South Korea’s presidential office said in a press release that South Korean President Lee Myung-bak during a two-day state visit by Malaysian King Mizan Zainal Abidin discussed enhancing cooperation between the two countries in nuclear energy and other economic fields.

Reporting on the bilateral discussions, a presidential official quoted President Lee as saying, “Malaysia has recently successfully overcome the global economic crisis, demonstrating a high level of national competitiveness,” Yonhap news agency reported.

South Korea has been intensifying its efforts to export nuclear power plants since South Korean firms in 2009 were awarded a $18.6 billion contract to build four atomic power plants in the United Arab Emirates after besting U.S., Japanese and French companies bidding for the contracts.

In response, the Malaysian monarch stated that he hoped that bilateral cooperation between the two countries could be expanded beyond its immediate …

Back in September at my blog, I linked to an interesting news story describing how the Taiwanese village of Houtong, located just outside the capital of Taipei, has managed to find new life after its coal mining economy went under thanks to its large feral cat community.Visitors' raves on local blogs have helped draw cat lovers to fondle, frolic and photograph the 100 or so resident felines in

Behind the Numbers, the US Population Reference Bureau's blog, has a post by Carl Haub highlighting the very low fertility rate in Taiwan. Why? It's the Chinese zodiac's Year of the Tiger.Taiwan’s government has just announced that the country’s total fertility rate (or TFR, the average number of children a woman would bear in her lifetime if the birth rate of a particular year were to remain

Global Strategist Jacek Dzierwa has just returned from another research trip to Latin America where he visited Peru, Chile and Brazil. Travel is important for our tacit knowledge because many of the world’s best opportunities aren’t discovered behind a Bloomberg terminal or an earnings report. We venture to visit as many companies as possible before investing in them.

This was Jacek’s first trip to Peru and the country “surprised to the upside.” Another beneficiary of higher commodity prices, Peru has seen a massive improvement in its standard of living in recent years.

The poverty level has declined from a staggering 55 percent in 2001 to 35 percent this year and is expected to fall to 25 percent by 2015. However, there is still much progress to be made. Roughly 71 percent of Peru’s population works in an informal economy,

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Charlie Rose sits down with Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group and David Sanger of The New York Times to have a look at the tensions in the Korean Peninsula.

A link to the transcript of the interview follows at the end of the post.

Click here or on the image below to view the video.

Click here for a transcript of the interview.

Source: Charlie Rose, December 20, 2010.

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The Blackstone Group has inked an agreement to manage Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Asian real estate assets across Asia, with the majority in Japan, China, India and South Korea. The Blackstone Group will act as the new general partner for the Merrill Lynch Asian Real Estate Opportunity Fund. Since acquiring Merrill Lynch, Bank of [...]

The paragraphs below come courtesy of Mark Mobius, emerging markets guru and executive chairman of Templeton Asset Management.

North Korea engaged South Korea in an artillery duel near their borders on Tuesday, November 23, sparking off a fresh round of tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Regardless of the motivations behind North Korea’s latest transgression, this incident is more serious than its previous provocations because it was the first artillery attack on the South’s territory since the war in 1950 and because the attack included injuries to South Korean civilians.

This incident will see deepening geo-political tensions between the North and South and is likely to be prolonged. However, the crisis is unlikely to escalate further as North Korea does not have the capability to implement and maintain a war without the support of its main ally, China. China is currently the primary supplier of fuel consumed in North Korea. The relationship

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One very notable difference between North Korea and South Korea, quite apart from their broadly different demographic profiles, lies in the ethnic and national composition of the populations of the two Koreas. These differences might even explain part of North Korea's hostility towards the South.North Korea's population is exceptionally homogeneous. Although North Korea's ties with Communist

The recent shelling of South Korea's Yongpyeong island by North Korean-South has obviously been quite disturbing. It likely won't come to war, notwithstanding being the most substantial confrontation between the Koreas since the armistice. If it did come to war ... Anatoly Karlin's scenario for a second Korean war does have an eventual South Korean-US victory over the North, but one coming at

Update: Team Macro Man has a good take on this as well, from a erm market/humorous side, and points to the true fact that financial analysts tend to become geopolitical analysts overnight when events suddenly take a turn for the worse in one of the world's hot spots.

Now of course, that would never apply to me, nope, not a chance! So, I do agree when TMM makes the following observation;

Do we know what will happen in Korea? No. To be frank we don't, and our expertise on the subject is so low that it is insulting to offer it up for consumption. All we know is that there are e few outcomes ranging from "all out war" to "will be forgotten about in a few days". And our limited experience would suggest that if we had to make a choice we would

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