· September, 2011

Stories about East Asia from September, 2011

Incredible Photos of North Korean Mass Game

  30 September 2011

Photographer Sam Gellman took 50 photos of a large-scale Mass Games in Pyongyang during his 4-day trip to North Korea. Although nearly 100,000 North Korean were mobilized for the game which is heavily laden with regime's propaganda, net users left good comments on Gellman who captured these incredible images.

Laos According to WikiLeaks

  30 September 2011

WikiLeaks has released a set of Laos files that confirmed the country’s underdevelopment, endemic corruption in the bureaucracy, and the fragile state of its environment. Here are some online reactions and excerpts of the Laos cables.

Taiwan: Polyglot teaches you Taiwanese indigenous languages

  29 September 2011

Mike Campbell, a polyglot who can already speak fluent Mandarin, Hakka, Fukien-major languages used in Taiwan, along with a dozen of other languages, is now teaching people how to speak Sediq, Truku, and other rarely spoken Taiwanese indigenous languages on Youtube that now even most indigenous people now cannot speak.

Wikileaks Cables on Laos

  29 September 2011

Wikileaks has released a set of cables that involve Laos. Blogger Lao Bumpkin identifies the relevant topics in the uploaded files.

China: Sex Education

  29 September 2011

While young people are interested in sex, 65.9% has not received any sex education and misled youngsters see abortion as a way of contraception. (More from China Hush)

Philippines: Creative Protests During Campus Strikes

  28 September 2011

Last week's nationwide campus strikes in the Philippines against education budget cuts saw the lively and creative integration of online tools to mobilize thousands to fight for the right to education. From mass planking, freeze mob, blackboard campaign, fashion show, to Facebook campaigns, activists used various forms of protests to highlight their cause

China: Secret Arrest to be Justified by Law Amendment

  27 September 2011

The Chinese government is in the process of completing an amendment to its Criminal Procedure Law (CPL). The draft, released for public consultation on 30 August, has sparked an intense debate among law professors and lawyers, as it has granted police legal justification for secret arrest and investigation.

Black Scholars Who Make a Specialty of Asian Studies

  27 September 2011

The Black Tokyo blog writes about the rich history of Asia studies by African-American scholars. “I want to follow the path of Blacks that have made it possible for other Blacks to provide information on Asia, in my case Japan, from an Afro perspective.“

North Korea: Kim Jong-Il's Surprise Appearance On the Simpsons

  26 September 2011

Martyn Williams from the North Korea Tech blog wrote a short post on Kim Jong-il's appearance on “The Simpsons”. One character from the episode says that he was forced to write a musical about Kim in a North Korean prison and introduces a song addressing the regime's ban on internet.

Book Review: ‘Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives In North Korea’

  26 September 2011

Change in Longitude blog posted a thorough review of the book ‘Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives In North Korea’ by Barbara Demick. The book’s title comes from a song that North Korean school children recite, “We have nothing to envy in the world” in spite of chronic malnutrition and famine...

About our East Asia coverage

Oiwan Lam
Oiwan Lam is the North East Asia editor. Email her story ideas or volunteer to write.

Mong Palatino
Mong Palatino is the South East Asia editor. Email him story ideas or volunteer to write.