The financial regulator is inspecting the nation’s top four commercial banks as they are plagued by allegations of corruption. It is unusual for the Financial Supervisory Service to inspect the four largest banks ― Kookmin, Hana, Shinhan and Woori ― at the same time.For Kookmin Bank, the FSS has launched an intensive probe into the recent allegations that the bank’s branch in Tokyo had been involved in irregularities to create slush funds.The Tokyo branch is suspected of having extended illegal

PRINCETON, New Jersey ― Sugar is sweet, but the ethics of its production is anything but appealing. “Sugar Rush,” a recent report released by Oxfam International as part of its “Behind the Brands” campaign, has shown that our use of sugar implicates us in land grabs that violate the rights of some of the world’s poorest communities. Better-informed and more ethical consumers could change this.We are genetically programmed to like sweet things, and when people become more affluent, they consume m

Most of us accept that we live in a world where food is no longer just grown, it is engineered. Even scarier, much of our food is bio-engineered and not grown, but bred.Given this reality, it is reasonable for a consumer to want to know something about the engineering, which produces foods that are known as GMOs, an acronym for products that contain genetically modified organisms.This is not an argument about GMOs, about whether they are safe for people or animals to ingest, whether they are env

MENOUFIA, Egypt ― A year ago, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leaders in this region of the Nile Delta seemed confident that they owned the future. But then came the military coup on June 30 that toppled President Mohamed Morsi and killed hundreds of his supporters. The story of this tumultuous counterrevolution is clarified by a visit to this town in the heart of the Delta. You encounter an odd combination of a bottom-up popular rejection of the Brotherhood and a top-down military putsch. I was happy

PARIS ― The Geneva talks on Iranian nukes have turned into a “pull my finger” charade. Iran says that it’s only making electricity, not nuclear bombs. The U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany are somehow all supposed to agree on reeling Iran in ― but let’s face it: Russia and China are close Iranian allies and trading partners, while even Germany and France have significant geopolitical ties to Russia through, for example, the European defense conglomerate EADS and the Nord Stream pi

The endless rows between political camps over presidential “NLL remarks” and the “NIS interference” in presidential election are too annoying. To get away from the noise, take a trip to one of our beautiful islands, the remoter the better. In cool breezes and under twinkling stars and immersed in the delight of marine delicacies, you realize how insignificant those current topics are. In the weekly “Koreans’ Meal Table (bapsang)” program on KBS-1 TV, actor Choe Bul-am takes us to the hinterland

World Diabetes Day is Nov. 14, and we urgently need to address this plague right here at home.Diabetes is a major public health problem ― an epidemic ― in the United States. One out of 10 people over the age of 20 now has diabetes ― primarily Type 2 or “adult onset” diabetes ― and the disease is rapidly increasing. This increase has been particularly striking in the several Southeastern states comprising what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls the “Diabetes Belt.” In Kentucky,

Regarding the Nov. 12 editorial “Dying alone,” it seems that the elderly desperately cope with scant resources to finance their later life. As highlighted in the article, by the time they are ready for retirement, the elderly have already spent sizable finances on their children’s upbringing ― that is, with little doubt, education and marriage. Although their children may luckily finance the traditionally high-cost Korean marriage once they establish a career, education is another pain. In Korea

On the list of U.S. military priorities, Africa has always ranked right smack at the bottom. Now that appears to be changing. As Eric Schmitt recently reported in the New York Times, “thousands of soldiers once bound for Iraq or Afghanistan are now gearing up for missions in Africa.” Before the gearing up proceeds much further, Americans might want to ask a few questions. Chief among them are these: Why the sudden shift in priorities? What’s the aim? Who stands to benefit? What risks does the mi

The main opposition Democratic Party has packed up its tent in front of Seoul City Hall. The party set up the tent more than 100 days ago as a symbol of its street protests against the National Intelligence Service’s alleged meddling in the December presidential election. The party folded up the tent not because it has ended its campaign to bring the truth to light. Quite the opposite. As its “tent protest” has failed to drum up much support from the public, the party is now seeking to escalate

The nuclear industry is not the only industry in Korea plagued by the malpractice of parts suppliers fabricating test certificates. The Defense Agency for Technology and Quality has found that similar irregularities had been committed by defense contractors as well.The arms acquisition watchdog has recently scrutinized all the parts and raw materials used in the 136,844 military items supplied by defense contractors in the last three years. Through the unprecedented inspection, the agency discov

China’s air pollution has been in the news for quite some time now, and the Chinese government is finally taking this issue seriously. Just recently, the City of Beijing declared a war against smog. The central government is also going to spend as much as $275 billion over the next five years to find a way to alleviate this chronic problem. And yet, the smog is now getting thicker and murkier with the increasing consumption of fossil fuels in the northern part of the country as the weather gets

On the morning of Oct. 11, I woke up at 4 a.m. in Potonggang Hotel in Pyongyang, excited and nervous. I found myself repeating, “My son is here. I am going to see him today.” I could not believe I was there to visit my son, Kenneth Bae, who has been held prisoner in North Korea.Sunday, Nov. 3, was the anniversary of the day my son, a tour operator, was detained. He has now been in a North Korean prison for more than a year. He is the longest detained American prisoner in North Korea in recent hi

Since the Tower of Babel, humans have needed interpreters and translators to communicate across nations. Due to cultural differences, however, misunderstandings often arise, and sometimes things are inevitably lost in translation. That is why there is a saying that “every translator is a traitor.” A host of writers have contemplated and written about the innate problems of translation. For example, Yevgeny Yevtushenko humorously wrote, “Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not

The reports coming out of the Philippines are all too familiar. Shattered villages, corpses strewn across battered beaches, dazed survivors picking through the wreckage of their former lives. As I write, Typhoon Haiyan (described in some news reports as a “supertyphoon”) appears to be the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history, and one of the worst ever in Asia ― a region that has known no shortage of calamities.Many of the survivors are talking about a “wall of water” ― most of the dama

Shinzo Abe faces plenty of roadblocks in his quest to revive Japan’s sluggish economy. His mentor wasn’t supposed to be one of them.Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is easily the most popular Japanese politician of the last 20 years. Not since Yasuhiro Nakasone in the mid-1980s had a Japanese leader made such a splash domestically and globally. Not coincidentally, both were keen reformers ― as Abe, too, claims to be.After he left office in 2006, the now-71-year-old Koizumi seemed happy to

NEW DELHI ― The rise in U.S. arms sales to India is being widely cited as evidence of the two countries’ deepening defense relationship. But the long-term sustainability of the relationship, in which India is more a client than a partner, remains a deep concern for Indians. Does the recently issued Joint Declaration on Defense Cooperation, which establishes intent to move beyond weapons sales to the co-production of military hardware, mark a turning point, or is it merely a contrivance to placat

Are jellyfish massing against humankind? Not really; it just seems that way. They may be sending us a message, though.Enormous aggregations of the diaphanous sea creatures have been wreaking havoc from shore to shore ― clogging water intake valves on seaside power plants, destroying fish farms, crowding fishing nets and, yes, stinging people (sometimes fatally). It’s nothing personal. Jellyfish, lacking brains, do not wish us harm. They’re merely going about their lives as they have for more tha

So far, the effort to strip Syria of its chemical weapons capacity has gone surprisingly well. In difficult circumstances, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons met a Nov. 1 deadline for disabling all the country’s declared production facilities and assembly plants.That, however, was always going to be the relatively easy part. A competent inspector will readily find the critical machinery for chemical weapons production, and with a sledgehammer and drill can put it out of com

Do you say a little prayer (for the markets, maybe) before you get down to work?Since 1999, the wonderfully named town of Greece, New York, has been doing that. At town council meetings, a volunteer chaplain ― generally but not invariably Christian ― prays before the opening of business. The U.S. Supreme Court now must decide whether these prayers, which frequently invoke Jesus Christ by name, violate the constitutional ban against establishing religion.Begin with the easy part: The Founders wou