I recently heard about the Duke History professor who replied to an editorial in the New York Times by complaining that “virtually every black has a strange new name that symbolizes their lack of desire for integration,” my thoughts flashed to an old Eddie Murphy interview. In a way that was at once incisive, uncomfortable, and funny when he was at his best, Murphy said that he sometimes found himself wandering how a black man like himself ended up with an Irish name.You’d think a Duke History professor would know the answer better than most. Rather than a black man named DeAndre, Diallo, or even KuntaKinte, perhaps a black man named Eddie Murphy is what’s truly strange.But maybe not as strange as black man who shares the same last name as Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War: Shelton Jackson Lee, otherwise known as Spike.He might be better remembered as the tiny guy yelling, “Do you know, do you know, do you know?” in vintage Nike commercials with Michael Jordan,

May 29, 2015By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

This is mindfulness

By Jason LimRecently, there has been a spateful of articles in The New York Times and other mainstream American press about how ``mindfulness” has become the latest spiritual, self-help de jour, coopted by trendy spiritual gurus and executive coaches alike to promise everything from personal happiness and wellbeing to better corporate decision-making and higher bottom-lines."Mindfulness has reached such a level of hipness that it is now suggested as a cure for essentially every ailment. Anxious? Broke? Sneezing? Definitely try meditating,” quips Anna North writing in The New York Times about mindfulness being used to denote everything and anything.Along similar vein, Tomas Rocha in The Atlantic quotes Dr. Willoughby Britton, an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior who works at the Brown University Medical School. Britton explains mindfulness in the context of the Theravadin Buddhist tradition: "mindfulness is about vipassana, a specific type of insight … into the three characteristics of experience.”These are also known as the three marks of e

May 15, 2015By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Read more

Who's the real Captain Kirk?

Why Angela but not Abe?

Amnesty International and sex work

What is Japan to Korea?

Big data lessons from Ashley Madison

Leadership lesson of Megachurches

Black, Hispanic, Jewish Korean American

Korea's national image epidemic

A black man named Eddie Murphy

This is mindfulness

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