Pop culture has worked a powerful magic in South Korea, turning it into one of the coolest places on the planet, which begs the question: How can Singapore get in on the act? The Hallyu fever, which started around 20 years ago, had overtaken Japanese pop that held sway from the 1980s to the early 1990s, and shows no sign of cooling.

The Tao Nan Primary School pupil was among 120 students - 60 local Marine Parade residents and 60 from the Japanese School of Singapore - at Moshi Moshi, Hello! Singapore-Japan Exchange 2016, an event to promote intercultural exchange and mutual understanding between children from the local and Japanese communities.

Cyber cooperation remains a prominent area of mutual interest between Singapore and Washington. Singapore’s Cyber Security Agency (CSA) and the US Department of Homeland Security recently established a formal cybersecurity partnership. This agreement will improve bilateral cybersecurity and potentially create mechanisms for ASEAN nations to better address cybersecurity challenges.

The heads of missions of five Asean countries based in Dubai met in a networking event for the first time with leaders of their communities on Monday to discuss future areas of collaboration [...] “As a community, you need really to have a very good people-to-people interaction. What’s more important is this is our first public diplomacy programme by all the Asean consuls” Yousuf said.
 

Marking half a century of strong diplomatic relations, the United States and Singapore on Wednesday (Aug 3) laid out an ambitious vision for future bilateral cooperation in a wide spectrum of areas across defence, cybersecurity, innovation, trade and people-to-people exchanges. [...] The joint statement is the most substantive outcome of Mr Lee’s official visit this week to the US to commemorate the 50th anniversary of diplomatic ties.

The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) yesterday said that its annual summer camp is to promote exchanges between Taiwanese students and their counterparts from Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam. The program is to bring together 50 university students to discuss regional development and cooperation, the AIT said.

From New York to Yokohama, an unstoppable wave of yellow monsters is infiltrating public venues, performing strange rituals and targeting young humans. Having already dominated Japan and conquered a number of overseas markets, the “Pocket Monsters” video game series, now in its 20th year, is entering a new realm: reality.

When the argument is made about global power shifting from West to East, it is primarily based on Asia's remarkable economic rise, although China's steady build-up of military and naval capability is also regularly cited. But a new authoritative study suggests that it is not just in hard but also soft power where Asia is fast making gains.