Secrets of “Three Brothers” of South Korea, China, Japan
By Yoshibumi Wakamiya
You probably do not know that there is the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat (TCS) in Korea. Although it is rarely known in Japan or China, it is an international organization jointly funded by South Korea, Japan and China and established to promote peace and common prosperity among the three neighbors.
93,000 People Voluntarily Left Japan for North Korea After World War II. Or Did They?
In April 1960, not yet finished with high school, 17-year-old Eiko Kawasaki boarded a Soviet ship called the Kryl’ion in the Japanese port of Niigata and set sail on the journey of a lifetime, to a place she was told was paradise: North Korea.
East Asia Insights | Five Factors That Could Lead to War with North Korea
What are the five factors that could lead to war with North Korea? They include the domestic turmoil in both political systems and the fact that differences between American and North Korean political systems and the absence of normal diplomatic relations increase the possibility of misunderstandings.
East Asia Insights | Confronting Uncertainty in East Asia
From a Japanese perspective, the defining characteristic of East Asia’s regional order today appears to be the high degree of uncertainty that prevails about what might come next. Geopolitical uncertainty seems to be intensifying on all fronts, whether one looks at the disarray engulfing US politics and foreign policy, the escalation of tensions with North Korea, the challenge of managing relations with China, or even Japan’s domestic politics. How can leaders around the region work to find a way to dispel this uncertainty?
East Asia Insights | Engaging North Korea after the Singapore Summit
On June 12, US President Donald Trump and North Korean Workers’ Party Chairman Kim Jong-un met for a historic US-DPRK summit. While the vagueness of their final statement left many skeptical of the results, Hitoshi Tanaka takes a more optimistic view, noting that the summit has changed the dynamics surrounding North Korea in a way that creates a rare chance to peacefully settle the nuclear threat and other pressing issues—but only if the United States, Japan, and other regional actors handle it properly.