Asian Legal Review

South Korea, under President Lee Jae-myung, has repeatedly proclaimed its desire to improve relations and re-engage in diplomacy with North Korea. Yet a landmark agreement with Washington formalised last week reveals a starkly different priority: advancing military capabilities that will almost certainly drive the two Koreas further apart.
The United States has officially approved South Korea’s pursuit of nuclear-powered submarines while supporting Seoul’s efforts to secure uranium enrichment…

Heavy rain, severe flooding and landslides in Vietnam have killed at least 90 people in the last week, authorities said on Sunday, leaving others stranded on rooftops and mountain roadways blocked.
Relentless rain has lashed south-central Vietnam since late October, and popular holiday destinations have been hit by several rounds of flooding, with economic losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Whole sections of coastal Nha Trang city were flooded last week, while deadly…

With ex-leader Sheikh Hasina sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity, Bangladesh is turning its focus towards a referendum aimed at reforming its political system and rebuilding its democratic institutions.
Interim leader Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate who assumed office after last year’s uprising, earlier this month pledged to hold a national vote on the blueprint for change, timed to coincide with February’s planned parliamentary election.
But analysts have cast doubt on…

Indonesian films and series are seeing a surge in interest on international streaming platforms. In recent years, several titles broke through to wider audiences and have made it into Netflix’s Global Top 10.
Notable examples include The Elixir, which has been viewed by over 11 million people, and Norma, which has captured the attention of Southeast Asia, reaching No 1 in Indonesia and No 2 in Singapore in mid-August.
So, how have Indonesian films managed to gain recognition on the global stage?

In 2004, Joshua Cooper Ramo, now co-CEO of Kissinger Associates, coined the term “Beijing Consensus” as an alternative to the Washington Consensus, the neoliberal framework of economic policies devised in the 1980s by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and US Treasury.
China had just joined the World Trade Organization and, within the country, there was considerable scepticism that a Beijing Consensus existed.
Come 2007, and as the global financial crisis broke out – first with the US…

Businesses that provide software, data and technology infrastructure to financial institutions are among the companies to be selected for direct regulation under the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).

The UK’s leading competition authority is considering whether to look in detail at how well the private dentistry market in the country is functioning following a request to do so by chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Across Southeast Asia, millions of young people are launching start-ups and driving rapid digitalisation, with new unicorns emerging in a sign that the region is becoming a global force in entrepreneurship, according to former Indonesian president Joko Widodo.
Speaking at the closing of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum on Friday, Widodo said the next unicorn – meaning a privately held start-up valued at more than US$1 billion – might emerge not from Silicon Valley or Shenzhen but from Jakarta,…

Plans to relax data protection laws to facilitate AI development and use in the EU have been outlined as part of a series of measures designed to boost growth and innovation in the trading bloc.

Premier League football clubs in England are to vote on Friday on prospective changes to financial regulations that apply to them.