Fear of a bank run is subsiding after the five savings banks whose capital adequacy ratios are lower than the 5 percent mark, and three other insolvent ones, were forced to suspend operations during the past two months. But the financial regulators still have much work to do before they declare the crisis over. The latest case involved a Chuncheon-based savings bank, which the Financial Services...

It’s good to see the boys of summer back on the baseball field. It will be even better if more players take the field without a pinch of chewing tobacco tucked under their lower lips. Sure, that puffed-out jaw of Lenny “Nails” Dykstra will live in the memory of every Philadelphia Phillies’ fan who ever watched him tear up the base paths. And ballplayers’ chewing habit goes back more than a centu...

The expanded Kansai regional alliance, which has the promise of becoming the first such organization to achieve efficient administration beyond prefectural boundaries, is hard at work. In this connection, there is no need to be obsessed with prefectural administrative borders in effect since the Meiji era (1868-1912). Transport conditions and the communications environment have changed drastical...

China has taken giant strides toward economic and social development. This has expedited its transformation from the previous class structure of workers, farmers, cadres and intellectuals to a more complicated one that comprises more classes and groups. To find the best way to handle and coordinate the interests of all classes and groups in today’s changed and pluralistic society and form a vigor...

Investors of the world, unite and buy Australian bank debt. Why? Moody’s Investors Service suggests you shouldn’t. Really, in our post-U.S.-crisis world, is there a better contrarian indicator? Credit raters missed the Asian crisis, Russia’s default, the tech-stock crash, Enron, the U.S. housing bubble, Wall Street’s collapse and Europe’s meltdown. Now, we’re supposed to care what they think abo...

After making a big splash at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington this month, Donald Trump was asked if he is considering a run for the presidency. “I’m incredibly tempted,” he responded. If Trump gives in to temptation, his past actions and positions may collectively provide the biggest handicap for a major candidate in the history of presidential politics. If he decides...

Two South Korean students are unaccounted for after their language-learning center building collapsed in an earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, the foreign ministry said Wednesday. The students, a 25-year-old man and his 21-year-old sister, are feared to have been in the building when it collapsed after a 6.3-magnitude quake hit New Zealand's second-largest city on Tuesday, said Baik Joo-hy...