We must hold regular dialogue and seek common ground, even if there are issues that are onerous to resolve. We hope to see a return to this standard practice of diplomacy. Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and his South Korean counterpart, Yun Byung Se, have held talks in New York, where they agreed on “the importance of continuing and deepening high-level communication” for Japan-South Korea ties. 

Given the troubled history between South and North Korea, it's difficult to imagine that the sides marched under the same flag at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. The unified marches, also held at the Sydney and Athens Games, fell in line with a reconciliatory mood on the peninsula as well as the idea that, in the words of the late Nelson Mandela, sport "has the power to change the world."

Emerging donor South Korea has high hopes for Myanmar, and the latest step is to establish a new think tank to assist in policy, capacity building and research efforts in the country, as well as boost Seoul’s own development footprint in Southeast Asia.

For the next two weeks, organizers of the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon are hoping the event will keep plenty of people in the port city, if not draw them from the capital. Incheon, about 25 kilometers west of Seoul and home to three million people, is ready to step out of the shadow of its giant neighbor and make a name for itself by hosting Asia’s biggest sporting event starting Friday.

If it wants to strengthen its presence in the international community and adequately inform a wider audience abroad about itself, Japan should strategically strengthen its public relations overseas and promote cultural exchanges with other nations. In its budgetary request for fiscal 2015, the Foreign Ministry has requested about 50 billion yen (about $475 million) for a new key budgetary item called "strategic proliferation of information abroad."

China's president, Xi Jinping, has paid visits to Russia, South Korea and Mongolia since February this year, visits that have "hit pressure points" that "cut right to the chase," according to Duowei News, an overseas Chinese news outlet. Zhang Jiuhuan, vice chair of the China Public Diplomacy Association, compared Xi's recent official foreign visits to hitting pressure points, or points on the energy channels of the body — in other words, they were "short, fast, rich in content and fruitful." 

Hong’s new book, “The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture,” loosely follows South Korea’s growth from the mid-60s, when the country’s per capita G.D.P. was less than Ghana’s, to now. Today, South Korea is the 15th-largest economy in the world. From Psy’s “Gangnam Style” video to the chips that Samsung furnishes for Apple’s iPhones, the book explores the confluence of factors that make for Korea’s pop-­cultural perfect storm.

There has been much debate recently on the possibility of a China-South Korea alliance. The “pro” arguments quite often begin by noting that China has been emerging rapidly in a multi-polar world, making a strategic competition or even stand-off between China and the United States more probable.