SOUTH KOREA has elected Park Geun-hye, a 60-year-old conservative, as president for the coming five years. The candidate is from the same party, the Saenuri party, as the incumbent, Lee Myung-bak. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the dictator who set South Korea on the path of break-neck development, seizing power in 1961 and […]
South Korea’s presidential campaign formally launched on November 26 with seven registered candidates. The main candidates today are ruling Saenuri party representative Park Geun-hye and progressive opposition Democratic Unity Party (DUP) representative Moon Jae-in. The election is likely to turn on the following factors: a unified support base, demography, and turnout. Here are some factors to […]
The Liberal Democratic Party, which was badly defeated in the Lower House election in August 2009 and had to give up power to the Democratic Party of Japan after ruling the nation almost without interruption since 1955, made a comeback in Sunday’s general election. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the current LDP chief, will regain […]
After announcing that its rocket was facing technical difficulties that might delay its impending test, North Korea surprised the international community by abruptly launching a three-stage rocket on Wednesday morning local time. Even more surprising than the timing was that the “Unha” (the Korean word for “galaxy”) rocket appears to have successfully placed the Kwangmyongsong-3 (“Shining […]
On the small, spectacular island of Jeju, off the southern tip of Korea, indigenous villagers have been putting their bodies in the way of construction of a joint South Korean–US naval base that would be an environmental, cultural and political disaster. If completed, the base would hold more than 7,000 navy personnel, plus twenty warships […]
Transparency International’s latest corruption report is sober reading for Asian leaders committed to ending dirty dealings in the world’s fastest-growing region. Dec. 9 was International Anti-Corruption Day, and Asia’s report card was a big disappointment.China (SHCOMP), Japan and South Korea, three of Asia’s four biggest economies, all lost ground. So did such emerging-market darlings as Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Even Hong Kong, routinely […]
North Korea’s improving missile capability cast a shadow on political campaigns in two of its neighbors, heightening focus on a potential threat that may prompt Japan to stiffen its defense posture and provide a bump to South Korea’s conservative candidate. North Korea yesterday deployed a communications satellite from a rocket eight months after a previous attempt failed, […]
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un can launch a rocket this month in defiance of international opprobrium and still look forward to better relations with South Korea’s next president. The candidates in the Dec. 19 election to head Asia’s fourth-biggest economy are outdoing each other in pledges to re- engage with the totalitarian state, undeterred by Kim’s […]
Turning around a modern naval warship at sea is a slow and difficult process. Turning around whole fleets of warships, aircraft carriers and other air and naval forces, and reorienting defense spending for weapons systems that are typically planned decades in advance, is a lot harder – especially when it’s being done in the context […]
Many years ago, Pakistan analyst Khaled Ahmed identified some nations as not having a foreign policy. Export-oriented economies, according to his thesis, chose not to have a clearly defined foreign policy. On issues of controversy, they lay low rather than commit to a side. Ahmed named Singapore and South Korea as his examples. For them, […]
looking beyond borders 