Special to WorldTribune.com By Lee Jong-Heon, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — The recent North Korean-Japanese agreement could undermine the U.S.-led international sanction regime aimed at curbing Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile activities, government sources and analysts here say. Under a surprise accord announced May 29, Japan would ease the strict sanctions it imposed on North Korea in 2006 in return […]
Special to WorldTribune.com East-Asia-Intel.com China appears to have staged a remarkable replay of the May 2001 EP-3 incident in which a Chinese supersonic fighter jet provocatively approached and caused a collision with a U.S. EP-3 surveillance plane. A Chinese air force Su-27 supersonic combat aircraft, armed with missiles, on May 24, deliberately flew dangerously close […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com SEOUL — The word “trilateral” has a certain allure among those in search of ways to pull disparate nations or regions together. A group of three might cooperate while a group of two might form an alliance and fight the third one, the odd man out. Rather than […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com The Japanese don’t take kindly to people telling them what they should and shouldn’t teach. “As a sovereign nation, any country should be responsible for what to teach and how to teach it,” an experienced teacher in Japan told me when asked about this textbook controversy that so […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Diplomatic tension between China and Japan is set to escalate to new heights during the Year of the Horse. July 25 marks the 120th anniversary of the start of the first Sino-Japanese War in 1894, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership is expected to hold a series […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Vicious competition between Asia’s two most powerful countries has spread to Africa, where China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are trying to woo the continent of 54 nations. On Jan. 6, Wang began a tour of Ethiopia, Djibouti, Ghana and Senegal. Meanwhile, Abe […]
Special to WorldTribune.com ANKARA — Turkey has ruled out the prospect of enriching uranium as part of its nuclear program. Officials said the government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan would not develop uranium enrichment capability. The officials said Erdogan, accompanied by a large government and business delegation, did not reach agreement with Japan to produce […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Willy Lam, East-Asia-Intel.com Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gave the Chinese leadership a much-appreciated Christmas present when he unexpectedly paid a formal visit to the Yasukuni Shrine — where 14 Class-A WWII criminals are honored — on Dec. 26. Abe’s perceived support of quasi-militaristic goals has elicited a tidal wave of […]
Sol W. Sanders Rather suddenly there is a welter of developments turning Asia’s dozen-odd countries into a cat’s cradle of conflicting interests — some new — that could lead to war. Central, of course, is “a rising” China. The Chinese, themselves, have given up the phrase “a peaceful rising”. That was a promise that […]
Special to WorldTribune.com By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com The shadows of war hang more menacingly over Northeast Asia at the opening of a brave new year than they have at any time since, well, since the last time the region was edging into armed conflict. That might be since the Korean mini-crisis of nearly a year […]