ISDP Voices

On May 9, South Koreans go to the polls to elect a new president to replace impeached former leader Park Geun-hye. Five candidates have put forward their policy priorities and agendas should they be elected. Whoever wins faces stiff challenges, both domestic and foreign, as Sangsoo Lee outlines below. Tackling Inequality and Population Greying South […]

The conflict on the Korean Peninsula has moved into a new and dangerous phase. North Korea’s rhetoric and unabated march towards ever greater missile and nuclear capability, combined with Trump’s erratic but hardline style, have many analysts seeking to draft the next chapter of the Korean story post-strategic patience. The dispatch of a U.S. navy strike group […]

During the past few decades China has gone through an extraordinary process of modernization. Due to economic development, urbanization and exchanges with the outside world, people in China today lead lives that are strikingly similar to the lives of people in the Western world. At the same time, there has been a return to the indigenous […]

The Internet is often described as a space for creativity, empowerment, and knowledge that builds on a vision of freedom and borderless connectivity. It is also regarded as an enabler of different human rights, with some even considering access to the Internet as a human right itself. But is this perspective shared by all, and what […]

By unpacking some of the key ideas within the human rights debate, this blog post argues that the debates and discussions surrounding human rights are essential for its promotion. The notion of human rights is heavily contested and politicized. After the Second World War when the human rights debate took center stage there were noticeable differences in conceptions of human […]

Continued failure to identify a shared political vision for the future hampers any prospect of a genuine fresh start after the Northern Ireland’s election, argues Alec Forss. Northern Ireland’s election to the Stormont assembly on March 2 was billed as the most important since the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the peace deal […]

China’s ban on coal imports in the latest round of sanctions on North Korea does not equate to it turning its back on its neighbor, argue Eleonora Rossi and Sangsoo Lee. Last month was a busy period for North Korea watchers. On February 12, Pyongyang successfully conducted its first missile test of 2017, and on the following […]

While China is actively seeking to diversify energy routes to reduce its dependence on the Straits of Malacca, the strategic waterway still remains a safer bet than other untested alternatives, argues B.A. Hamzah. The Straits of Malacca and Singapore are one of the most vital sea lines of communication in the world, constituting the principal […]

A Chinese researcher once resignedly confided in me that he thought a future war between China and Japan to be inevitable. According to such a view, the arc of history amid longstanding grievances and territorial disputes narrows the odds on this eventuality. And although Northeast Asia has “enjoyed” a hard peace since the end of […]

In 2012 ‘Womenomics’ was introduced in Japan in order to increase female employment by supporting women in the workplace. In addition to the obvious benefits of gender equality, the policies would help to ease Japan’s decades long trend of economic decline. Indeed, empirical evidence shows that boosting female employment could lead to a significant rise in Japanese […]