Ever since the United States divided the Korean peninsula in 1945, North Korea has had to cope with the existential challenge of U.S. hostility. Korea marks the western boundary of the empire, a border area…
Category: Tim Beal
Dr. Tim Beal, after completing an MA(Hons) in modern Chinese studies at the University of Edinburgh, went on to do a Diploma in Business Administration followed by a PhD on China’s terms of trade. He subsequently studied Japanese at Sheffield University and was Ferranti Research Fellow at the Centre for Japanese Studies at Stirling University. He has taught on subjects ranging from Chinese politics to international marketing at universities in Britain, Japan, China and New Zealand, where he moved in 1987. He is a senior lecturer in the School of Marketing and International Business where he currently teaches mainly international marketing, and Asian business environment.
Definition/Description The Korean peninsula is where Russia, China, Japan and the United States meet and contest. It is the most strategically valuable location in the world and inevitably has been of consuming interest to imperialism,…
… with potentially dire consequences. “Back home, we have a saying: The dog barks, but the caravan continues,” Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho told reporters in New York on Wednesday when he was asked about Mr….
Abe Shinzo’s victory in the election will only propel Japan down the dead end road of remilitarization Snap election – harnessing hysteria, diverting attention Japanese Prime Minister’s gamble in calling a snap election to harness…
Observing Moon Jae-in win the election on 7 May, take up the presidency of the Republic of Korea and move on to a summit with President Trump has been like watching a movie where the…
Synopsis The end of 2011 saw the death of Kim Jong Il and the succession of his son Kim Jong Un. During 2012 there will be elections in South Korea (for the National Assembly and…
The year is 2045 and the world is celebrated the 100th anniversary of the United Nations. Of course, some things have changed with the passage of time. The decline of the United States and the…
With the death of Kim Jong Il and the accession to power, nominal and perhaps actual, of Kim Jong Un, many have been asking what change this will make to DPRK policy towards the outside…
North Korea is seldom in the news but when it is this is usually occasioned by some event, such as a nuclear test, or a rocket launch, that is seen to be portentous and so…
What most journalists and sundry pundits have in common is a lack of examination of the facts of the case – if you write what is essentially ideological polemic, facts can get in the way. On top of that, or perhaps part of it, is a failure to understand and attempt to analyse the context in which the event is embedded. This context has two aspects, the contemporary geopolitical environment, and the historical framework. Once you take an event out of its context it often becomes impossible to comprehend it correctly. Worse still, events and the actors that perform them can have their meaning and significance distorted, often to the point of inversion. Prey become predators, victims become villains, and war becomes peace.