Global Asia Magazine - December 2020

In this issue

After spending most of human history out of sight to all but a small number of Indigenous peoples, the Arctic has emerged in recent years a major new venue of resource extraction, including oil and natural gas and numerous valuable minerals; an increasingly important shipping route; and a burgeoning arena of geopolitical contest, among other things. For most people, though, the Arctic represents an unwelcome sign of the effects of climate change, with the region widely seen as the most visible indicator of global warming. To be sure, it is that, but it is also much more...
For the cover package of this issue of GlobalAsia, Oran Young, one of the world’s leading figures in research on the Arctic, has served as guest editor, working with the Korean Maritime Institute to assemble a wide range of articles by Arctic specialists that illuminate the complexity and relevance of the region’s issues for the rest of the world. In putting together this cover package, Prof. Young and his NP AC colleagues wish to dedicate the package to Prof. Yoon Hyung Kim, who retired in September as a senior fellow at the East West Center and chair of the NP AC steering committee. “Kim has provided the essential glue making NP AC a success since its launch in 2011,” writes Young.

Global Asia Magazine Description:

Global Asia is a quarterly publication of the East Asia Foundation. The foundation, established in Seoul in January 2005, strives to promote peace, prosperity, security and sustainability in East Asia by creating an open and creative forum for the exchange of ideas on regional co-operation and integration, among other goals.
The mission we have set for ourselves with Global Asia is both bold and urgent: It is to provide a compelling, serious, and responsible forum for distinguished thinkers, policymakers, political leaders and business people to debate the most important issues in Asia today.
Global Asia is not a journal with a fixed point of view, or a particular agenda. Our aim is to give voice to the global dimension of what is happening in Asia. In our pages and on our web site, we aim for Asia to speak to the world, and the world to Asia. That is important at a time when this region is playing an ever greater role in world affairs.
There are other fine publications on international affairs. What sets us apart is our focus: Asia. We believe that the world is moving into “the Age of Asia,” to borrow a phrase from one of the articles in the inaugural issue of Global Asia in September 2006. This transformation is not going to occur overnight, but it has already begun.
The region’s dynamic economic growth, stable and accountable political systems, maturing democracies, and evolving sense of community are giving Asia greater weight in the world. These developments will have enormous implications for governments, businesses, societies and individuals across the globe. How that transformation is viewed, and shaped, from within Asia and how it is perceived outside Asia is an essential part of the story we have to tell.
The forces of globalization are having a profound impact throughout the world. And they are being influenced and channeled in different ways in different parts of the world. Ours is the story of Asia’s experience with globalization, and the ideas and debates influencing it. In pursuing our mission, we aim to play a part, however modest, in helping to shape the future of Asia.