Asia - South China Morning Post

Malaysian immigration authorities say they have uncovered an Indonesian migrant-smuggling syndicate that moved people from sea crossings to a more elaborate route through Singapore and southern Thailand.

The raid, carried out before dawn on Saturday at two major transport terminals in Kuala Lumpur, led to the arrest of 11 Indonesians, including a suspected transporter, and the seizure of a Mazda CX-5 believed to have been used to move migrants to their next stop.

Immigration director general...

Police in Thailand have arrested an Indonesian who allegedly defrauded Americans of about US$10 million, Thai authorities say, adding that they will extradite him to the United States.

The 33-year-old Indonesian man was arrested on Friday at a luxury resort in the coastal town of Phuket after a tip-off from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Suriya Poungsombat of the national immigration police said on Sunday.

The FBI had informed Thai authorities that the suspect left Dubai and...

Electric vehicles (EVs) made in China now account for one in every three new registrations in South Korea, as Tesla’s Shanghai-built models power the surge and Chinese carmakers start to gain traction.

The country’s auto manufacturers have further room to expand, analysts said, supported by higher fuel prices linked to the US-Israeli war in Iran and looser restrictions than traditional target markets. Still, tightening subsidy regimes could slow the pace of expansion, they cautioned.

Sales of...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said his country would continue to support Russia’s policies and he discussed the international political situation with Russia’s defence minister, state media KCNA reported on Monday.

A Russian delegation including Defence Minister Andrei Belousov attended a completion ceremony for a ‌‌memorial honouring North Korean soldiers killed while fighting in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces staged an incursion in 2024, KCNA said.

Russia launched a full-scale...

A strong earthquake rattled Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido early on Monday, US and Japanese meteorological agencies reported, the latest in a series of powerful tremors to hit the island nation.

The 6.2-magnitude quake struck at 5.23am in Hokkaido’s southern region, at a depth of 83km (52 miles), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) reported, revising its preliminary estimate of magnitude 6.1.

No tsunami alert was issued, JMA said, and the US Geological Survey predicted that damage to...

Japan is planning to build what could become the world’s largest floating wind farm – a gigawatt-scale project off the Izu Islands to power the island chain and Tokyo.

But the plan, championed by Governor Yuriko Koike, is facing questions over whether it can be delivered by 2035. There are also doubts about the power generation forecast and whether Japan could tackle the technical demands of such a megaproject.

Koike first announced the wind farm project at a climate change conference in...

Geopolitics, at its core, examines how geography shapes international politics, power distribution and security dynamics. One enduring idea is geographer Halford Mackinder’s “heartland” theory, which situates Eurasia as the central arena of global power competition.

In 1904, Mackinder argued that the vast land mass of Europe and Asia – what he called the “world island” – contained a pivotal core, the “heartland”, rich in resources, population and strategic depth. His dictum – “Who rules Eastern...

Japan has deployed 1,400 firefighters and dozens of Self-Defence Force personnel to battle mountain blazes that have been raging in the north for five days and threaten to reach homes in the ‌picturesque coastal town of Otsuchi, officials said on Sunday.

Fanned by dry, windy weather, two more wildfires broke out elsewhere in the north on Sunday – one in Kitakata city and the other in Nagaoka, potentially stretching firefighting resources thin as local authorities send personnel to neighbouring...

Two US citizens were among 19 people killed in a raid on an alleged communist stronghold in the Philippines that has sparked a probe by the country’s rights commission, a government task force said.

More than 300 residents in the Toboso municipality of Negros Island fled their homes on April 19 as gunfire rang out in the remote sugar cane-farming region, the municipal disaster management office told reporters last week.

The number of people killed in the firefight, in which only one soldier was...

Once a niche destination, Central Asia is quickly emerging as a key market for Chinese travellers, supported by robust traffic growth, expanding air links and deeper economic ties under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, according to analysts.

Data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China showed that passenger traffic to Central Asia grew 59.3 per cent in 2025 from a year earlier, marking one of the fastest growth rates among all regions tracked, said Mayur Patel, commercial and industry...