Japanese authorities now want to tap this soft power for tourism, amid an ambitious drive by the Abe administration to double burgeoning foreign tourist arrivals to 40 million by 2020. [...] The association, working with industry members and local governments, wants to create a whole suite of services and products, from shuttle buses to merchandising, to boost the experience for visitors - and bring in the yen.
 

Soon after coming to power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi prudently decided to emphasise India’s rich tradition of Buddhism in a soft-power approach to Asian geopolitics. Apart from countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Japan, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Mongolia and others, he even struck a direct chord with China to revive India-China ties. 

For over a decade, South Korean businessmen and officials have regularly met with representatives of the Maghreb and most developed countries in Central Africa. [...] Furthermore, the author stressed the role of "soft power" in Seoul’s presence in Africa.  "South Korea is a recognized international power. It wants to have an international policy adequate to this status," Dayez-Burgeon noted.

Indians — especially the youth — are learning Korean, eating kimchi and travelling to Seoul to sample the life shown on their favourite TV dramas, and films [...] Over the last decade, K-pop and K-dramas, as well as their movies, have unleashed a tsunami of growth and popularity in India, and the numbers of avid fans continue to grow exponentially.

With China not budging from its position on India's NSG bid, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar has called for a "sensible and pragmatic" conversation between the two sides on how "not accommodating" each others aspiration was detrimental to the overall relationship. The Foreign Secretary also observed India should use its soft power and do more in improving its image in China as people there do not have a very fair idea about the country.

The BBC World Service has outlined plans to increase the number of languages in which it broadcasts from 29 to 40 – in a drive to reach half a billion people across the world by 2022. It is the biggest expansion of the broadcaster in more than 70 years, and a signal that Britain aims to exercise its soft power more vigorously.