Seoul police announced Thursday that they have rounded up 73 people involved in racing their luxury cars on public roads during the wee hours of the night. From May 2015 to May of this year, police found 73 people who participated in 22-kilometer (13.6-mile) races from the Jangam Station in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi, to the Songchu three-way intersection and back. 

The racers were grouped into twos and threes by the horsepower of their cars, and as many as 10 to 15 such groups participated in the midnight race from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m., according to police. The participants drove at about 60 kilometers-per-hour until they hit the Sapaesan Tunnel, a 4-kilometer-long four-lane tunnel, where they reached speeds of 200 to 324 kilometers per hour. The speed limit in the tunnel is 100 kilometers per hour. Some motor service center owners helped racers tweak the electronic control unit of their cars in order to allow extreme speeding. Police said some of them received roughly 3 million won ($2,649) per car. Among the 73 drivers booked by police, only one was a woman. All 73 face the charge of violating the Road Traffic Act and five have been arrested for being chief organizers of the races. Six men were found to have raced at least 100 times since May of last year. “We always knew there were these reckless drivers on the road,” said Jeon Seon-seon, a police officer in charge of the investigation at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency. “But it has always been hard to catch them in the act. We began our investigation in February and have been working since then.” The officer added that they caught one of the group’s leaders when about 100 people gathered in a parking lot on Some Sevit Island on April 15 to show off their Porsches, Mercedes-Benzes, BMWs, Ferraris, Lamborghinis and more. 

They also gathered to encourage more people to participate in the races. But Jeon said that the police lacked the evidence needed to arrest them at the time. Since then, authorities have caught groups of cars leaving Jangam Station and passing through the Songchu three-way intersection repeatedly. “We rounded up suspects by looking into the blog sites and online communities of race participants and leaders,” Jeon said. The five chief organizers were all engaged in an online community of foreign or luxury car owners, whose membership count ranges from 3,000 to 77,000. The driver’s licenses of the five arrested individuals have been revoked, and 66 others have been suspended for 40 days. Among the five arrested for organizing the races, a 38-year-old driver surnamed Park participated in 312 races since May of last year. Park got into an accident on May 17 during a race in the Sapaesan Tunnel. The BMW that he was driving hit a Mercedes-Benz, then grazed the wall of the tunnel before flipping over. 

According to police, some 70 percent of the 73 participants are white-collar workers, including doctors, accountants and businessmen. They said about 71 percent of them were in their 30s. They also said that 60 percent of the participants’ cars are priced at over 100 million won. Seoul authorities seized 10 cars from chief organizers and race participants.

The value of Line Corporation, a Tokyo-based messaging app subsidiary of Korean portal site Naver, has amounted to an estimated 10 trillion won ($8.8 billion) after a successful debut Thursday and Friday on the New York and Tokyo stock exchanges that took even market experts by surprise. Not only is this the first Korean company to make a dual listing, it is also the largest tech initial public offering (IPO) of the year. Line shares closed at 4,245 yen ($40), 32 percent higher than the IPO price of 3,300 yen per share, on the Tokyo market Friday. 

Line is the seventh-most popular chat app in the world, with 215 million monthly users. It is available in 230 countries in 19 languages, with two-thirds of its users concentrated in four Asian markets: Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia. There was great interest in Line’s IPO even before the Tokyo market opened on Friday. In fact, because of the surge in orders for the company’s stocks, trading was held in Japan for almost an hour and a half before resuming at around 10:35 a.m. As soon as the stocks went public, the price surged 48 percent to 4,900 yen, and in less than 10 minutes, it jumped as high as 51.5 percent to 5,000 yen. The situation was similar in New York on Thursday, local time, where Line stocks closed 26.6 percent higher than the IPO price of $32.84 per share, ending the day at $41.58. During the trading day, it rose as much as 35 percent to $44.49. “The market capitalization is near 10 trillion won, which is about the amount that was expected,” Oh Dong-hwan, an analyst at Samsung Securities, said. 

Other analysts, though, were surprised by the amount of hype. “I didn’t expect it to be this successful, since the internet-related market is very hard to predict due to its volatility,” said Kim Chang-kwan, an analyst at Mirae Asset. Kim said the market valuation will likely amount to around 12.6 trillion won when adding the currency difference between the yen and won. It is likely that Line will continue to enjoy hefty revenue. The company currently leads major markets in several Asian countries, including in Japan, where there are 68 million users. In Korea, though, the app has only 16 million users, since rival Kakao still dominates with its messaging app. In 2013, Line’s revenue amounted to 39.6 billion yen. The following year, it doubled to 86.7 billion yen, and last year, revenue once again rose nearly 39 percent to 120.4 billion yen. 

“It appears that global investors thought highly of Line’s potential for further growth. Line and Naver will continue to be good choices for investment,” said Oh of Samsung Securities. “In addition to Line’s IPO, a strong Japanese yen against the Korean won will help the company’s profit and value. The company’s profit is growing rapidly, and investors are really interested in the mobile-related market.” Meanwhile, shares of Naver, Line’s parent company, fell 2.45 percent on the Kospi on Friday.

The 43-year relationship of Great Britain and the European Union is about to end because of the result of the recent referendum held in the country. The electoral process revealed that Britons want their country to be out of the politico-economic union that is composed of 28 European countries. Because of this, Great Britain may become the first nation to ever leave the European Union.

Experts predict that a lot of changes, and possibly, new problems may arise in the future because the British Exit, also known as Brexit, is only the beginning. Two years of negotiation regarding the political, economic, constitutional, and diplomatic changes between Britain and the European Union is expected. 

They add that the anticipated positive results of the Brexit such as economic stability, a better control of borders, and more employment opportunities for locals may come later than expected. This is because Great Britain still needs to follow the rules and laws imposed by the European Union while the separation is being processed. Major changes that Britons want to be implemented once they are out of the union can only be done after the separation has been finalized.

Right now, Great Britain, the members of the European Union, and many other countries around the world have Brexit-related issues that they have to deal with. For example, hours after the announcement of the voting results, David Cameron resigned from his position as the country’s prime minister. A lot of other politicians followed him while those who stayed continue to have misunderstandings.

In terms of the economy, the Brexit also had immediate grave effects. The euro plunged more than 10 percent against the dollar which is its lowest since 1985. The status of the euro continues tofluctuate as days pass. This causes major economic instability in countries that have the euro as their currency.

Moreover, investors seemed to have had an exodus from the European Union as they pulled out plenty of their investments or assets and fled to other countries like Japan. They say that taking business-related risks in European countries is not a very wise thing to do during this time of uncertainty in the area.

There are a lot of other major effects that can be expected from the Brexit. However, for now, the rest of the world can only wait for the next step that will be done by Great Britain and the European Union. Some say there might be a second referendum while others say the process of separation should start as soon as possible.

An iconic figure when it comes to golf in Korea, Pak Se-ri left behind a 18-year career at the LPGA after the U.S Women’s Open this past weekend. Pak, who earned her stardom at the U.S. Women’s Open in 1998, bid farewell to her pro career 18 years later at the same event, when she failed to make the cut after the second round on Saturday. 

Pak was in the limelight two decades ago when she inspired Korea, which was undergoing economic turmoil from the 1997 Asian financial crisis, with her performance in the U.S. Women’s Open at Blackwolf Run in Kohler, Wisconsin. Then-rookie Pak took off her shoes and socks to hit a ball on the edge of a water hazard and went on to achieve what was considered impossible - a Korean golfer winning a major U.S. event. The entire nation was touched by her boldness and some say it motivated Korea to push forward to end the economic crisis earlier than expected. The end to her career was as emotional as the start. After Saturday’s round, Pak was unable to control her emotions and sobbed until compatriots Choi Na-yeon and Ryu So-yeon came to console her. “I am overcome with emotion right now,” said Pak after the day, unable to speak clearly. “I thought I was going to be OK but I was wrong.” 

After submitting her scorecard, she was greeted by Karrie Webb, a hall of famer from Australia who Pak spent many years playing alongside. “Webb has been my idol and a good friend,” Pak said. “It is very meaningful that I am being sent off from the LPGA by Webb.” Pak may show up for the LPGA KEB Hana Bank Championship, set for Korea this October. However, before the U.S. Women’s Open, Pak announced that this was going to be her last LPGA event in the United States. Pak took part in the U.S. Women’s Open this year through an invitation by the United States Golf Association (USGA), the host of the event. After battling a shoulder injury last season, she had no notable records to speak of, which meant she could not qualify for the major event on her own. Well aware of the situation, the USGA decided invite her. “The U.S. Women’s Open is where my life as a pro golfer really took off so I consider the event more special than any others,” according to Pak. “It means a lot to me that I was able to play my final match in such an event.” 

Pak, who was inducted to the LPGA Hall of Fame in 2007 to become the first Korean to achieve the feat, still holds Korean records in number of LPGA wins with 25, including five major championship victories. Although her career as a player is ending, she will begin the new chapter of her life as a golfer as the head coach of the Korean female golf team in August during the Olympics.

There has been much debate surrounding the death penalty and life sentence. The debate is usually about human rights and money.

Nowadays, another issue is on the rise - denying life-extending medical procedures to the terminally ill. The difference is that these people are not criminals and have not long time to live.

Current advanced medical equipment and technology can keep a person alive for so long that they live longer than expected. Even those who did not have long to live are now living a lot more than the time of death had been set for them.

The terminally ill must live under conditions of heavy and extensive treatments in hospitals to stay alive. Many patients do not prefer the excessive treatments but rather choose less aggressive care methods. Also, they don’t like being locked up in hospitals but rather go to hospice. They’d prefer a more free life than onehooked up to machines.

However, some patients prefer longer lives instead of more freedom. Their families also want to keep them alive longer, though it be under machinery.

Of course, there is the matter of humanity. Many think it wrong to let someone die if there is a way to keep them alive. If there is the chance, then they should have that chance. Opponents of life-extending medical procedures argue that, even though they can live longer, it would be under very bad conditions. Living under those circumstances are not humane either.

The problem concerning money is also significant. The cost of keeping one alive is not cheap. Families pay the expenses for doctors, medicine and other various treatments. Around $55 billion was the average used by Medicare to keep patients alive for two additional months. This is not an ignorable amount. Not only the family, but also insurance companies are burdened.

However, others state monetary value cannot be applied to a life, and that human lives are invaluable. They say it is right to keep them alive at any costs.

The government announced Monday that it plans to build high-speed rail lines in a 2.06 trillion won ($1.8 billion) project to connect Chuncheon to Sokcho, two big cities in Gangwon. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said the Ministry of Strategy and Finance and Korea Development Institute (KDI), a state-run think tank, finished the preliminary evaluation for the project and approved the plan on Friday. It took more than two years to approve the project. “We will try to push forward to start the construction as early as the second half of next year as the project is finally approved,” Ko Yong-seok, a director at the Transport Ministry said. The construction will take about eight years. 

When this construction is complete, travel time from Yongsan Station in Seoul to Sokcho will be 1 hour and 15 minutes. The new rail lines will be 93.9 kilometers (58.3 miles) long connecting Chuncheon to Sokcho and will allow trains to travel up to 250 kilometers (155 miles) per hour. The train will stop in three stations between the Chuncheon to Sokcho route at Hwacheon, Yanggu and Inje and is expected to run 36 times a day. The bus, which currently is the only transportation option available for the routes, takes about 2 hours and 30 minutes. In fact, Gangwon residents longed for the project for some 30 years, or since 1987 when former President Roh Tae-woo announced the project as one of his campaign promises. This was the fourth time the project was evaluated as others were found not as cost-effective. The government found the cost was bigger than its foreseen benefits in 2001, 2010 and 2012. “The current administration has revised some of the projects that would have direct impacts on the local economy to have them get approved such as this railway project since 2013,” said Ko at the Transport Ministry. 

According to the ministry, they have reduced the total amount of the railway project by 64 billion won to get it approved. President Park Geun-hye also emphasized the importance of the project recently. “There are a number of projects such as Chuncheon-Sokcho railway that local people have longed for a long period of time,” said Park at a meeting to discuss trade and investment last week. “These projects can become new growth engines for the local economy when one can find ways to collaborate them with other industries such as tourism and healthcare.” The Trade Ministry said it will help people to travel from the Seoul metropolitan area to northern Gangwon area and will help companies distributing their goods. Additionally, the Trade Ministry added that it will boost Gangwon’s local economy significantly by attracting more tourists. 

The Finance Ministry also approved two other railway projects in the Seoul metropolitan region. One will be 3.5 kilometers long, connecting Ochon Station in Hwaseong, in Gyeonggi, to the major high-speed railway for Seoul to Busan. The travel time from Incheon to Busan will be reduced from 3 hours and 28 minutes to 2 hours and 40 minutes. Another rail line, of 4.7 kilometers, will be built to allow the KTX train to stop at Suwon Station in Gyeonggi. These two projects will cost another 638.7 billion won.

As human beings, we all have “rights.” Some are obvious, some not so. There are newly recognized rights that we have fought to get. One of those that are now being debated is the right to be forgotten. The right to be forgotten ensures individuals the right to request their information to be either deleted from the web database or become unsearchable.

As the name itself suggests, the right to be forgotten is a “right” to be protected. It is distinct from privacy rights. Privacy rights deal with information that is not publicly known, whereas the right to be forgotten involves publicly known information as well. It includes photos and videos of oneself once publicly known. If there is information containing data about him/her that the individual wishes to be removed, then it should be granted based on this right.

There is criticism against the right to be forgotten. If this right is recognized, it may violate one of the most important human rights ― freedom of speech. It could also constitute censorship and a reduction in the freedom of expression.

This right would also make the search results biased, which hurts the neutrality of the Internet. Information shown on search engines would only show the information people want to see, not theunbiased truth.

Also, big data companies would have to go through great lengths to identify third parties with other people’s information to remove it. It would also mean that these ‘big’ data companies many not be as big as they were, with a vast number of information people would request to be eliminated.

On the other hand, people argue with these criticisms saying that the web was not so unbiased before. They claim the net is a big fused storage containing numerous information written by billions of people, so it cannot be neutral. The right would not change the neutrality of the web.

Moreover, as stated before, it is a “right” and it needs to be kept. The information that a person can erase can only be about him/herself and not somebody else’s, so why oppose the right to be forgotten? Everyone has a past that they want people to not see, and this right enables them to make a fresh, clean start.

There is much debate about the right, whether it should be kept or not and to what extent should we allow the obliteration of our past? Still, the question remains: how far do we go to protect the right to be forgotten?

The number of single households in Korea topped the five million level for the first time last year, and some 60 percent of those people were married at least once. According to Statistics Korea on Wednesday, the number of single households hit 5.11 million in October 2015, up 171,000, or 1.3 percent, compared to the previous year. Among the total, 59.2 percent were or are married but are living alone, up 3.5 percent from a year ago. “Many of them said they are living alone because their spouses have passed away or they have divorced,” a Statistics Korea official said. “And the rest said they have spouses that don’t live with them for various reasons such as jobs or education.” 

South Gyeongsang recorded the largest ratio of single households, 33 percent of total households. It was followed by South Jeolla (32.8 percent) and Gangwon (32.1 percent). The ratio was the lowest in Incheon at 24 percent. “Rural areas tend to have more single households since the population in general is aging out there compared to big cities in the nation,” said Shim Won-bo, a director at Statistics Korea. Meanwhile, there were a total of 11.86 million married households as of last October, and in 43.9 percent of them, or 5.21 million households, both spouses work. The ratio of dual-income households was the highest on Jeju Island at 61.4 percent, while it was the lowest in Busan at 37.6 percent. “The figure was high in regions where there are many jobs related to agriculture, fisheries and restaurants,” Shim said. 

According to Statistics Korea, more than 50 percent of Koreans in their 40s and 50s belong to dual-income families, and the ratio of dual-income households rose in all age groups except for people in their 40s. The stats also showed a rise in couples who live apart because of work. There are some 543,000 households where spouses are living in different locations due to their jobs, up 3.7 percent from the previous year. “We didn’t ask specific reasons why they are living separately, but we believe the location of workplaces plays a big part,” Shim said. “Additionally, we think that Sejong City, where thousands of civil servants are being transferred, might have had a slight impact on this figure.” Average working hours per week for men in dual-income households recorded 46.7 hours, 5.8 hours more than the 40.9 hours of women. Working hours for men and women dropped 0.1 hours and 0.5 hours each compared to the previous year. 

Why do nations form alliances? According to realists, nation states are the key actors and the survival under anarchic system with no global government is a major concern. 

Different sectors of the society are looking into the use of artificial intelligence as a key component for improvement and positive change. Good examples are oil and gas companies turning to artificial intelligence to cut costs and increase productivity and telecommunications companies incorporating artificial intelligence to make systems automated and standardized. Artificial intelligence is seen as a game changer and an indispensable feature of the future. However, there are also concerns regarding the threats that it poses to earth and its people.

At the U.N. Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) held in Geneva on April 11 to 15, 2016, different state parties and representatives of the Human Rights Watch, a non-profitinternational organization that is known to perform studies germaneto the development of the society and a human rights group that supports different advocacies, brought up the issue concerning the development of “killer robots.” 

Officially called “lethal autonomous weapons systems,” these “killer robots” are weapons equipped with a different level of artificial intelligence as they are able to engage targets and make life-and-death determinations without meaningful human control. Artificial intelligence experts predict that the creation of such robots capable of surpassing the abilities of humans may come soon. The famous AlphaGo already exists, and robots that have deep learning abilities are being developed in countries with high-tech militaries.

During the said convention, experts and human rights advocates highlighted the importance of maintaining meaningful human control over critical functions of weapons with artificial intelligence. They emphasized that human control should not only be over the overall outcomes of operations but over every individual attack made by any machine.

As a way to maintain meaningful human control over lethal weapons with artificial intelligence, the creation of an international law that will mandate human control over the new class of weapons that may be created in the future was discussed during the convention. It is proposed that the law should prohibit the use of fully autonomous weapons, and that humans should remain in control of every weapon used, regardless of it being a device with artificial intelligence or a simple lethal weapon.

This year’s convention on lethal autonomous weapon systems is the third of its kind. It was first held on May 13 to 16, 2014. The second one was held on April 13 to 15, 2015. The same agenda—the emergence of a new kind of weapon that may be a threat to the human populace, is discussed every year.