Opinion - The Korea Times

What's the big deal about SAT cheating?

By Jason Lim Koreans are once again beating themselves up because of the SATs.The Educational Testing Service (ETS), which administers the SATs on behalf of the College Board, withdrew the biology section from the June 1 SATs. This came after the wholesale cancellation of the May 4 SATs.According to the Wall Street Journal, ``the latest decision marks the third SAT cancellation for South Korea within the past month due to suspected cheating with leaked test materials. Test-prep center officials say the exam booklets are illegally sold for thousands of dollars to students and their parents from brokers.”And this happened because the Korean law enforcement authorities raided a Hagwon suspected of involvement in enabling cheating and discovered that staff there were leaking test questions. So, they informed ETS accordingly, leading to the cancellation.The general diagnosis over the whys and wherefores of this incident seems to point toward Korea’s hyper-competitive culture of academic excellence as a means of getting ahead in life. This has led to a win-at-all-cost ment

May 31, 2013By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

What my wife's breasts mean to me

By Jason LimWhen I first read about Angelina Jolie’s piece in the New York Times about her double mastectomy, my thoughts flashed immediately to the only breasts that mattered to me: my wife’s. As we all do, I asked myself the obvious “what if” questions. What if the doctors had told my wife that she faced the same odds that Angelina Jolie did ― 87% of risk of breast cancer and 50 percent of ovarian cancer? Would we have done the same?And the answer was a resounding yes. Especially with an 18-month-old baby who has just found out that he had the joyous ability and power to whisper, speak, scream, and cry, “Mommy,” for hours on end without getting the least bit tired. It’s lovely. Really.Of course, the decision would be a heart wrenching one. And, as Angelina admonished, I would be right there by my wife’s side, supportive and cuddly, through the whole process. I would walk her through the inevitable emotional roller coaster of the momentous decision and painful experience, giving her all the reassurance that she needs to feel like a who

May 17, 2013By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Japan on late-night TV in China

By Jason LimThe Wall Street Journal recently reported that Shinzo Abe supposedly said the following when asked by a fellow lawmaker about his views on the 1995 Murayama Statement that apologized for Japanese colonial behavior: “The definition of what constitutes an 'invasion' has yet to be established in academia or in the international community. Things that happened between nations will look different depending on which side you view them from."Translated into more mundane language, Abe basically said, “It depends.” Needless to say, this response created a firestorm of public and diplomatic controversy, with even the Washington Post getting into the act with an editorial decrying Abe’s inability to face the past.Rightly so. The above reply was such a cheeky, slippery response wholly unworthy of the real suffering of the Korean teenage girls raped by Japanese Imperial soldiers, Chinese prisoners of war experimented on in the Harbin 731 labs in Manchuria, or hundreds of thousands of ordinary people brutalized in Nanking.It’s not that I am not sympathetic

May 3, 2013By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

What's terrifying about terrorism?

By Jason LimThis past Monday, three people, including an 8-year-old boy, were killed by a terrorist’s bomb, and more than 170 people were injured.The boy was waiting for his dad to finish the Boston Marathon when he was killed. Others were similarly waiting for their friends and loved ones to finish the race and undoubtedly looking forward to a post-race celebration that would mark such a wonderful feat. The dead and injured were not doing anything that would expose them to lethal danger. They were not Marines in combat zones in Afghanistan or Iraq. They were not Navy SEALs hunting down Osama Bin Laden. There were not even thrill seekers jumping out of an airplane for fun. And yet, they were killed. By a bomb. At the finish line of the Boston Marathon.And that’s what’s initially so terrifying about terrorism. That it’s so random, non-discriminatory, and senseless. And it’s this senselessness that frightens us because we can’t plan for it. And if we can’t plan for it, then we can’t prepare for it. And if we can’t prepare for i

Apr 19, 2013By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

What's President Park's problem?

By Jason Lim A recent editorial in these very pages complained that President Park’s “creative economy” appears to be more a campaign buzzword than a fully defined policy direction.At least creative economy is better named than the newly-created Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, for which Park should have gotten more grief. With a name like that, no wonder the first nominee refused the position. After all, who but the Pope can take on the responsibility of creating the future? Perhaps the Dalai Lama will work as his deputy and fill in when the Pope is feeling non-miraculous.All kidding aside, President Park did hint that a creative economy will be built on two pillars of science and technology and information communication. With that hint, the picture starts becoming clearer. Creative economy is basically one that relies on innovation to drive new markets and growth. And since these two pillars already provide much of the strength to Korea’s economy, it makes sense to rely on them; the whole Korean economic house is already built on them anywa

Apr 5, 2013By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

SCARF down your brain

By Jason LimThis is the second part of my two part column on the neuroscience behind change. In the first column, I spoke about how the brain sees every new situation in black and white: will this help or hurt my survival? In other words, will this kill me or help me live? Threat vs. Reward is the fundamental organizing principle of the human brain.The tricky part of change is that it’s automatically perceived by the brain as a threat because it presents the brain with a different “pattern” from the one that it is familiar with. And depending on the degree of change and the person’s prior experience with change (usually bad), the threat perception could so large as to trigger what Daniel Goleman described as the “Amygdala Hijack.”This means that the emotional brain, sensing a threat, hijacks the rational brain and reacts disproportionately to the perceived threat. Needless to say, this is not conducive to a successful change management, since the rational (prefrontal cortex) is exactly what’s needed to make the new connections, innovate new p

Mar 22, 2013By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Neuroscience of change

By Jason LimChange is hard. It’s so hard that people die rather than change. Studies have shown only one in nine people who have undergone coronary bypass surgery adopts a healthier lifestyle.It’s not that others don’t see the value of changing their lifestyle, but they just don’t follow through on the change. And it’s not just individuals. What about organizational change? According to a recent McKinsey study, only 30 percent of organizational change management effort succeeds. Personally, I think even 30 percent is probably wishful thinking.Why? Because our brain hates change.Let’s examine how our brain evolved. It evolved and was fine-tuned to the utmost degree to keep us alive when every encounter was literally a matter of life or death. To put it another way, to eat or be eaten.See that yellow greyish, lumbering animal slithering through the Savannah grassland? Will that thing eat me or do I have a chance to kill and eat it? That was the primary survival question that we ask our brain to answer. If our brain came up with the wrong answer, we d

Mar 8, 2013By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

South Korea as hostage

By Jason Lim Imagine that you are on a highjacked bus. A suicide bomber with a powerful bomb strapped to his body has you in a vice-lock from behind with a knife pointed at your jugular. By the tone of his voice and coiled readiness of his body, you can tell that he is ready to either plunge the knife into your neck or detonate the bomb. Outside, you hear sirens and police yelling at the suicide bomber to surrender peacefully and come out, or else. There are sure to be sharpshooters all around the bus.  Now imagine that the suicide bomber is your blood brother. That is roughly the situation facing Northeast Asia right now. The main hostage with a knife at his neck is South Korea. The suicide bomber and hostage taker is North Korea. The police and the sharpshooters are the U.S. with perhaps a contingent of Chinese troops waiting in the background to pick up the pieces if everything blows up. Then there are the Japanese who want this suicide bomber to blow himself to smithereens as long as Japan is not touched, lest she becomes the second hostage. What are the options?&n

Mar 1, 2013By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

'Cluod you raed this?'

By Jason LimNo, I am not suffering from a severe case of dyslexia. I am just trying to make the following point: aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in what order the ltteers in a word are, the only iprmoantnt thing is that the first and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae.The point I am trying to make with this amusing but enlightening example is about English education in Korea; more specifically, the two things that I have always found lacking in English as a Foreign Language learning system in Korea.The first is that Koreans are not consistently and persistently exposed to the very simple and easy expression patterns that make up the majority of communication in any language. In other words, Koreans can dissect and understand complex sentences in English, but they can’t easily create sentences of their own because they don’t have instinctive access to those building–block expressions and patterns. Therefore, Korean students often come up with convoluted sentences that are not generally comprehensible because they don&rsquo

Feb 8, 2013By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Will China block unification?

By Jason LimWill China block an eventual Korean unification? That was the question explored by the U.S. Senate Republican staff members recently in a report primarily drafted by Keith Luse, a long-time senior aide to the recently retired Senator Richard Lugar and an East Asian expert. And the answer is, ``Yes.”The report points out two major reasons for China’s opposition to Korean unification.One, China has historical claims to parts of North and South Korean territory. The Northeast Project of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences is a prime case in point, as many in Korea see this supposed academic research project as a thinly veiled attempt by the Chinese to justify a potential history grab from Goguryeo and Balhae and any attendant land claims.In other words, if the Northeast Project can academically ``prove” that Goguryeo and Balhae were really offshoots of the larger Chinese nation, then it stands to reason that the historical, cultural, and territorial legacy of these two ancient nations belong to modern China, not Korea.Two, China values the current status

Jan 25, 2013By Jason Lim

Jason Lim

Read more

What's the big deal about SAT cheating?

What my wife's breasts mean to me

Japan on late-night TV in China

What's terrifying about terrorism?

What's President Park's problem?

SCARF down your brain

Neuroscience of change

South Korea as hostage

'Cluod you raed this?'

Will China block unification?

Top 5 stories