Asia - South China Morning Post

A decade after a tribunal in The Hague ruled on July 12, 2016, that Beijing’s sweeping South China Sea claims had no legal basis, Philippine officials and analysts say Manila remains heavily outmatched at sea but has begun turning its landmark legal victory into a more credible form of deterrence.

The Philippines brought the case in 2013 under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), challenging Beijing’s nine-dash line and other claims.

The tribunal ruled that China’s...

Myanmar’s gradual return from the diplomatic deep freeze continued over the weekend as Southeast Asian foreign ministers met their counterpart from the junta-run nation in Bangkok, a re-engagement that analysts warn lends legitimacy to a government still at war with its own people, without any commitment to end the violence.

Thousands have been killed in the nationwide civil conflict resulting from the military’s 2021 coup, a power grab that prompted Asean to take the unprecedented step of...

Filipino domestic workers continue to endure widespread labour exploitation and sexual abuse in Saudi Arabia, according to a new Amnesty International report.

The rights watchdog found conditions had barely improved despite years of promised reforms, including last year’s abolition of the kingdom’s notorious “kafala” sponsorship system.

The report, based on interviews conducted in March with 19 Filipino women who worked as domestic staff in Saudi Arabia, found consistent patterns of abuse, from...

A South Korean court sentenced former president Yoon Suk-yeol on Monday to two years in prison for illegally receiving free opinion polls in exchange for political support, adding to his growing legal woes.

Yoon, 65, is already in detention while appealing against a separate life sentence for leading an insurrection through his declaration of martial law in 2024.

In a separate case, a court handed Yoon a 30-year prison sentence for sending drones into North Korea to “manufacture” a crisis ahead...

Rows of gold bars, stacks of US and Singapore dollars and seven suitcases found inside a locked safe have become the defining images of one of the biggest scandals to hit Indonesia’s law-enforcement establishment in years.

Police said they recovered 74kg (160lbs) of gold, plus more than US$15 million in multiple currencies from a house linked to Febrie Adriansyah, who until last week served as Indonesia’s deputy attorney general for special crimes, and is now suspected of corruption.

Authorities...

Sam Neill, a smoothly elegant and versatile actor whose career moved from art film to blockbuster as he dodged velociraptors in Jurassic Park to playing Holly Hunter’s husband in The Piano, has died. He was 78.

In 2023, Neill disclosed he had been diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Neill died on Monday in Sydney, according to a statement posted to the actor’s social media page.

His death was “sudden and unexpected,” the statement said, adding...

Malaysian lawmaker Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman walked free on Monday after the Federal Court dismissed the prosecutors’ final appeal in his corruption case, ending a six-year legal battle that had threatened to derail the future of one of the country’s most recognisable young politicians.

The decision was reached by a 2-1 majority, with Federal Court judges Che Mohd Ruzima Ghazali and Collin Lawrence Sequerah upholding last year’s acquittal of the former youth minister on four charges linked...

North Korea rarely airs its dirty laundry in public, but Kim Jong-un’s latest purge of a senior military official was staged for maximum visibility – a warning, analysts say, to generals growing too comfortable with their expanding economic power that they answer to him alone.

“Kim is effectively telling military and party leaders: ‘Don’t even think about it. You are under round-the-clock surveillance,’” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies.

On Friday, Kim...

A Tokyo ward has installed outdoor AI cameras with facial recognition capabilities to help locate missing children and elderly people, a move aimed at improving public safety but also raising privacy concerns in Japan.

Arakawa ward installed 33 artificial intelligence-equipped security cameras on pylons along the main street and elsewhere near the JR Nippori Station in April to test whether the technology could speed up searches for missing persons.

The busy area around the station is frequented...

South Korea’s navy said on Monday it had recovered the body of a sailor off the east coast, a day after the seaman disappeared near the de facto sea border between the two Koreas.

Authorities launched a large search involving 10 ships and aircraft after the sailor failed to report for duty on Sunday morning while the vessel was on patrol near the Northern Limit Line, the de facto maritime border between the neighbours.

“A patrol boat participating in the search operation found the missing sailor...