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Jason Lim

Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006.

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Jason Lim

Like deer in AI headlights

By Jason LimTwo weeks ago, there was a photo of the pope wearing a thick, luxurious-looking goose-down puffer coat that had many folks fooled into thinking that he had somehow changed his traditional style. As for me, I was more impressed by his seemingly buff physique underneath all that puff, thinking that he underwent the same type of bodily transformation that Jeff Bezos went through during his ascent to becoming the richest person in the world. I was slightly disappointed when it turned out to be fake.Making the rounds on social media this week is a photo of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson being arrested and dragged along by several bobbies, his characteristically wild hair flying about his panicked face. Apparently, it was made in a few seconds with ChatGPT and Midjourney and is obviously fake. But we only know that it's fake because it wasn't backed up by other news sources, such as TV news, print media, etc. There is no way to tell whether the photo itself was fake. A recent publication by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) titled, “Exploiting T

Apr 6, 2023By Jason Lim
Jason Lim

Coffee and sex in De Wallen

By Jason Lim“If you want coffee,” my fellow traveler warned me with a twinkle in his eyes, “don't go into a coffee shop.” This was my first day in Amsterdam, and I was now armed with the first bit of wisdom in navigating the gorgeous city that looked like NYC's SoHo and Italy's Venice spread out all across the whole metropolis. In Amsterdam, don't go to a coffee shop if you want coffee.Apparently, coffee houses in Amsterdam refer to places where they sell recreational drugs. According to the skipper of a canal tour boat that I rode in, selling recreational drugs is still illegal, so the stores would nominally sell “coffee” but give away a small package of drugs along with your cup of coffee. Stores eventually did away with the coffee, but the name stuck. This warning reminded me of the time I first visited Korea as an adult and was warned not to go to a barbershop with the traditional red, white and blue twirling pole if I wanted a haircut. “So, you're telling me not to go to a barbershop if I want a haircut?” I remember asking. “

Mar 23, 2023By Jason Lim
Coffee and sex in De Wallen
Jason Lim

Mothers need a wife

By Jason LimIt's no longer big news that Korea suffers from the lowest birth rate in the world at just 0.78 children per woman in 2022 ― down from 0.81 the previous year. In the absence of a population inflow through immigration, a country needs an average of 2.1 children per woman to maintain the population at the existing level. This isn't an exclusively Korean problem. Other advanced countries, especially in Asia, are suffering from decreasing birth rates. However, as with many other phenomena, Korea tends to experience the macro trend in a more acute fashion. It seems to be getting worse. In a recent survey conducted by Park Jeong-min, a professor of social welfare at Seoul National University, a mere 4 percent of unmarried Korean women in their 20s and 30s said that marriage and childbearing are essential in their lives. Money has been thrown at this problem but to no avail. As usual, the government is urged to enact policies to change housing, education, and inequality issues in order to reverse this trend. However, President Yoon Suk Yeol recently admitted that the government

Mar 7, 2023By Jason Lim
Jason Lim

Automating inspiration

By Jason LimDavid Brooks, in his recent New Times Column titled, “In the Age of A.I., Major in Being Human,” writes, “This is what many of us notice about art or prose generated by AI. It's often bland and vague. It's missing a humanistic core. It's missing an individual person's passion, pain, longings and a life of deeply felt personal experiences. It does not spring from a person's imagination, bursts of insight, anxiety and joy that underlie any profound work of human creativity.” Considering that we often see what we want to see, Brook's judgment of the quality of AI generated content sounds more like sour grapes than objective criticism. I have always been skeptical of the claim that great masterpieces somehow “speak” to us in a universal way. Rather, I believe we are inspired by the masterpieces because we project our experiences, values, and pain onto them and mostly because we were taught by others to feel this way because certain pieces were masterpieces while others were not. I am not saying that there are no differences between a DaVinc

Feb 20, 2023By Jason Lim
Jason Lim

Of course Gwen Stefani can be Japanese

By Jason LimGwen Stefani caused a minor ruckus recently when she proclaimed in an interview that she identified as Japanese. She was referring to the time in her childhood when she lived in Japan due to her father's work with Yamaha. “That was my Japanese influence and that was a culture that was so rich with tradition, yet so futuristic [with] so much attention to art and detail and discipline and it was fascinating to me,” Stefani said, adding that her own visit to Harajuku led to an epiphany. “I said, 'My God, I'm Japanese and I didn't know it.'” Expectedly, charges of cultural appropriation were leveled at her.Growing up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx and going to a private high school with a very high well-to-do Jewish population, I inevitably grew up with many of the sensibilities and cultural mannerisms of my fellow students. I cursed in Yiddish, cracked the latest Jackie Mason jokes, commiserated over my best friend's difficulties in memorizing the Torah verses for Bar Mitzvah and thought it was natural to go to the Hamptons over the weekends an

Jan 29, 2023By Jason Lim
Jason Lim

Nepo babies into 'Neo' babies

By Jason LimNepo is short for nepotism, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as, “the practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives, friends or associates, especially by giving them jobs.” Nepo babies, therefore, are the children of the rich, famous and powerful who are given exposure, opportunities and oftentimes jobs, which form the platform upon which their respective wealth, fame and power can grow. Nepo babies can occur in every industry, but it has recently become the trendy word describing the children of Hollywood celebrities whose path to success has been paved by the money and access that their parents wield. Vulture's article titled, “How a Nepo Baby Is Born,” started the latest round of public debate that pits the nepo babies on one side and the critics of privilege on the other. Of course, this isn't just a Hollywood phenomenon. Korea, with its burgeoning K-pop world of riches and prestige, has its share of nepo babies, many of them not too eager to showcase their familial connections. It's also not just an entertainmen

Jan 8, 2023By Jason Lim
Jason Lim

Certainty addiction

By Jason LimMy family was driving to Vermont to ski for a few days now that the kid was out of school for winter break. It was one of those hazy shade of winter days as the sun struggled to break through its own ennui to care barely enough to shed some light with only grudging warmth. While plowed, the roads were still slippery, decorated with the brilliantly white remnants of a furious snowstorm that passed the region less than 24 hours ago, with tree branches laboring under a late-term pregnancy of frozen snow. In short, this wasn't northern Virginia where we drove up from or even New York City where I grew up. This was a strange land. Then I missed the exit that Google Maps told me to take. I blame the cop who was hiding in a speed trap right before the exit and distracted me. “Wasn't that the exit?” My wife waved her hands as we drove by. I winced inwardly but said casually, “No worries, we will take the next one. We only lose five minutes. No sweat.” So, we did take the next one and quickly embarked on an unintended journey through Alice's winter wonderla

Dec 26, 2022By Jason Lim
Jason Lim

Taking refuge in self-absorption

By Jason LimIn the World Cup, the best footballers in the world, at the top of their game, are intently focused on getting a ball somehow past their opposition and into the net. Put it this way, it seems absolutely ridiculous. However, as they say, it's a beautiful game when it all comes together. The beauty is not in the win or loss. It's in the process, the build-up, the near misses, the key opportunities and the goals. Moreover, the beauty is in the passionate but innocent focus of the moment that is etched on the player's faces as they wince in pain, disappointment and even despair until that one brilliant moment when the ball finds the back of the net.I never imagined that focused self-absorption could be so beautiful. But that's what the best athletes are all about. It's about being in the zone, so intently focused that they tune out everything around them except for the singular objective of scoring, whether that's shooting the ball into a net, kicking it in between two posts, or swishing it into a basket. Sure, they are performing. And people are paying good money to watch th

Dec 11, 2022By Jason Lim
Jason Lim

World Cup and affiliations

By Jason LimBeing a Tottenham and Son Heung-min fan (who isn't), I found the scene of Son embracing his English Premier League teammate from Uruguay, Rodrigo Bentancur, before their World Cup match familiar but interesting. Son is well-known for being a team player and having warm relationships with his teammates. However, no one bats an eye when a player recalibrates his allegiance and does his best to beat his teammate who is now on the opposite side of the turf. Actually, the same would apply if Son was sold to another club, and had to play against his old team.This is obvious and expected since the context of the allegiance has now shifted. In the case of the World Cup, it has shifted from the club to the nation, which is generally considered a higher level of allegiance than the one predicated on a club affiliation, which is primarily a business relationship. So, an affiliation based on nationality is deemed to be of a higher calling than one based on bread and butter, although it's the latter that actually gives you the means to make a successful and privileged living. It's als

Nov 27, 2022By Jason Lim
Jason Lim

Korean Weltschmerz

By Jason LimIt was the mid-1990s. It was the first time that I ever went to Korea by myself. It was right after college graduation, and I hadn't been back to Korea since I had left when I was nine years old. Since my family didn't go to church, I hadn't even had a lot of contact with Korean Americans while growing up. But there is something akin to a pilgrimage for a Korean American in wanting to visit Korea as an adult ― a desire to validate some part of the identity, an unexplained hollowness that yearns to be filled. Looking back, this is probably pretty common for someone who has lived his entire life as a minority, an outlier, an exception surrounded by the dominant homogenous sea of the majority, no matter how accepted and welcomed you might have been. Something happened on that flight that has remained with me for the rest of my life. It was one of those experiences that makes little impression at first, but the indentation deepens in your psychic landscape as you mature and get older. An elderly gentleman was sitting next to me on the 15-hour flight. I was in the aisle seat,

Nov 13, 2022By Jason Lim
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