This is a revised version of a paper that was prepared for the Conference in Commemoration of the June 15 South-North Joint Declaration, Kim Dae Jung Peace Center Seoul, June 12, 2008.

A major purpose of this conference is to take stock of the June 2000 summit with the benefit of eight years of hindsight, also to examine the achievements of the October 2007 summit, and to assess where we are today in relations with North Korea. My perspective is obviously an American one, and I am deeply interested in where Korean affairs might go after the inauguration of a new American president only eight months from now. But I am afraid I sometimes overestimate American influence on Korean affairs. I think recent years have demonstrated that when Korean leaders want something badly enough, and stick to their policies and principles, they can directly or indirectly influence American leaders toward adopting similar policies. And so I want to make one major point that I will come back to in the end: Presidents Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun persisted with their engagement policy toward Pyongyang through five years of intense American pressure, criticism, and provocation, and ultimately were vindicated when the Bush administration turned 180 degrees and also adopted an engagement policy. Why this happened is still something of a mystery, but it certainly did happen.

The United States has long served as a magnet for talented scientists, engineers and mathematicians from China and India. This attraction has proven controversial, both in Asia and in the United States. Economic nationalists in China and India have long complained that the “brain drain” damaged their countries' ability to compete and slowed economic development by skimming off the best talent. For their part, critics in the United States claimed that foreign workers arriving on H-1B visas displaced U.S. knowledge workers and pushed down wages for this class of employment.

[Hisane Masaki provides an excellent survey of the energy challenges confronting Japan while suggesting some of the problems with the new energy policy regime about to be officially adopted by the Koizumi Administration. The issues are pertinent not only to Japan but throughout the Asia Pacific and globally.

First the challenges: Japan, like all other nations, now faces the strong possibility that fossil fuel supplies and energy politics will be fraught in the coming years, resulting in upward pressure on prices. In Tokyo and other parts of Japan, for example, unseasonably cold weather has boosted the demand for fuel, and sharply driven up the cost of heating oil along with winter vegetables and other products. The country's heavy dependence on imported fossil fuels is thus keenly felt by consumers. But it is systemic problems at the regional and global levels that pose the largest problems. Robust economic growth elsewhere, notably in China and India, presents a seemingly insatiable global appetite for more oil and gas. At the same time, the major oil producers have at best minimal margins of spare production capacity. While producers are investing in new sources of supply, the cost of exploration is skyrocketing due to the demand for rigs and other equipment as well as the risks, remoteness and other challenges attendant on new finds.

Trouble is again brewing in the South China Sea (SCS), where six nations compete for control over tiny atolls—the Paracel and Spratly Islands—that probably sit atop important gas and oil reserves. On the surface the dispute over sovereignty would appear to be about two kinds of claims, one based on history, the other on international law—200nm exclusive economic zones (EEZ) and territorial waters that a country may legally claim under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In reality, however, the dispute has more to do with politics and economics—motives based on nationalism, power, and energy needs. Without such motives, the territorial dispute would stand a good chance of being quietly resolved through diplomacy or adjudication; with them, the dispute stands a good chance of leading to serious conflict.

Daffodils that bloom along the Cape Echizen cliffs overlooking the Sea of Japan are wild. With their sword-shaped slender leaves and lovely white or yellow blossoms, these plants convey a sense of trim tidiness that makes them stand out among rare winter flowers and attracts many admirers. Perhaps because they are wild, these Echizen daffodils look tougher at a glance than their counterparts grown in city greenhouses. The green of their leaves too is a shade darker. Tough as they are – perhaps because they grow on windswept hills pounded by roaring waves – they look all the lovelier for being wild. Nowadays, when trains arrive at Takefu, Fukui, and other stations along the Hokuriku main line near Cape Echizen, so-called flower girls with pretty golden baskets stroll from window to window selling daffodils in small bunches, bulbs and all. They have recently made this wild flower the “regional flower” of Fukui Prefecture.

The explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has become an earthshaking situation, severely damaging the surrounding area. In addition, highly radioactive ocean water has been detected nearby. Sato Eisaku (佐藤栄佐久 age 71), who at one point brought 17 nuclear power plants operated by the Tokyo Power Electric Company (TEPCO) to a halt, is indignant about the situation: “The root of all evil is the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the government.”

Partha Chatterjee is a founding member of the Subaltern Studies editorial group and Director, Centre for the Study of Social Sciences, Calcutta, and Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University. A leading specialist on empire, nation, and social movements, his most recent book is The Politics of Government: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. In the present article, he defines the imperial prerogative as the power to declare the colonial exception, that is to make and break the rules of the game. This article appeared in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Vol. 6, Number 4, 2005. For the article click here

At 9:18 p.m. on Sept. 18 of this year, I was standing in front of the Sept. 18 History Museum in Shenyang, China. It was raining. A siren went off. It sounded like the wailing of a fire engine.

On this day each year, Shenyang holds a ceremony to mark the anniversary of a military crackdown against the city's unsuspecting citizens by the Imperial Japanese Army. This year was the 76th anniversary of that event.

Japanese forces swiftly overran a vast area of northeastern China. The annual ceremony seeks to keep this memory alive. It is also serves as a prayer for peace.

“We too are an army of rapists,” anonymous soldier, letter to the editor, Time Magazine, November 12, 1945.

What explains the lack of records regarding the number of rapes in occupation Japan by American servicemen? I briefly review the situation of rape during World War II in the European theater for which there is reasonable documentation to better understand why the names and numbers are concealed or lost. I then examine the situation postwar, focusing particularly on conditions in Japan at the beginning of the American occupation. I conclude by analyzing what little documentation I discovered about an execution for rape while writing Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, my memoir about my uncle who committed suicide after leaving me tapes about his experiences as an MP in Tokyo's 8th Army stockade.

It is January 15 1998. Standing grim-faced and with arms folded, Michel Camdessus, the International Monetary Fund managing director, peers down as President Suharto of Indonesia signs his acceptance of the latest list of 50 IMF demands. Mr Suharto has no choice, even though many of the intended reforms are politically unpalatable. Such has been the outflow of money from Indonesia over the past six months that the economy would implode if a second international bail-out were refused.

This conversation between two artists draws on, presents, and discusses visual representations including video, drawings and maps pertaining to the Nanjing Massacre and the US history of bombing. Discussion offers reflection on war, memory, history, biography, the relationship between language and visual representation, protest, the possibility of reconciliation, and the role of the artist in response to war.

This chapter entitled “Sex and Censorship During the Occupation of Japan” is excerpted from Mark McLelland's Love, Sex and Democracy in Japan during the American Occupation (Palgrave MacMillan 2012). The book examines the radical changes that took place in Japanese ideas about sex, romance and male-female relations in the wake of Japan's defeat and occupation by Allied forces at the end of the Second World War. Although there have been other studies that have focused on sexual and romantic relationships between Japanese women and US military personnel, little attention has been given to how the Occupation impacted upon the courtship practices of Japanese men and women. This book adds an important dimension so far lacking in studies of Japan's sexual mores during the Occupation period.

When North Korea went ahead with its nuclear test on October 9, 2006 in defiance of China's objections, the Bush administration had hoped that Pyongyang's brazen act would finally create the necessary momentum to precipitate a strategic shift in China's and South Korea's view of North Korea. The two countries hold the key to Pyongyang's economic survival and both countries have been reluctant to pursue policies that might lead to its collapse and regional upheaval.

Sixty years ago, during the evening of Aug. 14, 1945, Emperor Hirohito recorded the speech of surrender to be broadcast to the Japanese nation the next day at noon.

Aug. 15, 1945 found Sugihara Chiune, his wife, Yukiko, and their three little children in Romania, interned there by the Red Army. It was unclear what their fate would be. Japan had been officially at war with the Soviet Union, albeit for only a few days.

Concerned about the sustainability of its oil and gas reserves, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been taking steps to diversify its economy and reduce its dependence on natural resource exports. The most eye-catching of these changes has been the rapid development of Dubai as a finance, services and travel hub in the last decade. A further plank in this strategy has recently been revealed: UAE plans to embark upon a nuclear power programme. Emphasising transparency and close cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it hopes to have the first of its reactors on line by 2017.

For half a century, Australian journalists and academics have fought bitterly over the legacy of journalist Wilfred Burchett. Burchett broke the US embargo to report on radiation from Hiroshima in August 1945, calling it “the atomic plague, then controversially covered the Korean and Vietnam Wars from “the other side”. “Could anything justify the extermination of civilians on such a scale?” he pondered of Hiroshima.

The use and potential misuse of sovereign wealth funds in Asia has been newsworthy of late, especially because of their size and high profile investments. China and – and possibly Japan as well – look to parlay their governmentowned investment vehicles. With its small population base, and vast reserves of oil and natural gas, the small Southeast Asian nation of Brunei Darussalam, located on the northeastern side of the island of Borneo, has been able to lever its economy into providing an enviable standard of living for its population and mega-billions for its ruling Royal family.

Curiously, it had to be on the fateful day when Russia had begun brooding over former president Boris Yeltsin's final, ambivalent legacy that US Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived on his first official visit to Moscow.