Asia - South China Morning Post

The arrest of a Japanese journalist in Iran has puzzled observers and prompted speculation that it is linked to the US threat to attack the country over its nuclear programme.

On Tuesday, Radio Free Europe reported the arrest of Shinnosuke Kawashima, the Tehran bureau chief for Japan’s national broadcaster NHK. The US government-funded news outlet reported that Kawashima was first detained on January 20 and later taken to the notorious Evin Prison, which has been used to hold political prisoners...

A video of a young girl being shoved while posing for a photo at Tokyo’s iconic Shibuya Crossing has amassed over 9 million views in one day and ignited an online row over safety, manners and tourist behaviour.

The clip was posted on Wednesday by a Taiwanese social media user peipeilin527, who said the incident happened on her family’s last night in Japan. “I was thinking of taking photos at the famous Shibuya Crossing on my last night there, but some mean-spirited person pushed my child hard,”...

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet said on Wednesday that scam centres were destroying his country’s economy and giving the nation a bad name – pushing back on allegations of government connivance.

The nation has emerged as a hotspot for crime syndicates running a multibillion-dollar fraud industry that sees scammers lure internet users globally into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments.

“The scam network, what we call the black economy, is destroying our honest economy....

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, sales director Sabir Ansari relied on Deliveroo almost daily for burgers and pasta delivered to his door in Singapore.

Over time, the 31-year-old said, it became harder to justify the service’s costs as rival platforms such as Grab and Foodpanda offered more food options and aggressive promotions that made “delivery fees way cheaper”.

“It was a no-brainer,” he said.

For Deliveroo, that kind of calculation among consumers became increasingly...

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has warned that Pyongyang is ready for confrontation with the US but has also left the door open for dialogue, depending on Washington’s stance.

The prospects for North Korea-US relations hinge “entirely on the attitude of the United States”, he said on Wednesday. Pyongyang was prepared for both “peaceful coexistence or eternal confrontation”, but the choice lay with Washington.

So long as the US respected North Korea’s nuclear-armed state status, which is...

More than 8,000 personnel from 30 countries are taking part in Cobra Gold, one of the largest and longest running multinational military exercises in Southeast Asia.

The annual exercises are being held in many provinces across Thailand until March 6, aiming to strengthen coordination among participating nations and develop military capabilities to align with current global circumstances.

Thailand and the United States, which are co-hosts of the drill, along with Singapore, Indonesia, Japan,...

As Manila scrambles to investigate links between convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and a Philippines-based team he allegedly hired to scrub his criminal history from the internet, the revelation has cast an unwelcome spotlight on a relatively obscure industry.

Emails released by the US Department of Justice have alarmed lawmakers in the Philippines over the potential exploitation of Filipino gig workers handling shady online-reputation work.

The Philippine Department of Information and...

A proposed scheme in Japan offering cash rewards for tip-offs about illegal foreign workers has won support from residents frustrated by what they see as weak enforcement of immigration rules, but migrant advocates warn the policy could deepen distrust and push vulnerable people further into the shadows.

The “reporting reward” proposal, announced by Ibaraki Governor Kazuhiko Oigawa earlier this month, would pay “several tens of thousands of yen” for information leading to the detention of an...

Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, buoyed by a commanding majority in the powerful lower house after this month’s election, is poised to revive one of her longest-standing conservative causes: making it a crime to deface the national flag.

At issue is the hinomaru, the national flag, which currently carries no specific criminal penalty if damaged or desecrated – even though the Penal Code sets punishments for defiling foreign flags displayed in Japan with the intent to insult.

Takaichi has...

It began with a late-night declaration of martial law and has ended, for now, with a gavel. In the 443 days between those two moments, South Korea’s democracy was tested in ways most countries never experience.

Citizens formed human chains to block troops from reaching the National Assembly. Lawmakers rushed through corridors in the dead of night to kill the martial law decree by vote. The Constitutional Court upheld a president’s impeachment.

Millions took to the streets in protest. A new...