The decade after the Korean War (1950-1953) was a formative era for North Korea. Many of the striking features of the country's political and social system visible today took root during the postwar era, from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s.

The era was, above all, a time of proud achievements for North Korea. Socialist politics are often referred to as substantive economic democracy based on the principle of egalitarian access to and distribution of social goods, in contrast to the formal democracy of liberal states founded on ideas of universal suffrage and personal liberty to pursue greater access to social goods. In the early postwar years, North Korea achieved great success in building a state and economic system on the model of substantive democracy, rapidly transforming a war-torn, and previously highly stratified, primarily agrarian society into an energetic, industrial society enjoying distributive justice and universal literacy.

On the surface the story is simple enough. Japan's most powerful and controversial politician has done it again: shaking up the party political world by leaving, and perhaps breaking up, the DPJ, Japan's ruling party. And that because things did not go his way. The Japanese media were, predictably, ready with their favorite epithet, ‘the destroyer’, and with quotes from political commentators that this time his star may be truly fading because the perennial polls show that the people have had it with him.

As it aims to reduce fossil-fuel use, the country is investing heavily in wind and solar energy. Gansu province, once known for dirty mines and oil wells, is being revitalised.

On April 17, 2012, the day that Tokyo Mayor Ishihara Shintarô went public with his plan for the metropolis to purchase the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, the government of Yilan County in Taiwan responded, “The only way to carry out a sale of the Diaoyu Islands is through an official open, competitive bidding process.”

The departure of former leader, Ozawa Ichiro, from the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) signifies that the twenty year-long effort at reform of politics and realignment of the political party system has come to a dead end. It was just twenty years ago, in the summer, that the resignation of Deputy Prime Minster Kanemaru Shin over political fund problems led to crisis within the Takeshita faction and the search for a way to reform Japanese party politics.