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The Korea Times

Entertainment & Arts

SCMP
Asia

The Korea Times

Opinion

Columnists

Jason Lim

The precious mundane

My wife and I just listened to a Zoom call for the parents of kids who have entered into a national chess tournament that's happening in a few weeks. There are over 1,600 kids coming to this tournament, many flying in from all over the country. The organizers were explaining everything from how the ratings are calculated to where to go and sit in the conference hall while your kids are playing a game. In a word, they were explaining all the critical, mundane details that make a huge conference tick.

2023-05-16 16:47

The unbearable lightness of secrets

The recent U.S. intelligence leak that triggered tortured handwringing in Korea over “Should we get angry at the U.S. or not for spying on us?” is as immature as it is irrelevant to the real significance of the incident. The case of Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old Air National Guardsman accused of leaking classified documents to friends on a gaming server, represents two new phenomena in the old world of cloak and dagger.

2023-04-20 16:45

Like deer in AI headlights

Two 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.

2023-04-06 16:50

Coffee and sex in De Wallen

“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.

2023-03-23 17:05

Mothers need a wife

It'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.

2023-03-07 16:50

Automating inspiration

David 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.”

2023-02-20 16:40

Of course Gwen Stefani can be Japanese

Gwen Stefani caused a minor ruckus recently when she proclaimed in an interview that she identifies 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.

2023-01-29 16:50

Nepo babies into 'Neo' babies

Nepo 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.

2023-01-08 16:50

Certainty addiction

My 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 ...

2022-12-26 16:50

Taking refuge in self-absorption

In 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 br...

2022-12-11 16:55

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