For Chico Harlan's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Vice President Joe Biden urged Japan and China last week to set up "effective channels of communication" to avoid a dangerous escalation in their increasingly fraught dispute over maritime territory. But the estrangement between the Asian powers is so deep they are barely talking. Prime ...
The crowds at Tokyo's Koreatown have been replaced by a small but strident group of anti-Korean protesters who are turning it into a barometer of Japan-Korea relations.
In one of the world's most naturally deadly countries, catastrophes can originate almost anywhere. Flash floods race down mountainsides. A zigzag of tectonic plates collide below. Typhoons build in warm ocean waters and then tear westward. And when disasters do strike, they strike hard, ravaging ...
South Korea is renowned for its digital innovation, with coast-to-coast broadband and a 4G LTE network that reaches into Seoul's subway system. But this tech-savvy country is stuck in a time warp in one way: its slavish dependence on Internet Explorer.
In divided Korea, even the homecomings can be bitter.
Two and a half years after the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant experienced its three reactor-core meltdowns, the effort to clean up what remains of the complex is turning into another kind of disaster. The site now stores some 340 million liters of radioactive water, ...
South Korea is a nation covered by apartments, so much so that from above, it resembles a coast-to-coast game of dominoes. Apartment buildings snake around mountains and form jarring clusters in the countryside. In cities, they align in grids that stretch for several kilometers. Apartment ...
South Korea's last dictator lives in an L-shaped mansion protected by 5-meter stone walls and a plainclothes security team. He almost never goes outside, his longtime lawyer says, given the scrutiny he would face. Highlighting the extent of change in the nation he once ...
Every day, at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., a part-time worker at one of Fukushima's most well-known beaches walks toward the shoreline and lowers a dosimeter to the water. The device measures radiation, and its readings this summer have delivered the best news one ...
After cycling through seven prime ministers in seven years, the Upper House election is about to see the nation break free from its most vexing political pattern: instability.
