Journal of International Studies

The U.S. needs to rethink its current position on reopening negotiations with Pyongyang.

Author:  Sheila A. Smith , Senior Fellow for Japan Studies September - October 2013 Vol.1, No.2

Every region in the world today is locked in a heated war of words and strewn diplomacy. Barry Buzan's Regional Security Complex theory (of a region with security convergence and divergences) is analogous to a pressure cooker of all sorts, with overlapping and undermining tensions.  East Asia is not excused from this predicament. Sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diayou islands is increasing source of tension between China and Japan in their official 40th year of friendship. It reminds of the the Confucian saying "one mountain cannot harbor two tigers". A policy struggle of accommodation versus aggression by the Japanese in the light of China's "peaceful rise" is troubling Japanese investors and policy makers.  The region currently faces a string of asymmetric challenges that needs to be dealt with diplomatically. The islands dispute has been the elephant in the room for most talks between China and Japan in several multilateral frameworks.  W...

"History" again raised its ugly head when Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo failed to get even a brief session with South Korean President Park Geun-hye while they were both in Southeast Asia earlier in October.  By international standards, Japan's handling of its past is above average. Unlike Turkey with the Armenian genocide, Japan is not in hysterical denial. Nor does Japan, as the Chinese Communist Party does, put a mass murderer (Mao) on its banknotes. Tojo's soul is inscribed in obscurity at Yasukuni, but the founding father of totalitarianism's mummy is worshiped in Moscow. Western democracies have often dealt with crimes against humanity, such as the slaughter of native peoples and slavery, with indifference or negation. A highway next to Washington DC is named after Jefferson Davis who presided over the Confederacy during its struggle to uphold slavery.  In the end, though, Japan is always judged based on how West Germany (and later a reunit...

The relationship between North Korea and Mongolia does not usually make headlines, but Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj’s visit to the reclusive state this visit this week has brought this oft-overlooked East Asian bilateral relationship to the forefront. The visit also marks the very first meeting between a foreign head of state and Kim Jong-Un since his rise to power in 2011. Elbegdorj’s objectives during the visit are slightly unusual.  The Wall Street Journal  reports  that the president "will present his country’s history as an example of how to achieve sovereignty and economic development without relying on the use of force.” According to the Mongolian Foreign Ministry, Elbegdorj has considered the possibility of acting as a neutral mediator between the North and the outside world. Nevertheless, his visit demonstrates a closeness to North Korea that could be an asset for Mongolia’s relations with other states. According to certain experts, Mongolia pre...

Late this September, the media  reported   widely  on a new study focused on the production of advanced gas centrifuges in North Korea. The analysis, presented in Seoul by Joshua Pollack and R. Scott Kemp of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was largely understood to indicate that advances in in-house North Korean scientific know-how would significantly hamper the effectiveness of traditional policy mechanisms intended to yield concessions from the Kim regime on the nuclear program.  Pollack, who also writes for  Arms Control Wonk , a blog on arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation, was pessimistic about the policy implications of the evidence uncovered in his research, stating that it may place a “verifiable denuclearization deal out of reach.” The evidence pointed to a concerted effort by North Korea to consolidate its nuclear production cycle. Specifically, Pollack and Kemp  found  that North Korea "is learning ...

Is the South Korean Navy simply an expensive trifle? Last week, Kyle Mizokami  argued that the Republic of Korea Navy is “Impressive … and Pointless.”  Mizokami makes the nutshell case against South Korea’s  shift to the sea : "In the country’s rush to embrace its destiny as a seagoing nation, South Korea has prematurely shifted resources from defending against a hostile North Korea to defeating exaggerated sea-based threats from abroad. Seoul is in the midst of a strategic shift that has shorted defenses against the North and put its forces in harm’s way." There’s no doubt something to this argument.  The largest ships of the ROKN can, in context of the current state of disengagement between North and South Korea, look like little more than floating targets. South Korea treated the sinking of the Cheonan with admirable restraint.  Imagine, however, if an over-excited North Korean sub skipper decided to try to torpedo Dokdo or Seojong the Great?...

Chinese citizens don't think their government should have a monopoly on rumors. BY DAVID WERTIME   |   OCTOBER 22, 2013 "Official rumors" is more than just an oxymoron. The phrase -- pronounced  guanyao  -- has become a useful weapon in Chinese Internet users' linguistic guerrilla warfare against government censorship. That battle has intensified during a government-led  crackdown  on "online rumor-mongering," which has sought to rein in China's rambunctious social media, partly through the arrest  or  detention  of several high-profile online opinion leaders. Making things worse for China's Internet users is a new judicial interpretation, issued on Sept. 9 by China's highest legal authorities, stating  that posting defamatory messages read more than 5,000 times or shared more than 500 times can lead to up to three years in jail. In the face of these assaults on their right to speak out, grassroots Chinese are trying to t...

Japan   is   an   important   neighbor   of   China .  The   China-Japan   relationship   is   one   of   the   most important   bilateral   relationships   for   both   sides . The   following   is   a   brief   introduction   to   the   major   issues   in   China-Japan   relations   over the   past  40  years : 1970s -  Normalization   of   Sino-Japanese   Relations On   October  2, 1971,  China   put   forward  " the   Three   Principles   on   the   Restoration   of   Sino-Japanese   Diplomatic   Relations ": (1)  The   People ' s   Republic   of   China   is   the   sole   legal   government   of   China ; (2)  Taiwan   is   an ...