The response to that Toyota in Tianjin and the Apple iPhone5 could not be more different. What links them, however, are the notion of "soft power" and the risks and rewards of being identified as one of a given nation's leading companies...

The stunning success of the video and the song has turned assumptions about nation branding and images of Korean upside down... "Gangnam Style" was an unexpected hit, not a promoted one...This says volumes about efforts to promote Korean cultural products overseas: What Koreans like is not necessarily what foreigners like.

Chinese nationalists have for over a week now staged nationwide demonstrations against Japan which turned violent in some cities. The two countries are locked in a decades-old conflict over the ownership of a group of islets in the East China Sea, called in Chinese Diaoyu and Japanese Senkaku.

Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague is in Ottawa to announce an agreement between the two countries that Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird says will start with embassies in Haiti and Burma, and will allow civil servants to consider doing so in more countries as the need arises.

Over the past few years, Korean popular culture, often abbreviated as “K-pop,” has gained immense popularity in many countries. Following the initial surge of interest in Korean television dramas and popular music, nowadays all things Korean ― from food, movies and dances to fashion and language ― are quite the rage.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has left for the U.S. to pursue a crowded agenda that focuses on connecting with mainstream Americans including those who are part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. For a seventh successive year, the Iranian President will address the General Assembly session, which commences on September 25. Mr. Ahmadinejad will also represent the 120-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) as its rotating President.

South Korea will rev up a public relations drive on social networking sites worldwide for its easternmost islets of Dokdo to counter Japan's claims to the islets, a high-ranking government official said Monday. Diplomatic tension between South Korea and Japan remains high following the unprecedented Aug. 10 visit to Dokdo by President Lee Myung-bak, who cited Tokyo's unrepentant attitude over its brutal 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula as a key reason for the trip.

Is there anyone who still believes that the Noda government decision to “nationalize” the Senkaku islands (claimed and by China as their “sacred territory” andcalled Diaoyudao) was not a gigantic blunder? I would venture that by now–as they watch the spreading anti-Japanese protests in China, recently including attacks on Japanese diplomatic missions and pillaging of Japanese businesses–defenders of the government’s move in Japan are a small and still diminishing minority.