중앙데일리

[GLOBAL EYE]Aspects of South’s ‘mental illness’

The six-party dialogue on North Korea’s nuclear program, the death of Hyundai Asan chairman Chung Mong-hun, the drifting Mount Geumgang tourism operation, and the violent Hanchongryun demonstrations have stirred the nation, and all these boil down to the existence of North Korea. Watching controversies created by them, I am worried that the schizophrenia of our society is worsening. First, the six-nation dialogue reveals how Pyeong-yang’s nuclea…

Aug 14,2003
[FORUM]Wars, plunder and history

Many historians who study the history of civilization say that invasions in modern times have been wars for the plunder of cultural assets. Of course, conquerors who carried off booty have existed throughout history, but the founder of systemic, organized plunder of other countries’ cultural relics was Napoleon Bonaparte. He perceived that culture is an asset to national power, and brought back assets from as far away as the Middle East and Afric…

Aug 14,2003
[FOUNTAIN]Making presidents presidential

After becoming president of the United States following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson expressed the relationship between the man and the job by saying that the presidency exceeds the president. Grand titles such as leader of the nation, protector of the constitution or head of the administration, and such major powers as the right to declare war, the right to grant pardons and the right to command the army can overwhelm a…

Aug 14,2003
[OUTLOOK]Strategy required for 6-way talks

The wheels of history turn ceaselessly even in the middle of great disappointment, shock and tragedy. Lately, our society has been experiencing a series of chaotic developments, but the march to the future has never stopped. It is surely a constructive step forward that Pyeongyang, which had been fervently opposing multilateral discussions over its nuclear weapons development program, announced that, “Through the initiative and peace-loving ef…

Aug 13,2003
[CULTURAL DIMENSIONS]Resolving labor-business conflict

Over the past few months, “anti-business attitudes” has become a popular phrase in Korea. The term refers to the increase in labor activism that has emerged from the perceived pro-labor policies of the Roh Moo-hyun administration. In a survey of 22 countries reported recently, Korea ranked first in anti-business attitudes, indicating that the issue may be more than media hype. Interestingly, the survey was conducted in 2001. If the same survey…

Aug 13,2003
[FOUNTAIN]Mug shots on the cash

Money, money, money. Many Koreans are talking about it ― whether there should be a 100,000 ($84) note and what design should be on the new bill. I’ve heard lots of opinions from the people I’ve met lately. Park Seung, the chairman of the Bank of Korea, is trying to squelch the speculation. He said recently, “We cannot print new money right now because it takes at least two years’ preparation, and the economic situation is not right.” But tal…

Aug 13,2003
[OUTLOOK]Dodging the revenge of time

“My unhappiness today is the revenge of time once ill-spent.” No one is free from the truth in this quote attributed to Napoleon. This truth also held for Yang Gil-seung, the president’s personal secretary who was discharged from his job last week. Mr. Yang would probably want to erase the night of June 28 and the following dawn from his life if he could. Yet one's past deeds are something that cannot be erased. Time, alas, cannot be recalle…

Aug 11,2003
[NOTEBOOK]‘My men’ aren’t always the best

Right after he was elected president, Kim Dae-jung chose Lee Hun-jai to head the government’s restructuring drive. During Mr. Kim’s days as president-elect, Mr. Lee served as the chief coordinator of an emergency economic task force. In the first half of Mr. Kim’s presidency, Mr. Lee led the restructuring process as the first Financial Supervisory Commis-sion chairman and then as minister of finance and economy. But Mr. Lee was not one of the …

Aug 11,2003
[FOUNTAIN]Freud and Chung

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, said that humans have not only an instinct to live but also an instinct to shed a tough life and be calm forever. If he had analyzed the suicide of Chung Mong-hun, the chairman of Hyundai Asan Corp., he might have found a tug-of-war between the instinct to live and that to die, in which the latter won. Karl Menninger, a psychoanalyst from the United States, developed Freud’s theories. He explained the…

Aug 11,2003
[OUTLOOK]Participation, but not by media

The renowned communications scholar and international media critic John Merrill has theorized a three-stage development of a government’s attempts to control the media. A government will first attack the press, then only allow selected information to be printed and finally go into the media industry by itself. Recently, the Korean government announced that it would publish an online government newspaper contributed to by eleven government agenc…

Aug 11,2003

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