March 01,2019 National Commentaries

A View from Japan

Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is a very lucky man.  Despite a plethora of scandals that have erupted since he took office for the second time as prime minister in December 2012, scandals that would have toppled previous cabinets—Morimoto Gakuen, Kakei Gakuen, serious shortcomings and gaffes by his cabinet officers, government manipulation of employment data, etc.—he is well on his ..

Glen S. Fukushima
comfort women , Hanoi summit , Kurile Islands , Make America Great Again , Singapore Summit
February 14,2019 Open Forum

The 1954 Geneva Conference on Korea: From Armistice to Stalemate

For fifty days in 1954, many of the Cold War’s preeminent figures met in Geneva to deal with “the Korean question,” how to reunite and bring peace to a Korean Peninsula that had been divided since 1945 and which had just endured three years of devastating warfare.  The ongoing war in Indochina was also on the agenda but for the US delegation was a secondary concern.  Althou..

Mark Tokola
Armistice , Geneva Conference , Kim Il-sung , Korean War , Syngman Rhee
January 31,2019 Country Reports

Country Report: South Korea (January 2019)

The end of 2018 and the first weeks of 2019 saw the South Korean media obsessed with North Korea and its diplomacy with the United States and China. Prospects for a second US-DPRK summit were a repeated concern throughout this time frame. Donald Trump’s summit with Moon Jae-in at the G20 summit was viewed from this angle. Hopes for opening a railroad connection between North and South..

Kim Kimberly
G20 , Panmunjom Declaration , Pyongyang Declaration , Trump-Kim summit , Xi-Kim summit
December 30,2018 Alternative Scenarios

Negative Scenario II

In his own words, President Moon Jae-in’s plan “is to make enough progress by the year's end so the [peace] process cannot be reversed,” such that “there can never be another war on the Korean Peninsula.”1 In reality, of course, peace is never completely irreversible. More reasonably, what Moon likely desires is to create such momentum behind engagement with Nor..

Kathryn Botto
Donald Trump , Kim Jong-un , Moon Jae-in , Pyongyang summit , Singapore Summit
December 30,2018 Alternative Scenarios

Positive Scenario II

Months have passed since the Pyongyang summit—and hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough remain illusory. For a brief moment, the stalled diplomacy between Washington and Pyongyang appeared to recover; yet no date has been fixed for a second Trump-Kim summit and the newly-appointed US envoy Stephen Biegun has yet to set foot in North Korea. The deadlock is unsurprising given the profound diff..

Eun A Jo
Donald Trump , Kim Jong-un , Moon Jae-in , Moonshine Policy , Pyongyang summit , Singapore Summit
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

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 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
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