Kang Tae-moo arrives in Seoul from New York and heads to the office immediately. The tall, dashing heir to Geumhwa Group, a chaebol founded by his grandfather, Chair Kang Da-goo, snubs his inauguration ceremony as president of the subsidiary Go Food. He also fires a company executive for misbehaving. The chaebol has always been associated...
The ongoing Southeast Asian Games in Vietnam provoked this reminiscence from a journalist who covered the event hosted by the Philippines in December 1981. — ED. SYDNEY, Australia—The flag patch on the left breast of the barong shirt confirmed it: This was the official uniform of Filipino athletes competing in the Southeast Asian Games (SEAG)...
Editor’s note: These are remarks delivered by the author at the recent online launch of the book “Necessary Contexts: Essays for Our Times,” published by Gantala Press and Alfredo F. Tadiar Library. As I begin, I thought of mentioning an important detail that caught my eye in RosarioGarcellano’s first book, “Mean Streets: Essays on the Knife...
Spurious last-ditch reports of candidates being disqualified and a buildup of fabricated vote tallies of presidential contenders took hold of social media as voters trooped to precincts on Monday. The misleading and deceptive narratives on election day largely targeted now presumptive president Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his rival, Vice President Leni Robredo; their running mates,...
Philippine rural development has basically been the handiwork of colonialism and world capitalism. But the dominant role of external forces in development is not simply a colonial extension. Internal structures having already been laid in place by colonialism, they were able to continuously reproduce themselves in harmony with the external demands of the global capitalist...
In a world where changes are increasingly disruptive, creative works matter more than ever, not just to better understand our complex reality through stories, but also because stories shape our imagination and inspire the future. “Harvest Moon is a book that heeds the call to reimagine how we are going to survive and thrive in...
A World Bank publication in 2017 showed that close to three-fourths of Filipinos borrowed cash from informal sources. Informal sources aren’t easy to police and often get away with charging exorbitant interest and intimidating borrowers when they can’t pay up. This may be why Filipinos get really uncomfortable when talking about borrowing money. I had...
Exactly two years and three months since Covid-19 shut down all of Manila theater, the Virgin Labfest will return on June 16–26 to the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), marking the reopening of in-person theatrical performances in the capital region. Or so the plan goes, according to the organizers of the 17th edition of...
The Philippines has missed a number of opportunities toward long-term economic development. While it was in pretty good shape in the 1960s through the late 1970s—and certainly highly competitive with other developing countries in Asia—it began to falter at the turn of the decade. By the early 1980s it started to miss the boat in...
From surprise and shock to outrage, netizens have reacted to the way the Commission on Elections’ partial and unofficial results of the May 9 voting for national officials were being presented and reported by broadcast networks. They cited an intriguing pattern in the percentage ratios of incoming votes of frontrunner Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice...
