The government and the ruling Grand National Party have agreed to upgrade the Nuclear Safety Commission, now under the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, to an independent, ministerial-level agency by July this year. The decision, announced on Friday, is a welcome move as it would help address concerns about the safety of nuclear plants in Korea caused by the radiation leak at Japan’...

In early March, outgoing Financial Supervisory Service Gov. Kim Jong-chang issued a strong warning against excessive competition among domestic commercial banks. One example cited by the top regulator, who quit on Friday as his three-year term expired, was the recent scramble among banks to attract big corporate customers. It was triggered by Kookmin Bank, which sought to boost corporate lending...

Falling house prices and a backlog of foreclosures have turned 2011 into the most desperate year yet for many American homeowners. The pain just keeps coming, and government programs have proven ineffective at assisting many of those in danger of losing their houses. In the short run, now would be the worst time to strip away government subsidies that support many of those same beleaguered house...

You know things are bad when pop stars a world away get more fired up about a humanitarian crisis than a nation’s own leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan would no doubt take umbrage at this assertion. Many of Japan’s 126 million residents wouldn’t, as television cameras that had been fixed on the nuclear fiasco in Fukushima turn further north. We are getting an eyeful of millions in earth...

With the current military operation in Libya, the U.S. has taken on a third campaign for forcible regime change in the Middle East. No matter how we might try to convince ourselves otherwise ― that we are only “protecting civilians” or “implementing the will of the international community” ― Libya now joins Afghanistan and Iraq as cases where the U.S. military is using force to bring down a Musl...

Amid all the hysteria about nuclear meltdowns and radiation poisoning, here’s something to consider: U.S. commercial reactors have never caused a single death. Worldwide, nuclear power has the lowest accident rate based on the amount of energy generated by any source. Compare that record with the havoc caused by dam failures and the disease and deaths wreaked by fossil-fuel pollution and explosi...

No party in Korea truly represents the entire nation, as evidenced by the outcome of the 2008 parliamentary elections. The electoral divide along the boundary between Yeongnam and Honam was as clear-cut as it could be. In the elections, the ruling Grand National Party carried none of the 31 electoral districts in the southwest region of Honam. On the other hand, the main opposition Democratic Pa...

On March 26 one year ago, 46 South Korean naval crew members were killed when their warship sank in the sea off North Korea’s west coast. Fifty-eight survivors, when rescued, did not know what had ripped their Cheonan warship in two. It took a multinational investigation team two months to confirm that the corvette had fallen victim to a North Korean torpedo attack. There should be many question...

As more than 10 days have passed since the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami devastated northeastern Japan, the government should quickly review its setup so that it can carry out its relief operations as efficiently and effectively as possible. The extent of the damage wrought by the March 11 quake dwarfs that of Japan’s last big disaster ― the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake ― and ...

There were surprises in this year’s unfinished revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Many in the West were surprised that the Arab world, which we have regularly been told is medieval, hierarchical and undemocratic, was full of young men and women using their cellphones, their Internet access and their bodies in streets and squares to foment change through direct democracy and popular power. ...

After they parted some years ago when his trusted sidekick left his Chart Thai Party for the much more attractive Thai Rak Thai Party, Banharn Silpa-acha said his ties with Newin Chidchob were over and done with. That was just over a decade ago. But over a recent dinner between the Bhumjai Thai and Chart Thai Pattana parties, the two political veterans basically kissed and made up as their hench...

It is Pakistan Day on March 23. While it brings back to mind the promise that the nation showed 71 years ago, also puts into sharp relief the failings and the follies of the later as well as the present generations in not living up to that promise. It was a vibrant people then, charged with a mission that they fulfilled in mere seven years to the utter amazement of the world; now, it is a depres...