East Asia Archive

Last month, two South Korean police officers assigned to protect high school students in Busan, the country’s second-largest city, were found to have had sex with several of them. But neither was punished. Instead, they both resigned and were set up to receive full retirement benefits. The former police chief who broke the scandal on Facebook commented, “This is what happens when you dispatch young, good-looking police officers to schools filled with teenage girls.” News of this story broke as South Korea was in an uproar after a young woman was stabbed to death in a bathroom near Seoul’s central […]

Earlier this month, Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) marched to an unsurprising, if not significant, election victory in the upper house of Japan’s parliament, the Diet. The LDP and its coalition partner, the Komeito Party, scored 70 of the House of Councilors’ 121 contested seats and now control a combined 146 of its 242 seats overall. Their victory, coupled with the LDP-Komeito coalition’s significant majority in the Diet’s lower house, ensures that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will have firm legislative control at least until the fall of 2018, when his term as president of the LDP is set […]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was in China earlier this month, her ninth trip there since taking office, to discuss trade relations, rule of law concerns and the South China Sea disputes. In an email interview, Klaus Larres, a professor at the University of North Carolina, discussed Germany’s ties with China. WPR: How have Germany’s economic and political ties with China evolved since Merkel came to office, and in what areas are both sides looking to expand ties? Klaus Larres: Since the 1980s, under Chancellors Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schroeder, ties between China and Germany have become increasingly close. Schroeder traveled […]