![[Graphic News] South Korean passport falls to 39th in global ranking](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwimg.heraldcorp.com%2Fnews%2Fcms%2F2025%2F04%2F28%2Fnews-p.v1.20250428.fd581401fafb4bc498bd3671f5e203b2_T1.gif&w=3840&q=100)
[Graphic News] South Korean passport falls to 39th in global ranking
The Passport Index evaluates countries based on five key criteria: visa-free travel, taxation, global perception, the ability to hold dual citizenship and personal freedom. Korea received relatively low scores in areas such as its taxation system, restrictions on dual citizenship and limitations on personal freedom, contributing to its lower overall ranking.
Ireland topped the list, followed by Switzerland and Greece in joint second place. Portugal came in fourth, with Malta and Italy tied for fifth. European countries dominated the top 10, claiming nine of the highest-ranking positions. The United States ranked 45th.
Among Korea's neighbors, Japan shared 37th place with Malaysia, while China came in at 119th.
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Korea Herald
a day ago
- Korea Herald
[Shang-Jin Wei] Can Asia, Europe save world economy?
Countries around the world are confronting the same confluence of shocks. The continued breakdown of the global trading system, owing to a volatile US tariff policy, is now accompanied by the risk of disruptions to trade routes and oil production from military conflicts in the Middle East. Moreover, concerns about the safety of dollar-denominated assets are growing, because US President Donald Trump's 'big, beautiful' spending bill is expected to erode America's already-weak fiscal position. At the same time, the broad, geopolitically induced reshuffling of global supply chains continues, and the risk of climate and environmental breakdown has increased, especially now that the United States has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement again. Given that everyone will suffer from these shocks, cooperation to ameliorate them should be a priority, especially for Asia and Europe. Both regions are heavily integrated into the global trading system, and both could be affected by the loss of US fiscal credibility. Many Asian countries' foreign-exchange reserves are heavily weighted toward dollar assets, and most of their external trade is invoiced in dollars. Similarly, climate change poses a major threat to all countries, but Europe, especially, has staked its future on the clean-energy transition. Simply put, the recent shocks threaten the foundation on which Asian and European countries have built their economic models: open trade, which itself is based on a rules-based system. The US has gone from being a rule-setter to becoming a rule-breaker. For example, Trump's misleadingly labeled 'reciprocal tariffs' explicitly violate the most-favored-nation principle, which prohibits any World Trade Organization member from maintaining different trade barriers for different countries except under a formal free-trade agreement. Trump has also violated the US commitment not to raise its tariff rates beyond WTO 'bound rates' — another cornerstone of the global system. Similarly, the US is undermining the dollar-centric system that Asian and European countries have long relied on for liquidity, trade financing, and financial risk management. The expected erosion of the US fiscal position, combined with Trump's capricious tariff policy, has cast doubt on the dollar's reliability. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the budget bill that Trump wants Congress to pass will add an estimated $2.4 trillion to the $36 trillion of existing US debt (some 100 percent of US GDP in 2024). And with congressional Republicans poised to raise the debt limit by another $5 trillion, US federal government debt could reach 134 percent of GDP by the time Trump leaves office. Ernest Hemingway famously wrote that bankruptcy happens 'gradually and then suddenly.' Because the US has never technically defaulted, the recent rise in risk premia on government bonds can be said to fall within the 'gradually' phase. But investors must now consider the possibility of 'suddenly' coming sooner than previously thought. Rather than looking for separate hedging strategies, Asia and Europe would benefit more from collaboration. On the trade front, an enhanced framework between the European Union and the two big Asian trading blocs, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), would establish trading rules for almost the whole world — regardless of what the US does. The key to a successful framework would be to keep all the WTO rules that have proven effective in driving trade and prosperity for the past seven decades, including the most favoored nation principle. But Asian and European leaders should also seek to improve upon the WTO rules that are deficient, including those governing subsidies and the conduct of state-owned firms. They also would need to resuscitate the WTO dispute-settlement mechanism, perhaps tripling the number of Appellate Body judges. On the climate front, the danger now is that other countries (such as Argentina) may follow the US in exiting the Paris agreement. To head off that possibility, Asia and Europe should pursue a common carbon-tariff framework. If the world's two largest trading regions impose the same penalties on carbon-intensive imports, they will create a powerful incentive to stay the course on decarbonization. On international finance, the two regions can work toward a system that is more resilient to irresponsible behavior on the part of any single country. The goal is not to displace the US dollar as the dominant global currency, but to offer more instruments for risk management and diversification. For example, a new stablecoin could be pegged to the euro or one of the major Asian currencies. Central banks could form a network of currency-swap agreements that are independent of the US dollar. And countries could work toward a more robust multilateral debt-relief framework for low-income countries, building on cooperation among the European Investment Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the African Development Bank, and the Paris Club of sovereign creditors. None of these solutions will be easy to achieve, of course, given the tensions between countries within each regional bloc regarding a variety of issues. Cooperation would require compartmentalization, with governments focusing squarely on providing global public goods. As challenging as this might seem, the alternative will be far costlier to Asia and Europe — and to the rest of the world. Shang-Jin Wei, a former chief economist at the Asian Development Bank, is a professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School and Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. The views expressed here are the writer's own. — Ed.
Korea Herald
a day ago
- Korea Herald
Sinopec Wins Technological Innovation Award at the 2nd Sino-European Corporate ESG Best Practice Conference
STUTTGART, Germany, June 30, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation ("Sinopec", HKG: 0386) has won the "Best Scientific And Technological Innovation Practice" award at the 2 nd Sino-European Corporate ESG Best Practice Conference (the "Conference"), which was hosted on June 26 in Stuttgart. Sinopec's case submission of Breakthrough in Depth, Climb to New Heights — Empowering the Energy and Chemical Industry with Technological Innovation stood out among the numerous entries. The Conference reviews and awards the best ESG application cases in six areas of environmental protection, social responsibility, corporate management, scientific and technological innovation, education and training, to further enhance mutual understanding between Chinese and European businesses, facilitate bilateral economic and trade exchanges, and showcase China's open, inclusive and confident mindset to European society. "Sinopec has harnessed technological innovation as a powerful engine in its journey toward carbon peaking and carbon neutrality," the jury panel said. "By focusing on strategic areas such as oil and gas exploration and development as well as green and low-carbon transformation, the company is vigorously advancing high-end, intelligent, and green development." Leveraging its integrated, full-industry-chain innovation capabilities, Sinopec is scaling up clean energy solutions and decarbonization in production to continuously empower the social development. Driven by innovation, Sinopec's Project Deep Earth is regarded as "Mount Everest underground" to unlock ultra-deep oil and gas reserves and light up the green future of the earth. In shale gas exploration and development, Sinopec's Fuling Shale Gas Field is the first in China with commercial development, boasting reserves of hundreds of billions of cubic meters. In promoting the green and low-carbon technology, Sinopec built China's first megaton CCUS project as well as the world's first 100-kilometer CO₂ transmission pipeline. Sinopec collaborates with Shell, China Baowu and BASF to launch the joint study on the first 10-million-tonne open-source CCUS project to provide a new path of decarbonization emphasizing both emission reduction and carbon sequestration. Innovation is powering Sinopec to continuously break new ground and achieve intelligent transformation. In 2024, the world's first intelligent ethylene factory based on digital twin technology was put into operation, and Sinopec's AI digital employee is now on duty at over 40 integrated energy stations to provide smart services to customers. At the Conference, Sinopec also released the "World Energy Outlook 2060" report, which is Sinopec's first energy and chemical industry development report released in Europe.
Korea Herald
a day ago
- Korea Herald
China to keep anti-dumping steel duties on EU, UK, S. Korea and Indonesia
BEIJING - China will maintain duties on certain steel products from the European Union, the United Kingdom, South Korea and Indonesia, its commerce ministry said Monday, as overcapacity concerns drive global trade turbulence. The duties on stainless steel billets and hot-rolled plates, first levied by Beijing in 2019, range from 20.2 percent for Indonesian imports to 43 percent for those from the EU. China's commerce ministry said that an internal investigation found the potential termination of the anti-dumping duties could still cause "damage" to the domestic stainless steel industry. Authorities will therefore continue to impose duties on products from the three countries and the European bloc "for a period of five years starting from July 1", the ministry said in a statement. China, the world's largest steel producer, first took the measures in response to tariffs imposed on it by the United States during Donald Trump's first presidential term. The US tariffs were motivated by fears in Washington and among its allies that unfair industrial policies in China had led to a global glut of cheap exports, threatening to undercut local producers. Since returning to office in January, Trump has sent the world economy into a tailspin with a tariff blitz that has hit Chinese exports particularly hard. Trade tensions between the world's top two economies remain high despite China and the United States reaching a temporary truce to the tariff war this month. (AFP)
