In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

Season’s Greetings! On behalf of In Asia‘s editorial board and bloggers, we thank you for your engagement and continued readership throughout the year. We’ll be taking a short break, but will return on January 9 for a special “Forecast: Asia in 2013″ edition. In the meantime, catch up on a few must-read pieces and highlights on the most pressing events and issues in Asia throughout 2012.

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South Koreans proved once again why they have one of the most vibrant democracies in Asia by narrowly electing the first woman as president of the country on December 19. Even though exit polls showed that she would lose, five-term lawmaker Park Geun-hye secured 51.6 percent…

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After months of hot debate and decades in the making, President Benigno Aquino Jr. is signing into law major changes to the tax structure on alcohol and tobacco products. This so-called “sin tax” is expected to raise P30 billion ($750 million) to provide health care services…

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Yesterday, countries around the world marked International Migrants Day in recognition of the 214 million migrants on the move across the globe in search of better economic opportunity. No where is this recognition more important than in a place like Nepal…

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Almost a year after Typhoon “Sendong” devastated the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan in the northern part of Mindanao, Philippines, last December, the historically “typhoon-free” island experienced another similarly rare and intense tropical storm that struck on December 4.

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Stone sculptures of headless torsos, huge niches stripped of priceless Buddhist statues, rubble scattered on the floor of empty galleries lined with classical columns – these are the images of carnage inflicted on the art and artifacts of Afghanistan in the last three decades.

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Last week, The Asia Foundation released “The Youth Factor: 2012 Survey of Malaysian Youth Opinion.” The nationwide survey, a continuation of a series of similar youth surveys conducted between 2006 and 2008, polled over 2,100 Malaysians…

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Former Korean prime minister and Asia Foundation trustee, Lee Hong-koo, examines issues that loomed large in the  2012 presidential campaign in Korea, including an economy struggling with the global crisis, a young generation adrift with a desire for change, and a budding civil reform movement, known as the Ahn Cheol-soo phenomenon, that is driving Korea’s [...]

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December 8-10, The Asia Foundation supported six highly regarded Burmese women entrepreneurs to attend the South Asia Women’s Entrepreneurship Symposium in Dhaka. The symposium, hosted by the U.S. State Department, brought together over 100 women entrepreneurs from across Asia to discuss shared challenges that limit their economic and political opportunities. Read more.

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Mindanao dominates the headlines in the Philippines this week for several reasons. There is the horrific aftermath of Typhoon Pablo (known internationally as Bopha), which slammed into an area of the island that typically does not get hit by storms. On a lighter note, but one that also riveted the nation, hometown boxer Manny Pacquiao (from General Santos City in Mindanao) was knocked out this past weekend in a surprise, convincing defeat – leading to speculation about whether his sterling career is on the wane.

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