October 29,2014 Country Reports

Country Report: China (October 2014)

Ukraine (Russia), South Korea, India and, as usual, Japan attracted keen attention for their potential to alter the geopolitical environment in Asia. Ukraine’s significance is its impact on Russian relations with both the United States and China. In the case of South Korea its tensions with Japan and forward-looking diplomacy with China led to questions […]

Editorial Staff (with the assistance of Dong Jiaxin*)
civilizations , hegemonism , india , look east policy , new cold war , new defense guidelines , ukraine , us-rok alliance
October 20,2014 Country Reports

Country Report: Japan (October 2014)

Hopes for Japanese diplomacy had grown faint in the late summer of 2014. Russian relations had stalled, as Russia flexed its muscles with rare military exercises on the islands in dispute. North Korea was delaying a report on the abductees, which Japan had been expecting in the middle of September. Possible meetings on the sidelines […]

Editorial Staff
asean asian dream , comfort women , eurasian diplomacy , japanese abductees , northern territories , putin’s visit , sanctions , thailand , ukraine , us pressure
September 29,2014 Country Reports

Country Report: Russia (September 2014)

While the world’s gaze centered on Russia’s relations with the West and the on-again, off-again confrontation over Ukraine, Russian publications paraded a new, more assertive outlook on Russia’s “turn to the East” (povorot na Vostok). Giving impetus to this was an early July meeting of ambassadors addressed by Vladimir Putin, the statements at which on […]

Editorial Staff (with the assistance of Olga Puzanova)
brics , central asia , dead hikiwake , india , liberal secularism , new cold war , turn to the east , ukraine
September 12,2014 Country Reports

Country Report: South Korea (September 2014)

President Park’s “principled diplomacy” has been criticized for a lack of detailed policies. Park set the two diplomatic goals of a “Northeast Asian Peace Process” and a “Korean Peninsula Trust Process.” The former has been practically blocked by Korea-Japan relations, and the later by the inter-Korean relationship. Seoul and Japan currently have only one official […]

Editorial Staff (prepared by Han Minjeong)
apologizing compensation" , may 24 restrictions , principled diplomacy , reunification charter , sex slaves , small routes to north korea , universal human rights and history
August 31,2014 Country Reports

Country Report: China (August 2014)

An article by Sun Ru in Zhongguo zhoubian distributed in its August 2014 posting took a close look at the US-Japan-South Korea triangle as it was strengthened by the three-way summit in March. It explained that the United States occupies the leading position in this triangle and has succeeded in temporarily getting the other two […]

Editorial Staff (with the assistance of Dong Jiaxin*)
arms trade , ck fta , equilibrium , hegemonic thinking , india , public relations battle , six-party talks , southeast asia , values-based diplomacy , xi-park summit
August 11,2014 Country Reports

Country Report: Japan (August 2014)

On May 25, Yomiuri shimbun carried an article by Kitaoka Shinichi, who had chaired the advisory panel that had debated national security and defense capabilities. With the aim of identifying where the legal system for security relations was inadequate, his panel had found many barriers in the interpretation of the Constitution to acting in collective […]

Editorial Staff
collective self-defense , new type of great power relations , north korea card , peripheral diplomacy , propaganda war , ukraine , vietnam
July 25,2014 Country Reports

Country Report: Russia (July 2014)

New Russian articles suggest that South Korea’s foreign policy is more intriguing than previously anticipated. Explaining that there is talk today of forging a new system of global governance, an article in the June issue of Mezhdunarodnaia zhizn’ argues that the responsibility is rising for South Korea, with its important interests in the geopolitics and […]

Editorial Staff (with the assistance of Olga Puzanova)
gas deal , global governance , new cold war , new silk road , sco , sino-russian alliance , soft integration , threat from the west , trustpolitik , ukraine
July 11,2014 Country Reports

Country Report: South Korea (July 2014)

Northeast Asia’s geopolitical tensions have intensified and grown more complicated over the past two months. The Cold War-era legacy of contention between South Korea, the United States, and Japan on one side and China and North Korea on the other has become blurred. President Xi Jinping became the first Chinese leader to visit Seoul before […]

Editorial Staff (prepared by Han Minjeong)
balanced diplomacy , horizontal and vertical alliance , kono statement diplomatic record , park-xi summit , serving as a bridge , xi history speech
June 18,2014 Country Reports

Country Report: China (June 2014)

Regional Dynamics, the US Pivot, and Maritime Security Shi Jiazhu and Yu Lingling in Guoji guancha, No. 2, 2014 explain the US strategy in shifting the center of its global strategy to Asia and China’s response to maintain maritime security. They describe its aims as: reducing US lines for fighting a war; concentrating control over […]

Editorial Staff (with the assistance of Dong Jiaxin*)
central asia , china’s maritime strategy , japan-north korea ties , japanese militarism , peripheral diplomacy , southeast asia , strengthening the sco , us offensive strategy
June 13,2014 Country Reports

Country Report: Japan (June 2014)

The most important event in Japanese foreign policy during this time period was the visit of Barack Obama to Tokyo in late April. Yomiuri shimbun showcased its success as it published a long interview with Obama on April 23 and trumpeted the success for Japanese foreign policy of Obama’s decision to declare unambiguously that the […]

Editorial Staff
japanese abductees , southeast asia abe-obama summit , state branding , territorial issues , textbooks , tpp , triangles , us election