South Korea has been actively engaged in a serious re-branding effort. The South Korean government has been worried that the country’s brand has been underperforming in years past...One area that the Korean government has chosen to try to conduct public diplomacy outreach is in the realm of gastrodiplomacy.

Embattled Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Wednesday he was resigning over his broken campaign promise to move a U.S. Marine base off the southern island of Okinawa. The prime minister faced growing pressure from within his own party to resign ahead of July's upper house elections.

Germany now deploys its diplomatic weight in Brussels but it has no vision for a global role, except through the European Union. Germany is still reticent when it comes to the unabashed declaration of national interest.

Where knowledge is limited, and the desire to learn the complex reality doesn't exist, public opinion can be shaped by whoever generates the most powerful symbols. And on a matter of only tangential interest, governments tend to follow their publics' wishes, however they originate. There is little to be gained for governments in resisting public opinion and much to be gained by giving in.

What should have been a quiet piece of policing now has the word ‘atrocity’ appended to it. The press may be being disingenuous, even craven, but the Israeli commanders were monumentally stupid for falling into such an obvious trap.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao carried on efforts to boost the friendship between the people of China and Japan by exercising with Tokyo locals in a park on Monday morning. "The friendship between China and Japan had its base at the non-governmental or grassroots level," the Chinese premier said on the three-day official visit to Tokyo, which ran from Sunday to Tuesday.

More and more Australians view China's economic growth positively, but think that China will become a military threat to Australia within 20 years, a survey showed Monday.

In recent weeks I've written extensively about the nearly $100-million debacle that the US Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo has become. So much false propaganda has been flooding cyberspace, most of it produced by an enormous PR effort...