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  Op-Ed: When sanctions change the rules: The world they create Editor's Note: The following opinion article was contributed by the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Seoul. SEOUL, September 04 (AJP) - No policy exists in a vacuum. A measure designed to pressure one country can, over time, alter the calculations of many others. Companies look for new ways to trade. Banks develop new approaches to managing risk. Governments seek to reduce their dependence on financial networks and supply chains that can become instruments o September 4, 2026
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  Editorial: Relocate public institutions, but get the order right Move, merge or disappear. Hundreds of South Korean public institutions and their employees still do not know which fate awaits them. The government on Thursday put roughly 350 public institutions based in the Seoul metropolitan area under review for relocation while separately unveiling a sweeping restructuring plan that would reduce the number of public entities and subsidiaries by 109 through mergers, consolidation and other changes. Yet which institution will move where &md September 4, 2026
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  OPINION: Is anywhere safe from climate disaster? Planet Earth has suffered and is still enduring a punishing summer in 2026. Last week, a massive section of glacier-covered mountain near the Nepal-Tibet border simply gave way, plunging roughly 1,200 meters into the valley below and unleashing an avalanche of ice, rock, mud and water that tore through settlements along the river. The collapse was so violent that it generated seismic energy equivalent to a magnitude 5.2 event, briefly leading observers to believe an earthquake September 1, 2026
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  Editorial: Lee's Cabinet overhaul needs discipline, not haste President Lee Jae Myung has launched a broad Cabinet reset as his approval rating slides sharply barely into his second year in office, replacing six ministers at once in a bid to regain political momentum and accelerate delivery on the economy, housing and reform. The decision is understandable. What the administration needs now is not another prolonged season of personnel speculation but demonstrable results, particularly on the economy and housing. Lee's approval rati August 30, 2026
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  OPINION: Prevention is the best cure. But has the BOK overprescribed? South Korea's central bank on Thursday sent an unequivocal message to markets and borrowers through back-to-back rate hikes rarely seen outside extraordinary conditions. The diagnosis is that the artificial intelligence boom has given new traction to a Korean economy that had underperformed its potential growth rate of around 2 percent for nearly a decade - except during the post-pandemic rebound - and that deleveraging must begin as inflation and interest rates are unlikely August 27, 2026
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  OPINION: A stronger won can buy BOK more time South Korean policymakers spent much of the first half wrestling with a stubbornly weak won anchored around levels associated with previous periods of financial stress, even as the stock market roared to records and the economy posted its strongest growth in nearly five years on a semiconductor bonanza. The Bank of Korea enters this week's rate-setting meeting with an almost opposite financial-market picture. The won is at its strongest since September 2025. Bond yields hav August 24, 2026
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  Truth-Seeker's Odyssey: From world of gods to world of man - Part 2 This is part 2 of a two-part column series by Aju Media Group's senior columnist Abe Kwak. 5. The Pale Blue Dot: Ithaca for All Humanity Let us leave, for a moment, the Mediterranean of Odysseus and turn our eyes toward space. Voyager 1, launched in 1977, photographed Earth on February 14, 1990, from a distance of roughly 6 billion kilometers. Against the immensity of space, Earth appeared smaller than a single pixel — a tiny point suspended in a shaft of sunli August 20, 2026
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  Truth-Seeker's Odyssey: From world of gods to world of man This is part 1 of a two-part column series by Aju Media Group's senior columnist Abe Kwak. A single film has summoned the world back to the seas of ancient Greece, nearly 3,000 years after Homer first sang of them. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has filled theaters in major cities around the world and rekindled an extraordinary interest in Homer, Greek mythology, the Trojan War and the origins of Western philosophy. Film critics, historians, philosophers, writers August 19, 2026
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  OPINION: Can today's needs outweigh history in Korea-Japan relationship? Eighty-one years after liberation, South Korea and Japan have learned how to work together without having settled how to remember the past. That may be the most revealing measure of their relationship today. For Koreans, Aug. 15 marks liberation from 35 years of Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945. For Japan, the same date marks the end of World War II — a day to mourn the dead, reflect on the destruction of war and reaffirm the country's postwar commitment to August 15, 2026