Security

What Happened: Nuclear issues have shaped the Korean Peninsula since it gained independence from Imperial Japan in 1945, with both North and South Korea pursuing nuclear weapons at different times. As South Korean policymakers and public opinion alike debate the wisdom of their own country going nuclear, other Koreans can speak with graphic specificity on the topic. For South Korea’s atomic bomb victims and their descendants, nuclear weapons represent a painful and enduring, multigenerational open wound.

Our Focus: When the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 Koreans were among the victims, some 40,000+ of whom are believed to have died. At the time, Korea was colonized by Japan and many of the victims had moved to Hiroshima or Nagasaki – willingly or not – to work for the empire. Afterwards, the victims found themselves ostracized both by Japan – where they were denied the care given to Japanese survivors – and back home in South Korea, where the military dictatorship chose to view the atomic bombings as the source of liberation from Japanese colonial rule and harshly repressed any criticism of its ally and benefactor, the United States.

What Comes Next: Korean atomic bomb victims have gained visibility in recent years, professor Ágota Duró tells The Diplomat, both because of unflagging activism by civil society groups and because of high-profile political engagement, like a joint Japanese-Korean leaders’ visit to the memorial for Korean victims of the bombing in Hiroshima. Survivors’ groups are also spreading their activism across national borders, reaching out to the victims of nuclear testing from Australia and New Mexico to Kazakhstan, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands. As nuclear arsenals balloon once again, “It is not the possession of nuclear weapons that should serve as a deterrent to its use against other nations,” Duró says. “It is the stories of hibakusha and the lessons humanity can learn from them that should deter their use.”

INTERVIEW

Srinath Raghavan, the author of “Indira Gandhi and the Years that Transformed India,” on the lasting impact of the Emergency, even after it was lifted: “The institutional balance of power remained tilted towards the executive. What is more, the broader ‘rules of the game’ that shape and sustain parliamentary democracy continued to be eroded… In short, Indian democracy never fully recovered from the institutional and normative damage done by the Emergency.”

Northeast Asia

Starting in 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the annual NATO summits have been attended by the leaders of the so-called “Indo-Pacific 4”: Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. This year, that streak was broken. Both South Korean President Lee Jae-myung and Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru declined to attend the summit in The Hague. Lee, who took office three weeks ago, cited a need to focus on domestic issues, while Ishiba said the lack of participation by other IP4 members decreased the value of the summit (Australia’s Albanese also declined to attend). But many analysts saw the withdrawals as evidence of a lack of support for the U.S. bombing of Iran last weekend, as well as a more general unease with Trump’s pressure-heavy style of diplomacy. After all, skipping the NATO summit means avoiding a bilateral meeting with Trump – for better or for worse.

South Asia

In 2017, Nepal signed on to China’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – much to the consternation of India, which is sensitive to any increase in Beijing’s influence in its neighbors. Yet in the years that followed, not a single BRI project was undertaken in Nepal. In December 2024, Prime Minister K.P. Oli Sharma signed a “Framework for Belt and Road Cooperation” during a visit to China; the deal was supposed to finally jump-start the BRI by picking 10 specific projects to implement. Yet a familiar pattern re-emerged: six months later, not one of the projects has moved forward. For reasons both geopolitical and pragmatic (disputes over funding), the Belt and Road has yet to truly launch in Nepal.

Southeast Asia

Thailand’s government entered crisis mode this week following the withdrawal of the second-largest party in its coalition. The Bhumjaithai party, which holds 69 seats in the House of Representatives, announced on June 18 that it was exiting the government due to Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra’s handling of the ongoing border crisis with Cambodia. Its decision came after the release of a leaked recording of a phone call between Paetongtarn and former Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. In the call, the Thai leader effectively accused the commander of Thailand’s Second Army Region of inciting anti-government sentiment, accusing him of being “completely aligned” with her political opponents. While Paetongtarn’s government has seemingly survived, albeit with a much-reduced parliamentary majority, the border dispute continues to worsen and she will now be forced to contend with escalating protests calling for her resignation and legal complaints seeking her removal from office.

Central Asia

Alatau is envisioned as a futuristic Singapore-style city, built on the site of a small village north of Kazakhstan's largest city and former capital, Almaty. To hear officials tell it, the planned city of Alatau will be Kazakhstan’s gateway to China and a center of business and innovation. In pursuing the city’s construction, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is following in the grand footsteps of his predecessor, who saw through the expansion of Soviet-era town Akmola into Kazakhstan’s present capitol, Astana. Unlike Astana, however, Alatau will arguably require the relocation of present residents of the land. On that angle, Kazakh officials have been less talkative.

Thanks to its overseas territories, France is the only European country with a permanent presence in the Indo-Pacific – in both oceans, in fact.

Politics

Samvidhan Hatya Divas, literally “Constitution Murder Day” in Hindi, is the Modi government’s label for June 25, now an annual event to mark the 1975 declaration of the Emergency by Indira Gandhi.