Despite being in an era of a smooth logistics system, we have experienced the shock of shortages; not being able to buy or having to wait days for masks, smartphones, etc. Shortages occur when demand is greater than supply. There are various reasons for the shortage; lack of labor force, lack of materials, circulation problems, and sometimes it is just a kind of marketing. For whatever reason, shortages continue to occur, and we must seek the causes and measures to be taken. Here are two shortage cases that occurred recently.Diesel exhaust fluid shortageOn Oct. 11, Chinese customs officials an

Internet bots are software applications that are automatically programmed to perform simple, repetitive tasks. The first internet bot can be traced back to 1988 when it was used by a small group of developers. Nowadays, internet bots can easily be found and bought on many different websites. Internet bots are essential for internet search engines as they are used for web crawling, a process that allows companies to analyze millions of data on servers. However, internet bots can also be malignant when developed by cybercriminals. DDoS attacks and email spams are classic examples. Since 2016, us

On Oct. 21, South Korea’s first homegrown launch vehicle KSLV-II (Korea Space Launch Vehicle II), commonly known as Nuri, was launched into space. The rocket seemed to go through a successful flight as it reached the target altitude of 700 kilometers, yet it failed to deliver the payload into orbit. However, the launch marked a milestone in South Korea’s aerospace history. Some experts suggested that the fact Nuri failed at its last step while completing prior stages could be considered as a huge success, given that less than 30 percent of the rockets in the world succeeded on their first laun

On Aug. 15, the Afghanistan government surrendered to the Taliban, and as a result the Taliban took control of the country. The two-decades-long war between the U.S. and Afghanistan ended when the president of Afghanistan fled abroad, and the last U.S. transport plane left Afghanistan on Aug. 30. Presently, the Taliban are in the process of establishing a new government.The beginning of this war goes back 20 years. After the 9.11 attack shocked the world, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 along with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the name of eliminating Osama bin Laden, th

On Aug. 31, the National Assembly of South Korea passed a new bill, “In-app Payment Prevention Act (amendment to the Telecommunications Business Act),” which prevents app marketers from forcing their own payment methods in in-app transactions. As a result, South Korea has become the first country in the world to restrict compulsory in-app payment (IAP) regulations set by app market operators. The bill, which is also called the “Anti-Google Law”, is aimed to challenge Google and Apple’s duopoly in the app store market, which has been condemned for abusing their market power with unreasonable co

The 17-day long Tokyo Olympics came to an end with a closing ceremony on Aug. 8. The Tokyo Olympics was unprecedented compared to the previous Olympics: it was postponed for a year due to COVID-19, and spectators were banned after a state of emergency was declared on July 8 in Tokyo. Nevertheless, the Tokyo 2020 Olympics ended successfully with lots of memorable moments and new records. Team USA secured the top spot on the table by winning 39 gold medals, 41 silver medals, and 33 bronze medals, followed by China and Japan in second and third place. Team Korea ranked 16th place with six gold me

If AI were able to automatically complete the code you had been struggling with for countless nights, would you truly count on the unaccustomed technology? GitHub Copilot is a brand-new extension for Visual Studio Code, a popular source-code editor for software development. The recently unveiled technology uses AI to help developers write code. Copilot is powered by Codex, a deep neural network language model developed by OpenAI and GitHub. It is a descendent of the previous OpenAI language model—Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3)—and has been repurposed to generate syntax-abiding co

“You would get to see a massive canyon, some frozen icebergs, geysers, and some craters.” This is not what a human said, but what an AI responded, taking the role of Pluto when it was asked, “Tell me what I would see if I visited (you).”Google’s new conversational machine learning program, LaMDA (short for “Language Model for Dialogue Applications”) is drawing attention due to its proficient, human-like words. LaMDA was announced at the 2021 Google I/O (Innovation in the Open), Google’s annual developer conference, which aired online from May 18 to 19 at Mountain Dew’s head office in Californi

On April 22, 2021, 23-year-old Lee Seon-Ho passed away in a devastating industrial accident. While working part-time to clean cargo containers on the port of Pyeongtaek, in Gyeonggi-do, the container’s 300kg iron plate crushed Lee to death. There was no safety management official or signal operator near him. The victim had been sent to work without undergoing any safety training.The problem of a weak safety system came into the spotlight after the Korean television channel JTBC released CCTV footage of the tragic accident. After JTBC’s video went public, the Cheongwadae’s national petition, wh

Protests for democracy in Burma (more formally known as Myanmar) have erupted after the military staged a coup against democratically held elections. The Southeast Asian country is under turmoil as the military continues to kill hundreds of civilian protesters, jailing and injuring thousands more.The military (known as the Tatmadaw) dominates political and economic power in Myanmar. The country was under direct military rule from 1962 to 2011. Since then, the military implemented parliamentary elections and other political and economic reforms in 2011. However, the military still held a signif

On Oct. 13, 2020, an adopted 16-month old baby died of severe abdominal injuries, internal bleeding, and prolonged abuse. Though the abuse was reported three times, the police failed to help the baby each time. The cruel and brutal nature of the abuse, along with the fact that she could have been saved if the police had taken action, attracted public grief and outrage.Child abuse is a serious problem in Korea. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the number of child abuse reports has risen dramatically by 115% over the last five years from 19,214 in 2015 to 41,389 reports in 2019.

Hwang Ha-na, granddaughter of the Namyang Dairy Products’ founder, received a one-year suspended prison sentence with two years’ probation for drug abuse in 2019. Hwang purchased and injected herself with methamphetamine multiple times. On Dec. 7, 2020, Hwang was prosecuted again for using drugs with her acquaintances. While Hwang Ha-na’s first drug test returned negative results, the case became more complicated as her husband committed suicide and one of her acquaintances, suspected to be the supplier of the drugs, also made a suicide attempt but ended up in a coma. This incident exposed dru

Last December, the United Kingdom (UK) became the first nation to authorize and to begin vaccinating its citizens. On Dec. 2, 2020, the UK Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency approved the COVID-19 vaccine jointly developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. More than 600,000 UK citizens have received the vaccine. The first COVID-19 vaccines are being introduced in not only the UK but also in other countries. Middle Eastern and Latin American countries, such as Mexico, have secured vaccines and have started mass vaccinations. China and Russia, which have self-developed vaccines, have also be

The Singapore Food Agency (SFA) approved the world’s first cultured meat sales on Dec. 2, 2020. The approved cultured meat is produced by a U.S.-based food technology start-up, Eat Just, which develops plant-based and lab-grown protein sources. Eat Just demonstrated that its lab-grown chicken went through rigorous consultation and review processes and that the analysis assured the safety and quality of the cultured chicken. The harvested lab-grown chicken met the standards of poultry meat, containing high protein, high monounsaturated fats, and a significantly cleaner microbiological content c

Big-tech companies are entering the securities industry. Following KakaoPay Securities, on Nov. 18, 2020, Toss Securities received approval from the Financial Services Commission for the securities industry. Toss Securities plans to introduce the service within the first half of the year. A comparison of these two major security companies shows the current situation of the mobile securities industry.Similarities There are many similarities between the two companies in that they are mobile securities companies created by Big-techs. KakaoPay Securities and Toss Securities are both mobile securit

The murder of the French middle-school teacher Samuel Paty on Oct. 16 shook the world. Paty presented a cartoon of Muhammad from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in his class to teach freedom of expression. Although he advised his Muslim students to leave the classroom if they deemed his teaching inappropriate, Paty’s lecture offended some Muslims, leading one of the parents to file a complaint. The parent also claimed on multiple social media platforms that Paty showed an image of a naked Muhammad to his students and exposed the teacher’s name and the school address. An 18-year-old Muslim

COVID-19, since its emergence in Wuhan, China in Dec. 2019, still holds a strong influence in everyone’s daily life. Governments and medical institutions strive to provide appropriate care diagnosis, recovery, and quarantine of confirmed or probable patients. As no definite cure for the disease has yet been discovered, prevention measures are emphasized in every country to stop the further manifestation of COVID-19. Along with social distancing, the most prominent means to prevent COVID-19 is to wear masks. Not only masks but gloves and many other hygiene products have become daily essentials

Since ancient times, when it was named Ares by the ancient Greeks, Mars has been a great mystery. For a long time, humankind could only gaze at Mars, but the advance in technology allowed them to send spacecraft to the red planet. However, these spacecraft can only be launched during a specific time: the “launch window”.The “launch window” is a crucial time for rocket launch that comes every 2.2 years when travel between the two planets is most cost-effective: the spacecraft can maneuver in the “Hohmann transfer orbit” which consumes the lowest possible amount of propellant. As the launch wind

On July 29, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet (parent company of Google) went through a five-hour congressional grilling as lawmakers on the House’s top antitrust subcommittee confronted the executives for abusing their market dominance to neutralize potential competitors and even threaten consumers.Representative David Cicilline, the chairman of the antitrust subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, opened a congressional investigation of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, aiming to provide the basis for proposals on ho

On May 25, a Black man named George Floyd was brutally suffocated by a police officer. Police brutality acted upon the Black man was captured in videos recorded by witnesses and went viral. The lingering issues of racial discrimination were yet again exposed, and it sparked the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement—an advocate for non-violent protests against governmental violence inflicted on Black people—around the globe.BLM movement first started in 2013 to issue racial conflict regarding the shooting of Trayvon Martin. Since then, BLM demonstrated against unjust police actions that killed Blac