Dennis Halpin is a foreign policy analyst specializing in East Asian affairs, with particular expertise on the Korean Peninsula and Japan. He contributed extensively to The Weekly Standard from 2013 to 2017, writing on North Korea, U.S.-Asia diplomacy, Japan's historical controversies, and related geopolitical issues. He previously served as a policy adviser on Capitol Hill, bringing deep experience in Asian security matters to his commentary.
New South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s June 29-30 White House summit will likely ease the discomfort felt by many in his home country over alleged “Korea passing” by the Trump administration. Korea passing included a combination of factors: a prolonged impeachment process in Seoul, followed by a…
Kim Jong-un's decision to take out his half-brother Kim Jong-nam, with the assassins using an internationally banned chemical agent to do it, is not the usual mode of operation for North Korea's first family. While the Kims of Pyongyang have not hesitated to purge hundreds by some of the most…
Kim Jong-un’s decision to take out his half-brother Kim Jong-nam, with the assassins using an internationally banned chemical agent to do it, is not the usual mode of operation for North Korea's first family. While the Kims of Pyongyang have not hesitated to purge hundreds by some of the most…
President Trump's January 30 phone call to South Korean prime minister (and acting president as of December 9) Hwang Kyo-ahn, reportedly spelling out the U.S. "ironclad" commitment to South Korea, came at a particularly opportune moment. Likewise can be said for the decision of Secretary of Defense…
In 1992, in anticipation of the 1997 reversion of the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong to communist Chinese rule, the United States Congress enacted the U.S.-Hong Kong Policy Act. The act made the findings that "the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China,…
Just eight months after President Obama announced a new Association of South East Asian Nation (ASEAN) economic initiative at a "first-ever" exclusive meeting with ASEAN leaders in the United States, America's new policy towards the group is in shambles. President Obama's premier trade initiative,…
Chris Stewart gave a simple explanation for introducing a congressional resolution on missing American David Sneddon: "As a parent, it seemed the right thing to do." The Utah congressman's own son was the one who told him that his friend had mysteriously vanished—the first U.S. citizen to disappear…
Chris Stewart gave a simple explanation for introducing a congressional resolution on missing American David Sneddon: “As a parent, it seemed the right thing to do." The Utah congressman's own son was the one who told him that his friend had mysteriously vanished—the first U.S. citizen to disappear…
The photo posted on Akie Abe’s Facebook account on August 22, showing her paying her respects at the USS Arizona Memorial to the victims of the attack on Pearl Harbor, is worth far more than the proverbial thousand words. This was the first visit to the site by the wife of a Japanese prime…
The level of fury expressed by Beijing over South Korea's recently announced decision to deploy the U.S. Army's Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD) seems to have caught some in Seoul off guard. China's official mouthpiece, Xinhua, even carried an August 13 report suggesting that…
The July 28 announcement that Beijing and Moscow will be carrying out "routine" joint naval exercises in the South China Sea in September is merely the latest indication that Beijing is firmly digging in its heels on its maritime territorial claims. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told a…
All of the hubbub over the Permanent Court of Arbitration's July 12 ruling that left China's "nine-dash line" in tatters and raised questions anew about Beijing's ability to become a "responsible stakeholder" in the international arena overlooked one vital factor: There's a new sheriff in town in…
Last week's primary defeat of Virginia congressman Randy Forbes, chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services committee, was one more surprise in an increasingly unpredictable political year. Virginia Republican primary voters, however, have already proved…
President Obama's decision to be the first sitting U.S. President to visit the ground zero site of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on May 27th as part of a G-7 Summit visit to Japan comes as no surprise. Advancing the cause of nuclear nonproliferation has been a hallmark of the Obama presidency and…
North Korea will convene a Workers' Party Congress in Pyongyang on Friday for the first time since Jimmy Carter was president. Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un's grandfather, convened the first six such party congresses, where a party-based juche doctrine of national self-reliance was put forward as the…
The Great Wall of China, often cited as the ultimate measure of border security, was not, in fact, all that effective. Just ask Kublai Khan and his Mongol hordes who rode south through the original Great Wall fortifications to establish the Yuan Dynasty in 1279.
Asian-Americans have recently surpassed Hispanics as the fastest growing ethnic voting bloc in the United States, with their voting numbers expected to double by 2040. Admiring thrift, hating waste, valuing education, upholding traditional family values, and with a disproportionate number of small…
China chose the perfect moment to indicate how little regard it has for the Obama Administration's vaunted "pivot" to Asia. Just as President Obama held the first-ever summit on American soil with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders last month, Beijing deployed surface-to-air…
As tensions in Asia, particularly in and around the South and East China Seas, have steadily risen in the past eight years, Taiwan has emerged as an island of unexpected tranquility. The thaw in cross-Strait relations brought about by the era of the Nationalist (KMT) presidency of Taiwan’s Ma…
Chinese internet giant Alibaba's purchase of one of Asia's great newspapers, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post (SCMP), should be a cause for concern for all who value an independent press. While Alibaba executive vice chairman Joseph Tsai claimed that the company would continue to allow the SCMP…
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported on October 7 that “the only concern” Beijing has regarding the October 16 White House summit between President Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye is a possible discussion of “deployment of the THAAD missile defense system in the South.” Yonhap…
Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in scheduling his U.S. visit, seems to have fallen into a trap common for many communist leaders: underestimating papal power. Xi will be following in the footsteps of Pope Francis on visits first to the White House in Washington, and then to the United Nations in New…
A lame duck President Obama, released next year from any lingering political constraints, will make a likely final official visit to Asia to attend the 42nd G-7 summit of leaders of the world’s leading economies. The summit is scheduled to be held in May 2016 in central Japan, not far from…
ABC News reports that the United States suspended and then resumed joint military exercises with South Korea this week after North Korea fired artillery shells across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Assistant Secretary of Defense David Shear gave reporters the news Friday, August 21, at a Pentagon…
The statement of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the 70th anniversary of the conclusion of the Second World War was the focus of profound anticipation throughout Asia. The prime minister was in an extremely delicate position, seeking to balance the need to express contrition to Imperial…
In the summer of 1994 the Clinton administration faced the gravest crisis on the Korean peninsula since the signing of the armistice agreement in 1953. The genesis of the crisis had come in 1992 when Pyongyang concluded an agreement accepting the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nuclear…
South Korean President Park Geun-hye may have avoided walking into a potential minefield in postponing her recent Washington visit due to the MERS outbreak in her home country. Following the highly successful Washington visit of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, there is a growing sense of “Korea…
When guests at a North Korea Freedom Week dinner in Northern Virginia learned the Korean-American pastor at our table led a Maryland church, they immediately asked about the situation in Baltimore. It was May 1, and National Guard troops had been deployed to the city three days earlier to help…
The recent vicious attack on U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert (he was stabbed in the face in Seoul) is, in fact, not the first attack on an American ambassador in that country. The earlier attackers on Ambassador Donald Gregg’s residence in 1989, however, were radical students with…
Kim Jong-un, seeking to escape international isolation, has found a willing partner in Russia’s Vladimir Putin and thereby revived Pyongyang’s Cold War art of pitting Moscow against Beijing, perfected by his grandfather Kim Il-sung. The collapse of the Soviet Union just prior to Kim Jong-un’s…
If Pyongyang has an equivalent to the late Richard Helms, the Nixon era director of central intelligence who kept the secrets on Vietnam and Iran, that would be Kim Yong-chol, a four-star general and Kim Jong-un confidante. Kim, a former bodyguard of late North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il, is now…
Alarm bells have gone off in Beijing, in Moscow, and even among some so-called “realists” in the West. They caution that the pending U.N. General Assembly consideration of an EU-Japan joint resolution on North Korean human rights violations, scheduled for December 18-19, could push Pyongyang over…
With the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing safely over and regional leaders departed, China’s new strongman Xi Jinping decided to lower the boom on Hong Kong. Police there began clearing the barricades last week from the city’s main thoroughfare with the students in…
In 1853 Czar Nicholas I, in a conversation with the British ambassador, reportedly coined the phrase “sick man of Europe” to describe the decaying Ottoman Empire. The corrupt and debt-ridden Ottomans soon dragged England, France, and Russia into conflict in Crimea, just as the czar had feared. The…
America’s “pivot” to Asia is rapidly going nowhere, but diplomatic challenges in the most economically vibrant region of the world still cry out for attention. These include the brash assertiveness of a rising China, the emergence of an erratic, nuclear-armed young North Korean leader, and the…
America, just before its Fourth of July birthday, lost one of the greatest of the generation that guided it through the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. Louis Zamperini was 97, so this was not entirely surprising. Zamperini, the American who couldn’t be broken by Nazis in Berlin or…
In 2007, during his first term as Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe penned a work titled Toward a Beautiful Country, My Vision for Japan. The recent re-examination of the 1993 Kono Statement on the Imperial Japanese military’s use of “comfort women” during World War II (a euphemism for sex…
In a March 28 speech at the Körber Foundation in Berlin, China’s president, Xi Jinping, called for historical truth-telling. He had in mind the Rape of Nanking, the massacre carried out by Imperial Japan’s forces in 1937-38 during their occupation of the then-capital of the Chinese Nationalists…
A U.S. Army soldier goes missing at night from a remote post on the edge of enemy territory. Depressed and anxious, he has expressed doubts about the U.S. mission and disillusionment with the war. He allegedly leaves behind a note recording these doubts. There are some reports that he consumes…
In an age of hypersensitivity to sexism and homophobia, why does the North Korean regime escape censure? North Korean media specialize in a gutter rhetoric that, from any other source, would be met with immediate condemnation. The world, however, seems so accustomed to hearing astonishingly…
President Obama is about to undertake a fence-mending mission to America’s Asian allies in Tokyo, Seoul, and Manila. The U.S. “pivot” to Asia is coming under renewed scrutiny following Beijing’s announcement of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) for the East China Sea in November,…
The student leaders of Taiwan’s Sunflower movement, having occupied the legislative chambers in the capital of Taipei for the past three weeks, recently announced plans for demonstrators to vacate the floor of the Legislative Yuan on April 10. The students have been expressing their strong…
In 1916 London faced a dilemma. The British were hoping to bring American reinforcements to assist them and their beleaguered French allies in the trenches of the First World War. Woodrow Wilson, however, seeking to become the first Democratic president to win reelection since before the Civil War,…
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s self-proclaimed “friend for life” Dennis Rodman announced January 4 that he had assembled the promised team of former NBA players to take to Pyongyang. These reportedly include former NBA All-Stars Kenny Anderson, Cliff Robinson, and Vin Baker. Craig Hodges, Doug…
The spectacle of North Korea’s former number two, Jang Song-thaek, being stripped of all his titles at a December 8 party meeting in Pyongyang and then arrested by uniformed guards left no doubt about his fall from grace. Jang’s former protégé, Premier Pak Pong-ju, was in tears as he denounced his…
Now that the hoopla has begun to die down over Kim Jong-un’s execution of his uncle—reportedly Mafia-style with machine guns—the Young General is anticipating his athletes shooting a few hoops under the expert tutoring of Dennis Rodman. Kim Jong-un’s best American buddy has just arrived back in…
Woody Allen once famously said "90 percent of life is just showing up." In the Kim family's North Korea showing up—or suddenly not—can be a true matter of life or death.