Asian Legal Review

North Korean propaganda has been found at the South’s presidential compound, officials said on Monday, with the discovery of leaflets praising Pyongyang, which once sent commandos to attack the complex.
Authorities in the nuclear-armed North and activists in the South regularly use balloons to carry leaflets across the demilitarised zone that has divided the peninsula since the end of the Korean war.
Seoul is only 35 miles from the DMZ, within artillery range, and the leaflets are…

The Court of Appeal (CoA) has issued a landmark judgment which clarifies the rights and obligations for issuers of bearer notes and investors in them.

An opinion poll released on Monday found that nearly nine out of 10 Filipinos support Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs and almost three quarters believe extrajudicial killings are taking place in the bloody crackdown.
Duterte’s signature campaign has killed thousands of people and caused international alarm, amid widespread claims by activists that police are executing suspected drug users and dealers.
Police reject that and say every one of the more than 3,900…

Loretto Cunningham has had a rough day at work. A well-meaning colleague inadvertently revealed her sexuality to a senior member of staff at one of the primary schools in Tokyo where she teaches English.
The school was immediately supportive and reassured her that it changed nothing, but Cunningham, 29, who is originally from West Virginia and has lived in Japan for five years, does not like her private life being the potential subject of staff room gossip.
But whatever her own tribulations…

Chinese businesses are quietly expanding their footprint in Cambodia as relations between the Southeast Asian nation and Washington worsen and the din of anti-American sentiment grows louder.
The United States and Cambodia have never been on the best of terms, with the small country’s long-time ruler Hun Sen rarely missing an opportunity to take potshots at the Western superpower.
In recent weeks, the prime minister has unleashed a flood of conspiracy theories centred around the US…

Four Rohingya refugees, three of them children, were killed by elephants as they built a shack in a forest in southern Bangladesh on Saturday, police said.
The incident occurred at Balukhali camp in Cox’s Bazar district, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have set up makeshift shelters since fleeing violence across the border in Myanmar.
“They were trampled to death by seven or eight wild elephants. They include a woman and three children,” said Afrozul Haq Tutul, deputy…

Malaysia plans to “close down” its embassy in Pyongyang, a Foreign Ministry source said on Friday, confirming reports that the ministry has recommended to the cabinet that the country’s embassy in China also be accredited to North Korea.
“Wisma Putra (the Foreign Ministry) will be putting up the recommendation for the cabinet to decide. We will have to wait until the cabinet has made a decision,” an aide to foreign minister Anifah Aman told Kyodo News on condition…

The government must change the law to liberate pensions data and enable savers to access all their information in one place online, an industry group has said.

ANALYSIS: Pension scheme trustees can be particularly vulnerable to cyber security attacks, and they can be high profile targets for scammers. There are some steps that they should take to reduce their risk.

SINGAPORE PRESS HOLDINGS is hoping that a slimmer employee base will save its struggling media business, but observers say retrenchments alone will not keep Southeast Asia’s biggest newspaper publisher and its regional peers in business, as digital disruption throttles circulation and advertisement revenue.  Singapore Press Holdings (SPH), publisher of The Straits Times English daily, announced this week it was urgently bringing forward previously announced plans to slash a tenth…