Here is not the place for a comprehensive account of the deepening crisis of Japan-Okinawa-US relations. The forthcoming study by Satoko Oka Norimatsu and myself attempts to do that in a systematic way (Gavan McCormack and Satoko Oka Norimatsu, Resistant Islands: Okinawa vs Japan and the United States, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012.)

Here, however, we present two Okinawan accounts of the events on which the year 2011 ended: one by Okinawa's leading environmentalist, specialist in environmental assessment law and till 2010 president of Okinawa University, the other by the long-time chronicler of the Okinawan resistance movement and Nago city resident. Both are core members of that movement. They write of the astonishing events that marked the end of 2011.

Austria is a great country for many reasons, but with just 8.4 million citizens and locked in the center of the European continent, it is hardly a global player. However, even here the death of Kim Jong Il, the details of the mourning procedure, and the assignment of titles and functions to his son Kim Jong Un, were reported by almost all media as top news.

This tells us something about globalization and our own profession. News is being produced and fed by a few globally operating press agencies that make hundreds of national media outlets look like clones with minor local mutations. It also shows how visually oriented the consumption of news has become. We have reason to believe that without the particular features of Kim Jong Il's appearance, and without the TV broadcasts of thousands of ecstatic mourners [Erich Weingartner: The reality of tears], attention in the West would have been much lower. I was asked by one journalist why our public does not seem to be too worried about the humanitarian situation in North Korea. My answer was: because they cannot see it on their TV screens.

Little more than a year ago, in December 2011, Kim Jong Un was announced as successor to his late father Kim Jong Il. Initial hopes for a change in North Korea's WMD policy faded away after two missile launches in April and December 2012, and the country's third nuclear test in February 2013. Shortly afterwards, wave after wave of threats has been issued by Pyongyang, including the use of nuclear weapons against the United States. Against this background, does it make sense to even think about economic engagement?