East-West Center in the News

(2011-03-28)Since the collapse of North Korea’s centralized state economy during the country’s devastating famines in the 1990s, many ordinary North Koreans have turned to an underground market system as a means to survive, according to economist Marcus Noland, co-author of the recently published book “Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea,” based on large-scale surveys of North Korean refugees in China and South Korea.

As a result, more North Koreans have gained some access to foreign media, and more seem to be privately blaming the regime’s policies for the nation’s woes, Noland said in a talk at the East-West Center in Honolulu, where he is a nonresident Senior Fellow.

(2011-04-04) As long as the U.S. - Hawaii included - maintains its addiction to oil for transportation, Fereidun Fesharaki says he expects prices will top $6-a-gallon (or $200 per barrel for oil) in less than five years and have a "dramatic" impact on the country.

"On the demand side, there's only one fat boy in the room: that's the U.S.," Fesharaki said. "Twenty-seven countries of the European community combined use less than the U.S. At the moment, China, India, Japan, Korea combined are 25 percent, 20 percent less than the U.S.," he said, noting that the U.S. makes up 40 percent of global consumption.

(2011-04-10) Denny Roy, an expert on Asia-Pacific military affairs, said Friday that the triple-disasters may actually solve one of the largest buildup controversies in Japan. Roy is a senior fellow with the East-West Center in Hawaii, a congressionally established think tank.

If the military relief efforts help soften public opinion of American troops in Japan, an unpopular plan to relocate a Marine airbase within Okinawa could become more palatable to the unwelcoming Japanese public, Roy said.