Asia
The Korean Peninsula: Why 2023 will not be like 2017
The year has already started with some bad news for the South Korean armed forces. It was confirmed last week that a North Korean drone not only intruded South Korean airspace…
Avenging the century of humiliation, one artefact at a time
Book review: Portrait of a Thief, by Grace D. Li (Penguin Random House, 2022)
In 1860, the Second Opium War culminated in British and French troops sacking the Old Summer…
Commentary
Park the hyperbole about Wong’s historic visit
The two countries may be renegotiating a fresh framework for diplomatic ties, but they are doing it with palpable wariness on both sides. Originally published in the Australian…
How to Interpret 2022: A Taiwan crisis
One overnight stay. But that flying visit to Taiwan in August by Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, second in line for the presidency, certainly caused a…
How to Interpret 2022: Solomon Islands strikes a deal
Rarely have the affections of a sparsely populated archipelagic state been so wooed as those of Solomon Islands – the string of southwest Pacific isles sitting 2,000 kilometres…
Pop culture politics: How to Interpret 2022
Missed the headline? Hollywood star Angelina Jolie is stepping down after more than 20 years as ambassador for the UN refugee agency. It’s fine, because India’s celebrities are…
The Interpreter 2022: Your most-read articles
Almost 3 million readers turned to The Interpreter over the year – an audience that increasingly reaches far beyond Australia. In 2022, roughly four out of every five Interpreter…
Seeking independence: three books to read this summer
In her book, Becoming, Michelle Obama revealed that her husband, former United States President Barack Obama, has about eight books on the go to read at any time. I’ve lived a…
To unchain Indonesia’s commodity reliance
Indonesia’s dependence on commodity wealth has been a prominent feature in its economy. The archipelago’s abundance of minerals and agriculture resources coupled with poor local…
A focused direction for the Quad
The Quad, a “minilateral” grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the United States has made a recent resurgence. First initiated in 2007, the Quad was abandoned until 2017 when…