Asia - South China Morning Post

South Korea’s former president Yoon Suk-yeol, removed from office and arrested earlier this year for attempting to impose martial law, is facing new charges alleging he sought to provoke North Korea to justify his failed power grab.

Prosecutors say Yoon and senior aides orchestrated risky military operations near the border to draw a retaliation from Pyongyang, which they hoped would legitimise the emergency decree Yoon signed on December 3 while still in office.

Those operations allegedly...

For US President Donald Trump to consent to South Korea building its own nuclear-powered submarines was unexpected – though a welcome decision for the many South Korean analysts who have long argued such vessels were urgently needed by the country’s navy.

It will have a huge impact on the US alliance with South Korea and its neighbours, not least North Korea, which is apparently building its first nuclear ballistic missile submarine with Russian technical support: not just any nuclear-powered...

At least eight people were killed on Monday in a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in a densely populated area of the Indian capital New Delhi, a police spokesman said, a rare blast in the heavily guarded city of more than 30 million people.

The exact cause of the blast is being investigated, said police spokesman Sanjay Tyagi. However, financial capital Mumbai and Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, went on high security alert after the blast, local media reported. Uttar Pradesh...

When Typhoon Fung-wong roared towards Luzon this weekend, forecasts invoked grim memories of Haiyan, the 2013 superstorm that killed more than 6,000 people in the Philippines. In Metro Manila, residents braced for disaster.

But by dawn on Monday, the capital woke instead to light rain and an uncanny calm. Once again, Luzon’s Sierra Madre mountains – the island’s natural shield – had absorbed the storm’s worst blows.

Scientists and environmentalists hail the range as a silent guardian. But they...

About 100 Bangladeshi workers who were employed by Malaysian companies rallied on Monday to demand unpaid wages, fair compensation and an end to alleged abuse by Malaysian employers.

The Migrant Welfare Network, a Bangladeshi migrant group based in Malaysia and Bangladesh, organised the protest at the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka.

The demonstrators said the event was organised to protest what they say is widespread mistreatment of...

A Thai court of appeal has upheld an extradition order against a Chinese gambling kingpin after more than three years of legal battles, Thailand’s state prosecutor said in a statement on Monday.

She Zhijiang, 43, a Chinese national who also holds a Cambodian passport, was arrested by Thai police in August 2022 on an international warrant and Interpol red notice requested by Beijing, who accused him of running illegal online gambling operations.

A Thai criminal court ordered his extradition to...

Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul has threatened to derail a fragile peace deal with Cambodia – signed just last month – after a landmine explosion injured two Thai soldiers near their shared border.

The soldiers stepped on what the Thai army suspects were newly laid mines while on routine patrol Monday in Si Sa Ket province. It was the seventh such blast in four months, following a wave of explosions in July that sparked the deadliest border clashes in years.

As a result, Thailand...

In an interview with Fox News in April, Peter Navarro, US President Donald Trump’s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing, described Vietnam as “essentially a colony of communist China”. For someone who believes trade negotiations with Beijing are pointless, such extremist views are unsurprising.

Yet the fact that Navarro, the chief architect of Trump’s trade wars, has it in for Vietnam attests to both the vulnerability and the strength of the country’s manufacturing sector. Among the...

Severe coastal erosion caused by Typhoon Kalmaegi exposed a centuries-old shipwreck in Vietnam, providing a narrow window to salvage what experts say could be a historically significant find.

Initially discovered in 2023 off the coast of Hoi An, the at least 17.4-metre (57-foot) vessel – whose heavy wood-ribbed hull survived hundreds of years of rough seas almost perfectly intact – was resubmerged before authorities could reclaim it.

Experts have not yet dated the wreck, but preliminary findings...

The deaths of at least 16 people, including several children, in a boat accident off Malaysia’s coast have reignited fears of a renewed surge in perilous sea crossings by refugees fleeing conflict in Myanmar and worsening conditions in neighbouring Bangladesh.

The vessel had reportedly departed from Rakhine state in Myanmar, where members of the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority continue to face severe restrictions on movement, access to aid and basic rights. Many others are stranded in...