December 27,2018 Country Reports

Country Report: Japan (December 2018)

The last part of 2018 was marked by the hopeful aftermath of the Abe-Xi summit and the new push by Abe and Putin to resolve the long-lingering dispute between Tokyo and Moscow. These themes are covered separately in an Open Forum article. Below, attention is directed at the less positive coverage of Japan’s relations with North and South Korea and at the efforts by Abe to bring to fru..

Editorial Staff
"Belt and Road" Initiative , America First , APEC , East Asia Summit , free and open Indo-Pacific , Korea boom , Tokyo Strategy 2018
December 21,2018 National Commentaries

A Japanese Perspective

What Do the Midterm Elections Mean for Trump's East Asia Policies?The 2018 midterm elections have revealed that President Trump has only Plan A for his reelection campaign in 2020. Trump will seek to go back to the White House by appealing solely to his core support base. This approach will mostly dictate Trump’s approach to East Asia in the next two years.  The president’s par..

Akimoto Satohiro
America First , free and open Indo-Pacific , Meng Wanzhou , Singapore Summit
December 20,2018 Special Forum

Introduction

The history of East Asian democratization has been cast in terms of negative Confucian heritage, postwar US encouragement to allies, and the positive spillover of economic “miracles.” Focused on national identities distinct from Confucian heritage and nuanced in coverage of the impact of the United States, the following four articles direct attention at forces, positive and negati..

Gilbert Rozman
Constitutionalism , democratization , imperialism , nationalism
December 20,2018 Special Forum

Democracy is More than a Political System: Lessons from South Korea’s Democratic Transformation

An assessment of South Korea’s democratization requires acknowledging juxtaposing patterns. On the one hand, the shadow of an authoritarian, Cold War state hangs over the country’s politics. State-society relations constructed under deeply illiberal circumstances did not disappear with the transition to democracy. On the other hand, developments in 2016-17 proved that South Korea&r..

Erik Mobrand
April Revolution , Candlelight Movement , Conservative democratization , De-authoritarianization , Kwangju Uprising , National Security Law
December 20,2018 Special Forum

National Identity and Democracy: Lessons from the Case of Japan

The relationship between national identity and democracy is a complicated one. National identity provides a foundation for democratic politics in at least two senses. First, the spread of national identity can prepare the ground for democracy in the sense that nationalism breaks the elite’s monopoly on politics and transforms the masses into participants in the political process. Nation..

Tadashi Anno
Asianism , Imperial restoration , Meiji Constitution , peace diplomacy , Taisho democracy
December 20,2018 Country Reports

Country Report: China (December 2018)

In late 2018, Chinese experts assessed China’s relations with India and India’s maritime strategy in the Indian Ocean under the Modi administration. They examined the revival of the quadrilateral security dialogue between the United States, South Korea, India, and Japan, evaluated the impact of South Korean citizens’ views toward the United States and China on South Korea&rs..

Danielle F. S. Cohen (assisted by Dong Jiaxin)
"Belt and Road" Initiative , America First , free and open Indo-Pacific , Quadrilateral Security Dialogue , THAAD
December 20,2018 Open Forum

Thirty Years of Japan’s Diplomacy toward the Korean Peninsula

When considering Japan’s politics and diplomacy toward North Korea over the thirty years from the second half of the 1980s four important developments warrant attention: 1) Nakasone’s approach during the Cold War; 2) Kanemaru’s 1990 visit to the North in an effort to normalize relations; 3) Japan’s response and domestic politics reacting to the first nuclear crisis of ..

Miyagi Taizo
Cold War , Korean War , North Korean nuclear crisis , North-South Cross-recognition
December 11,2018 Open Forum

The Last Asian Frontier? A Comparison of the Economic Cooperation Agendas of China, Japan, and South Korea with Uzbekistan

China, Japan and South Korea have regarded Central Asia (CA) as a new, and perhaps the last, Asian frontier in their foreign policies after the collapse of the Soviet Union.1 For all these states, CA represented an area where they had not been previously active. In addition, their foreign policies in this region, at least initially, did not have any new objectives but rather were focused on r..

Timur Dadabaev
"Belt and Road" Initiative , Arc of Freedom and Prosperity , Eurasian Economic Union , Islam Karimov , Shanghai Cooperation Organization , Shavkat Mirziyoyev , Xinjiang
November 29,2018 Country Reports

Country Report: Russia (November 2018)

The extraordinary flux in the Indo-Pacific area has elicited diverse and exploratory writing in Russia. No part of the region is ignored in the search for answers as to what is taking place and what Russia’s response should be. With Sino-US relations and ties on the Korean Peninsula in transition, China rushes to improve ties in all directions, while Russia thinks anew about its “..

Editorial Staff (with the assistance of Olga Puzanova)
BRI , inter-Korean summit , KORUS FTA , Made in China 2025 , SCO , turn to the East , US-DPRK summit
November 26,2018 Country Reports

Country Report: South Korea (November 2018)

The 73rd Session of the United Nations General AssemblyPresident Moon Jae-in’s New York itinerary was all about sharing the meeting results from the Pyongyang summit he had held with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un: Moon met with President Donald Trump on September 24 to deliver Kim’s off-script messages; then he spoke in front of American experts and academics covering Korean ..

Kim Kimberly
Asia-Europe Meeting , comfort women , Panmunjom Declaration , Pope Francis , Pyongyang Declaration , UN General Assembly , US-DPRK summit