U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s meetings with Chinese Minster of Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi in Boston on October 17–18 marked the end of preparations by senior-level officials for the 22nd Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit and turned the attention to the leaders’ meetings... MORE

On the 40th anniversary of establishing bilateral diplomatic relations, Mongolia’s President Tsakhia Elbegdorj and Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met in Tokyo on July 22, 2014, to sign a Joint Statement on affirming the final roadmap toward instituting an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA). Aimed at... MORE

In the wake of the newest sanctions on Russia by the European Union and the United States, Washington is seeking to persuade its Asian allies, Japan and South Korea, to follow suit (Yonhap July 31; Korea Times Online, July 29). While South Korea has hesitated... MORE

During her week-long visit last month (June 2014) to Central Asia, South Korean President Park Geun-hye made further progress in advancing her “Eurasia Initiative,” which she announced in October 2013. The Initiative aims to deepen South Korean ties with Europe through Russia, China and Central... MORE

The Ukrainian crisis has apparently claimed another victim, namely Russo-Japanese rapprochement. This rapprochement, which began after Shinzo Abe’s rise to power in Tokyo, offered clear signs of a new attempt to overcome the long-standing dispute over the Kuril Islands (known in Japan as the Northern... MORE

There is no consensus in the Chinese expert community regarding the time frame of the next North Korean nuclear test. However, the policy debate that started with the rise of the “abandonment school” after the third nuclear test, which occurred in February last year, has... MORE

During his visit to Seoul in late 2013, Vladimir Putin almost explicitly warned the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK—North Korea) that, if it did not respond to Moscow’s proposal for a trans-Korean pipeline and railway, which would connect to Russia’s planned Siberian gas pipeline... MORE

In a move that both exacerbates international conflicts in the Western Pacific and suggests how Moscow plans to proceed in the Arctic, Russian President Vladimir Putin has closed to all outside shipping and fishing the entire Sea of Okhotsk—some 52,000 square kilometers of water that... MORE

Two high-level visits of Mongolian officials to Seoul in the past six weeks indicate that Mongolian–South Korean relations are rapidly intensifying. This trend and Mongolia’s mid-March facilitation of the reunion of Japanese relatives with the daughter of a North Korean abductee illustrate the desire of... MORE

Despite the mounting ferocity of Sino-Japanese rhetoric, China’s partner Russia is moving forward on normalizing its ties with Japan. Indeed, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at Sochi on February 8, and Putin has accepted an invitation to visit Tokyo... MORE