For some, the south is a dream turned sour and they are willing to return to their unhappy home.
Psy’s hit Gangnam Style has taken the Korean pop genre to the top of Western charts. If it is new to you, drop these names and watch these videos.
Organised crime in Japan is under threat from new laws that will lead to the naming, shaming and fining of citizens who do business with the yakuza.
A day after mourners packed Pyongyang to bid adieu to ‘Dear Leader’ Kim Jong-il, North Korea has completed the transfer of power to his youngest son.
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/ 8 December 2011
Japan’s whaling fleet has left port under heavy guard, where more clashes are expected with members of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
He is a prolific artiste who has appeared in more than 350 films, but Shigeo Tokuda gets little recognition in the streets of Tokyo.
South Korean bands strike gold in the world’s second-largest music market.
A small town has become a model for recovery after the Japanese tsunami"About 70% of our customers died or were made homeless in the tsunami.
Japan’s government is reportedly ready to consider nationalising the operator of the crippled power plant.
The operation to cool the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has suffered a setback.
The power plant at the centre of the biggest civilian nuclear crisis in Japan’s history contained far more spent fuel rods than it was designed to.
Japan’s humanitarian crisis has intensified, with relief workers being hampered by freezing temperatures and snowfalls.
People left behind to fight the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima are anonymous heroes.
England’s failed footballers are lucky that their ignominious World Cup exit was met with less more than a public mauling by the media.
North Koreans must have relished the prospect of a rare glimpse of life on the outside and the chance to watch their team play in the World Cup.
When Akio Toyoda became president of Toyota in June last year, he promised to steer it through its "worst crisis in a century".
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/ 23 September 2009
Taiji’s annual cull of bottlenose dolphins and pilot
whales continues despite growing international
condemnation.
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/ 15 September 2009
Taiji’s annual cull of bottlenose dolphins and pilot whales continues despite growing international condemnation.
While the financial crisis will hurt us all, it is the world’s poorest who stand to suffer most.
The tiny village if Kamikatsu, in the densely wooded mountains of Shikoku island in south-west Japan, has a new obsession: rubbish.
Corporate Japan will join the country’s battle against bulging waistlines next month with the introduction of compulsory "flab checks" for the over-40s and penalties for firms that fail to bring their employees’ weight under control. Health authorities hope the measures will arrest the rise in obesity among middle-aged men and slow soaring medical costs.
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/ 11 January 2008
Dressed in dark cotton robes, a bracelet of prayer beads hanging from his wrist, Gugan Taguchi certainly looks the part. But, as he kneels to chant a sutra before an altar in the corner of the room, the people around him continue to chat and his rhythmic prayers can only just be heard above a Blue Note jazz track.
After years of relative calm, the yakuza have recently captured the public imagination in Japan. Shoko Tendo’s story, <i>Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster’s Daughter</i>, has become a surprise bestseller in Japan in 2004, shining a light into a dark and little-understood corner of modern Japan.
Saddam Hussein has started "cooperating" with his American interrogators and has admitted hiding millions of dollars in secret international bank accounts, a senior member of Iraq’s governing council said this week.