[Editorial] Rightful reversal

The ruling Democratic Party of Korea said Monday it had decided not to push the so-called "trial suspension bill," which would halt criminal trials of sitting presidents. The decision came just a day after its spokesman hinted at advancing the bill this month. The party said that it made the decision after consulting the presidential office. It is the right move to abandon the bill seen to be an unfair interference in judicial independence. The trial suspension bill is a revision to the Criminal

Nov. 4, 2025

[Editorial] Gyeongju leap

The world rarely pauses for ceremony these days. Trade wars, transactional alliances and strategic supply chains define the fractured global backdrop. The APEC summit in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, could easily have been a polite gathering with little substance. Instead, it showed that diplomacy can still bend history’s trajectory, offering a critical counternarrative to global pessimism. South Korea’s ancient capital Gyeongju hosted a summit aimed squarely at the future. The theme, “Bu

Nov. 3, 2025

[Editorial] ‘Surprise’ growth

The South Korean economy expanded 1.2 percent in the third quarter from the previous quarter, driven by rising consumption and solid exports. The figure exceeds the 1.1 percent growth anticipated by the Bank of Korea in August and is also the fastest in a year and a half. Growth had lingered around zero percent for four straight quarters after the 1.2 percent posted in the first quarter of 2024. There was great concern that the economy could end up this year at around zero percent. However, the

Oct. 30, 2025

[Editorial] Beyond 4,000

South Korea’s stock market has rarely been accused of exuberance. For much of the past decade, it lagged regional peers, weighed down by export dependence, opaque governance and erratic policy. Yet this autumn the mood has shifted. On Monday, the benchmark Kospi broke the 4,000 mark, setting an all-time record high. The surge, driven by foreign capital and a growing belief that the Lee Jae Myung administration has begun to steady the economic helm, has become a moment of national pride. Yet the

Oct. 29, 2025

[Editorial] Stick to principle

US President Donald Trump said, "I think North Korea is sort of a nuclear power." This was his reply to a question from reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Asia, asking whether he was open to North Korea’s demand to be recognized as a nuclear state as a precondition for dialogue with the US. He also said that the North has a lot of nuclear weapons. His remarks give the impression that he effectively recognizes North Korea's nuclear weapons. Trump told reporters that he is open to meeting

Oct. 28, 2025

[Editorial] Seoul’s diplomatic test

President Lee Jae Myung’s diplomatic agenda this week is less a schedule of meetings and more a high-stakes tightrope walk across a geopolitical chasm. The journey began Sunday with his attendance at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Malaysia, which is also a precursor to the main event: South Korea’s hosting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province. This diplomatic “super week” culminates in an unprecedented convergence on Korean

Oct. 27, 2025

[Editorial] Alliance arithmetic

When US President Donald Trump demands that South Korea and Japan each provide colossal sums — $350 billion and $550 billion, respectively — to invest in the US, it stretches the limits of diplomacy and common sense. What might appear as a hard-nosed negotiation is, in truth, an act of financial coercion dressed up as economic nationalism. Even the Wall Street Journal, in an editorial, called the plan unrealistic and warned of its implications for fiscal oversight. The WSJ’s editorial goes furth

Oct. 24, 2025

[Editorial] Press freedoms

The ruling Democratic Party of Korea on Monday announced measures to root out false and manipulated information. The party plans to process the related bill within the year. Under the bill, news companies and YouTubers would be slapped with punitive damages if they disseminate false or manipulated information maliciously. Such damages could amount to up to five times the loss calculated by the court. If media organizations spread disinformation repeatedly, they could be fined up to 1 billion won

Oct. 23, 2025

[Editorial] Housing policy dispute

South Korea’s housing debate has long been framed as a moral issue — the young versus the rich, renters versus owners, Seoul versus the rest. Yet at its core, it is an economic one. Successive governments have treated real estate not as an ecosystem but as a battlefield, swinging between populist regulation and speculative deregulation. The result is a market that delivers neither affordability nor stability, and a public that has lost confidence in both builders and bureaucrats. The Lee Jae Myu

Oct. 22, 2025

[Editorial] E-government holes

The e-government that South Korea has boasted is having a rough time. Serious holes came to light in the government computer network after a battery fire at the National Information Resources Service in September paralyzed electronic government services. The Onnara System, an online platform used by civil servants when they work, is said to have been hacked and data leaked for about three years. It is the first time that the system managed by the Interior Ministry was infiltrated. About 650 elec

Oct. 21, 2025

[Editorial] The handcuffed generation

When 64 young South Koreans arrived at Incheon Airport in handcuffs on Saturday, the scene looked less like a crime roundup than a mirror held up to the nation’s quiet tragedy. They were not hardened criminals, but victims of a cruel equation: despair multiplied by debt, driven by the promise of “10 million won ($7,030) a month.” Their return from Cambodia, where they were detained for online scams, exposed not only the brutality of foreign criminal networks, but structural neglect that has left

Oct. 20, 2025

[Editorial] Collateral damage

China’s decision on Oct. 14 to bar transactions between Chinese entities and five US-based affiliates of Hanwha Ocean is a sharp escalation in the economic contest between Beijing and Washington. It also delivers a clear warning to Seoul. The Chinese Commerce Ministry justified the measure by saying the US affiliates “assisted and supported the US government’s Section 301 investigation” into China’s maritime and shipbuilding sectors. That is Beijing’s stated rationale — not an accusation about e

Oct. 17, 2025

[Editorial] Nobel laureates’ lessons

The 2025 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences went to three economists — Joel Mokyr at Northwestern University, Philippe Aghion at College de France and Peter Howitt at Brown University. They were honored as the prize recipients for their work on how innovation and the forces of "creative destruction" can drive economic growth. Their study was significant in that it has awakened people to the importance of innovation in the age of the "fourth industrial revolution," characterized by advance

Oct. 16, 2025

[Editorial] Productive longevity

South Korea has entered a demographic inversion that few advanced economies have faced so abruptly. As of the end of 2024, those in their 70s outnumbered people in their 20s. The milestone is more than a statistical curiosity; it exposes the structural limits of a labor market still built for a younger, expanding workforce. Unless the Korean government acts to turn longevity into a new source of growth, the country’s model — strained by a falling fertility rate and stagnating output — risks hard

Oct. 15, 2025

[Editorial] Ever-present risk

Trade war tensions between the US and China are escalating again, ending months of an uneasy truce. Beijing said Thursday that it would restrict its exports of rare earths. The following day, US President Donald Trump said he would impose an additional 100 percent tariff on imports from China beginning Nov. 1. That would bring US tariffs on China to 130 percent, nearing the 145 percent rate Trump imposed in April before the US agreed to shelve them while China paused its retaliatory duties. The

Oct. 14, 2025