Global Pulse

标签： Asia

亚洲

  • Former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra freed early from parole after receiving royal pardon

    Former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra freed early from parole after receiving royal pardon

    BANGKOK – In a move that reshapes Thailand’s volatile political landscape, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has officially wrapped up all court-mandated legal obligations after King Maha Vajiralongkorn granted a royal pardon that cut short his four-month probation period, with the decree taking full effect on Wednesday.

    The 76-year-old billionaire populist, whose influence has rippled through Thai politics for more than 20 years, walked out of a Bangkok prison last month to throngs of cheering supporters. Ever since his release, political observers have engaged in intense speculation over whether he will continue to wield significant sway over the Pheu Thai Party, the leading faction in Thailand’s current governing coalition, even as his family has suggested he may be preparing to step away from frontline politics.

    The royal pardon decree, announced to mark Queen Suthida’s birthday, was published in the official Royal Gazette on Tuesday evening. Under Thailand’s constitutional monarchy framework, the king holds exclusive final authority over pardon grants for convicted individuals. The pardon applied to a broad group of qualifying inmates who met pre-set eligibility criteria; Thaksin qualified for full clemency because he had already been released on probation and had fewer than 12 months left on his original commuted sentence.

    Thaksin first entered politics as a telecommunications tycoon, launching his own political party in 1998 before winning the prime ministership in 2001. His time in office ended abruptly in 2006, when a military coup ousted him while he was traveling overseas, triggering nearly 20 years of deep political polarization that continues to define Thai public life.

    Even during 15 years of self-imposed exile following the coup, political parties aligned with Thaksin repeatedly won general elections and returned to power. His signature populist policies, which expanded access to public services and microloans for low-income households, built a fiercely loyal base among working-class and rural voters, particularly in Thailand’s northern and northeastern regions. But his overwhelming popularity and confrontational governing style also created intractable divisions between his grassroots supporters and the country’s established urban elite, royalist factions, and military establishment.

    Thaksin returned to Thailand in 2023, after which he began serving an eight-year prison sentence handed down on corruption-related charges, including convictions for abusing his prime ministerial authority to benefit his personal business holdings and improperly approving a state lottery project that caused public financial losses. Shortly after his conviction, King Maha Vajiralongkorn commuted his sentence to one year, and Thaksin was initially allowed to serve his term in a private suite at Bangkok’s Police Hospital on medical grounds.

    After widespread public outcry over claims of unfair preferential treatment, Thailand’s Supreme Court ordered Thaksin moved to a mainstream prison to serve his sentence in September 2025. He was granted parole on May 11, having served eight months of his one-year commuted sentence. As a condition of his parole, he was required to wear an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet, with his original four-month probation period set to run through early September. His legal representative, attorney Winyat Chatmontree, confirmed to the Associated Press on Wednesday that all legal restrictions have now been lifted, though administrative procedures to remove the monitoring bracelet will take several additional days to complete.

    The early end to Thaksin’s sentence comes as Thailand’s governing coalition navigates shifting internal dynamics, leaving open the question of how much the former premier will participate in national politics moving forward.

  • India set for a blockbuster 12-match New Zealand tour, the biggest in a generation

    India set for a blockbuster 12-match New Zealand tour, the biggest in a generation

    WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A historic all-format cricket tour by India, set to take place later this year, will mark the largest inbound international cricket tour New Zealand has hosted in nearly 30 years, bringing more than six weeks of top-tier cricket action to fans across the country. The unprecedented tour will see India’s men’s national side face off against New Zealand’s Black Caps across 12 matches spanning all three formats of international cricket: five Twenty20 Internationals, five One-Day Internationals, and two Test matches. This slate of fixtures makes India’s visit the most match-heavy tour any visiting nation has ever conducted on New Zealand soil, according to local cricket organizers. The tour will tip off on October 22 at Christchurch’s iconic Hagley Oval with the opening T20I, and will wrap up six weeks later on November 27, when the second and final Test match gets underway back in Christchurch. Beyond the on-field competition, New Zealand Cricket’s top commercial leaders frame the tour as much more than a series of sporting contests. “This will be about more than just the cricket on the field. It will be a celebration of New Zealand’s shared history and culture with India and our burgeoning rivalry and friendship through cricket,” said Glenn Critchley, New Zealand Cricket’s Marketing and Commercial Officer. The massive popularity of the Indian men’s cricket team globally, and particularly among New Zealand’s large South Asian community, has organizers preparing for unprecedented crowd interest and fan engagement. Star players including former captain Virat Kohli and star fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah are widely expected to feature in the touring squad, amplifying excitement ahead of the series. “The passion and the following this team has is staggering, not to mention some of the star players expected to tour,” Critchley noted. “So we’re bracing for the intensity and fandom that will accompany the tour.” Critchley added that the tour will deliver 42 consecutive days of international cricket to supporters across eight host cities around New Zealand, a massive slate of content for domestic fans. The historic India series kicks off a busy period for the Black Caps, who will travel to Australia for a four-match Test tour immediately after concluding the India series. New Zealand will then return home in early 2025 to host Sri Lanka for a full series that includes three ODIs, three T20Is and two Test matches across January and February.

  • Indonesia’s Prabowo fires head of free meals scheme plagued by poisonings

    Indonesia’s Prabowo fires head of free meals scheme plagued by poisonings

    Indonesia’s flagship free school meals initiative, a cornerstone of President Prabowo Subianto’s 2024 presidential election platform, has been roiled by widespread public health incidents, corruption probes, and mounting political pressure, leading to the dismissal of the agency chief tasked with overseeing the multi-billion-dollar project.

    The ambitious programme was designed to deliver daily free meals to 80 million school-aged children across the country, aimed at addressing childhood malnutrition and easing household financial burdens. But within months of its January 2025 launch, the initiative began to face cascading crises. As of April this year, local education advocacy group Network for Education Watch has linked at least 33,000 cases of food poisoning across the archipelago to the programme, forcing authorities to confront widespread public anger and demands for a full suspension of the scheme.

    Last week, Indonesia’s anti-corruption commission formally filed a complaint over documented budget inconsistencies across hundreds of programme food preparation kitchens. Just seven days after that filing, on Wednesday, Prabowo moved to remove Dadan Hindayana, an entomologist who had served as head of the National Nutrition Agency, the governing body responsible for the free meals initiative. Hours before the dismissal was announced, officials from the Attorney General’s Office executed a raid on the National Nutrition Agency’s headquarters, blocking staff from accessing the building as investigators collected documents.

    Dadan has been replaced by his former deputy, Nanik Sudaryati Deyang, a former journalist who worked as a member of Prabowo’s 2024 presidential campaign team. The leadership shakeup has drawn mixed reactions from the Indonesian public and policy analysts. While some welcomed the change as a necessary first step to address the programme’s failures, many critics have dismissed it as a superficial cosmetic fix that does not address deep-rooted structural flaws. “What the programme needs right now isn’t just swapping people, but a total overhaul of the concept and system. Without that, it’ll just keep being a source of problems,” Indonesian social media user Ahmad Arif wrote on platform X. Additional criticism has centered on Nanik’s lack of relevant professional experience: she has no background in nutrition or food safety management, a gap that has raised concerns about her ability to turn the troubled initiative around.

    Beyond the public health crisis, Dadan also faced backlash for a series of controversial public statements, including a recommendation that all Indonesians drink two liters of milk per day and a proposal to incorporate insects and sago worms into the free meal menus. The programme itself has also drawn intense scrutiny over its enormous price tag, at a time when Indonesia is facing mounting economic headwinds including shrinking trade surpluses and a depreciating national currency. Just recently, authorities scaled back services from six days a week to five, a cut framed as a necessary response to global economic volatility spurred by the ongoing conflict between the U.S.-Israel alliance and Iran.

    President Prabowo has not shied away from acknowledging the programme’s shortcomings. In a speech delivered last month, he admitted the scheme was beset “with many problems” and pledged to take firm action against any individuals found violating rules or abusing public authority. Even amid the scandals, however, the president maintains that the programme retains broad support among ordinary Indonesians. “Free nutritious meals are so important for our nation,” he said. “Everywhere I go, I meet ordinary people, farmers, saying, ‘sir, please don’t stop the free nutritious meals programme, this really helps my grandchildren to be able to eat’.”

    Additional on-the-ground reporting for this story was contributed by Astudestra Ajengrastri in Jakarta.

  • New prime minister says Solomon Islands will review its secretive security treaty with China

    New prime minister says Solomon Islands will review its secretive security treaty with China

    CANBERRA, Australia — On his first international visit since taking office, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale confirmed Wednesday that his incoming administration will launch a full review of the country’s classified 2022 security agreement with Beijing, a deal that sparked widespread regional and global geopolitical concern over potential Chinese military expansion in the South Pacific.

    The bilateral security treaty, negotiated and signed under Wale’s predecessor Manasseh Sogavare, has drawn intense scrutiny from Western powers and regional nations including Australia and the United States since 2022. Critics have raised alarms that the pact could clear a path for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy to establish a permanent military outpost in the strategically located South Pacific island nation, a shift that would reshape regional security dynamics.

    Wale, who won a parliamentary vote to claim the prime ministership on May 15, had repeatedly demanded public transparency for the treaty’s full text during his election campaign. He told reporters Wednesday that he only gained access to a full copy of the agreement within the past few days, after replacing unnamed officials in key government posts.

    “I haven’t completed a full detailed review, but I have been able to review the initial text,” Wale stated during a press conference in the Australian capital Canberra. “I have been reflecting deeply on this agreement. The treaty includes a binding nondisclosure clause, which means I cannot release its full text to the public immediately. However, a comprehensive review of this pact is on the table, alongside parallel reviews of all other security agreements the Solomon Islands holds with nations across the globe.”

    The small island nation, which has a total population of just 700,000 and sits roughly 1,200 miles northeast of Australia’s northeastern coast, has been the center of competing geopolitical influence in the South Pacific in recent years. During Wale’s visit, he and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a landmark new agreement to negotiate a broad comprehensive strategic treaty that will upgrade the bilateral relationship, with coverage spanning both security cooperation and economic development partnership.

    Wale’s predecessor had pushed back against Australian efforts to deepen bilateral ties, but the new prime minister framed the updated agreement as a full reset of the relationship. “We recognize there have been significant frictions in our bilateral ties over the past several years, and this reset addresses those issues,” Wale said.

    Albanese made clear Australia’s position that it should be the Solomon Islands’ first-choice primary security partner, rather than China. “We have stated openly and clearly that Australia aims to be the preferred security partner for nations across our region, and we believe that regional security issues should be managed by the Pacific family,” Albanese told reporters.

    Wale echoed that framing, noting that centering regional leadership for local security is “the direction we want to move in as a nation.”

    Under the existing 2022 deal with China, Beijing has deployed police training instructors to the Solomon Islands to build local law enforcement capacity. The island nation does not maintain a standing military force, so its national police service carries a much broader set of security responsibilities than police forces in countries with dedicated military institutions.

    The Solomon Islands first shifted its diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taipei in 2019 under Sogavare’s administration, a move that delivered a major diplomatic win for China, which claims the self-governing island democracy of Taiwan as an inalienable part of its sovereign territory.

  • Convenience or entitlement? Indian start-up offers people to carry shopping bags

    Convenience or entitlement? Indian start-up offers people to carry shopping bags

    For millions of shoppers across India, navigating crowded, unplanned open-air street markets comes with a unique set of frustrations: juggling heavy shopping bags, maneuvering strollers over broken sidewalks, and balancing errands when extra hands are nowhere to be found. It was this exact frustration that led two mothers of young children to launch a one-of-a-kind service in one of New Delhi’s busiest shopping hubs, Lajpat Nagar Market — but the concept has quickly ignited a fierce national debate over class, labor, and entitlement in South Asia’s largest economy.

    Launched in April 2026 by friends Ritu Kandari Srivastava and Kanishka Malhotra, CarryMen offers on-demand personal assistants to shoppers for short-duration shopping trips. Priced starting at 79 Indian rupees (roughly $0.83) for 30 minutes of assistance and 149 rupees for a full hour, the service provides trained helpers who can carry purchases, push strollers, navigate the market’s winding lanes, wait in lines, and even assist shoppers with mobility or health challenges. The idea grew out of a personal experience for the co-founders: during a joint shopping trip with their toddlers, they struggled to manage both their strollers and growing bags, then watched an elderly shopper struggle with her purchases with no one to help. Frustrated by their own inability to assist and the hassle of begging family members to accompany them on shopping trips, the pair began building the service within days.

    Unlike modern air-conditioned shopping malls that have become common in major Indian cities, Lajpat Nagar and thousands of similar traditional markets across the country lack accessible infrastructure. Sidewalks are frequently uneven, broken, or completely blocked by street vendors, making navigation for older adults, pregnant people, parents with strollers, and people with disabilities incredibly difficult. After hashing out their idea with family members, Srivastava and Malhotra completed company registration, secured all required permits from municipal authorities and local police, built a small branded kiosk in the market, hired seven trained staff (five men initially, followed by two women) and opened for business after a month of intensive customer service training.

    Within weeks, the service went viral across Indian social media, splitting public opinion sharply. Supporters have celebrated the startup as a clever solution to a widespread everyday problem that also creates stable formal employment in a country where urban unemployment has remained above 5% for years, with millions of working-age Indians unable to find steady work. But critics have pushed back hard, arguing the service is a symptom of excessive entitlement among India’s growing affluent middle class, which increasingly outsources all menial labor to low-wage workers. The backlash intensified after AI-generated images of wealthy, manicured clients went viral online, framing the service as a luxury for the ultra-rich unwilling to lift a finger during shopping trips.

    Leading critics, including labor rights activist and sociologist Akriti Bhatia, have gone further, labeling CarryMen’s workers as just glorified “coolies” (a term for manual laborers with deep colonial and exploitative connotations) that reinforce unequal power dynamics in India’s unregulated gig economy, with some even comparing the model to modern slavery. But the startup’s founders have forcefully rejected all these claims.

    “First of all, there’s no slavery. We are not forcing anyone to work for us. And all our workers are full-time salaried employees, they are not gig workers,” Srivastava explained in an interview, adding that the vast majority of early clients are not wealthy elites, but marginalized groups who need extra assistance: pregnant women, parents of young children, the elderly, and people with disabilities.

    For Anand Kumar, one of the first CarryMen hired by the startup, the role has already been a positive change from his previous work. The 18-year-old previously held low-wage, informal roles as a shop helper and gig delivery worker, and says the pay at CarryMen is better, and he feels far more respected in his new role. He recalled one particularly meaningful interaction with a customer with artificial arms, who trusted him to handle his cash and pay for his shopping: “I was so touched by the trust he reposed in me,” Kumar said. Beyond carrying bags, workers are trained to memorize the market layout, assist with opening and locking strollers, carry emergency supplies including water, umbrellas, and portable chargers, wait in food lines for clients, and help shoppers find specific stores quickly.

    After a slow first week with no bookings, interest has grown steadily. The startup now averages six bookings per day on weekdays, rising to eight to nine on busy weekends. During a recent visit to the kiosk on a hot, humid Delhi afternoon, a local couple — Jatinder and Anita Sabharwal — booked Kumar for an hour of assistance. Jatinder, who will turn 60 in a few months, was already struggling with a heavy shoulder bag, while Anita carried two additional bags and had developed a sudden migraine. Kumar led the pair directly to a nearby pharmacy, waited outside with their bags while they shopped, and handed Anita her water bottle to take her medication immediately after they exited.

    “He’s helping us navigate too. We didn’t know where the pharmacy was. I think this is a very good service. With him around, we’re getting some help and can shop comfortably,” Jatinder said. His wife Anita added, “Now we can move freely, unencumbered by baggage.” The couple rejected the national debate around entitlement, saying the service fills a clear need for people who need extra support, and should be expanded to every market across the country.

    Srivastava says the startup already has expansion plans: in July, it will launch a second location at Delhi’s iconic crowded Chandni Chowk market, with plans to gradually add more locations across the capital and eventually expand to other cities across India. But critics like Bhatia warn that the model’s future remains uncertain, particularly as the startup scales. Right now, CarryMen operates as a small operation with seven full-time, salaried staff, but expansion will require outside funding. Bhatia notes that many Indian gig and platform startups begin by offering good wages and benefits to early workers, but cut pay and increase workloads once they scale and face pressure to turn a profit. With an abundance of cheap labor and very low unionization among low-wage workers in India, companies often face little pushback when squeezing worker pay and conditions. “Which way would CarryMen go, we’ll have to see,” Bhatia said.

  • World shares are mixed as Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 follows Wall Street to an all-time high

    World shares are mixed as Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 follows Wall Street to an all-time high

    Global equity markets kicked off Wednesday with stark divergence across regions, capping a prior session that saw U.S. benchmarks notch all-time records powered by the red-hot artificial intelligence boom.

    The most notable milestone of the day came from Asian trading, where Japan’s Nikkei 225 index crossed the 68,000 threshold for the first time in history, closing up 2.5% at 68,402.13. The historic rally was led by semiconductor sector stocks that sit at the core of AI supply chains: Tokyo Electron, a leading manufacturer of chip production equipment, soared 13.4%, while Advantest, a specialist in chip testing gear, added 5.1% to its value. Other Asian markets delivered mixed results: Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.7% to 8,785.70, Taiwan’s Taiex climbed 2%, and China’s Shanghai Composite eked out a 0.2% rise to 4,083.97. By contrast, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped 1.6% to 25,633.21, India’s Sensex fell 0.9%, and South Korean markets remained closed for a public holiday.

    When European markets opened for trading on Wednesday, the momentum from Japan’s AI-fueled rally failed to lift regional shares, with all major benchmarks opening in negative territory. Germany’s DAX index slid 0.8% to 24,930.74, Paris’ CAC 40 fell 0.4% to 8,173.51, and London’s FTSE 100 shed 0.3% to 10,340.00. U.S. index futures also pointed to a mild pullback at the opening, with S&P 500 futures down 0.1% and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures off 0.2% ahead of the New York opening bell.

    The mixed regional performance follows a record-setting session on Wall Street Tuesday, when the ongoing AI boom pushed all three major U.S. indexes to new all-time highs. The S&P 500 notched its ninth consecutive weekly gain — its longest winning streak since 2023 — edging up 0.1% to 7,609.78, while the Dow added 0.4% to 51,307.79 and the Nasdaq composite climbed less than 0.1% to 27,093.90.

    AI-linked stocks continued to drive gains for Wall Street, with multiple players posting spectacular single-day jumps. Hewlett Packard Enterprise saw its stock surge 19.5% after reporting quarterly profits that far outpaced analyst projections, with the company attributing the beat to booming customer demand for AI infrastructure. Marvell Technology, another chip and AI infrastructure firm, leaped 32.5% — its best single-day performance since its 2000 IPO — after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang suggested during a Taiwan conference that Marvell could become the next trillion-dollar corporation. That milestone has already been reached by a growing number of AI-focused firms, including most recently Micron Technology, and Nvidia itself, which now boasts a market valuation above $5 trillion even as its stock slipped 0.7% on Tuesday.

    The nine-week winning streak for U.S. equities has left some market observers noting an unusual dynamic in investor behavior. “One thing that stands out in today’s market is how little investors seem willing to pay for protection despite a world overflowing with potential shocks,” Stephen Innes, managing director at SPI Asset Management, wrote in a Wednesday market commentary. Many analysts have also warned that a near-term pullback may be on the horizon after the extended run of gains.

    A stronger-than-expected U.S. labor market report has added to mixed signals for investors: new data released this week showed U.S. employers posted far more open jobs at the end of April than economists had forecast, signaling ongoing resilience in the world’s largest economy. Market sentiment has also been supported by hopes for a diplomatic deal between the U.S. and Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global oil chokepoint. A resolution would restore unimpeded oil flow from the Persian Gulf and ease upward pressure on energy prices.

    Despite those hopes, oil prices resumed their upward climb on Wednesday, with international benchmark Brent crude rising $2.63 to $98.63 per barrel, and U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude adding $2.79 to hit $96.55 per barrel — a jump of more than $2 per barrel for both benchmarks.

    In currency markets, the U.S. dollar saw mild movement against major global currencies. After hitting an intraday high of 160.44 yen, the dollar slipped to 159.86 yen, down slightly from 159.92 yen at Tuesday’s close. The euro also edged fractionally lower, falling to $1.1631 from $1.1632 in the prior session.

  • Heavy rain from tropical storm raises flood risks in the Tokyo region

    Heavy rain from tropical storm raises flood risks in the Tokyo region

    A severe weather event is unfolding across east-central Japan, where Tropical Storm Jangmi has brought torrential downpours, life-threatening flood risks, and widespread disruption to critical infrastructure just as it reached the densely populated Tokyo metropolitan region on Wednesday.

    The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) confirmed that mid-morning Wednesday, the storm was positioned east of Shima City, tracking northeastward with maximum sustained winds reaching 90 kilometers per hour (55 miles per hour). This downgrade in strength came after Jangmi made landfall in Wakayama Prefecture earlier as a typhoon, packing winds of 126 kph (78 mph), before moving inland and weakening rapidly. Forecasters projected the system would hold tropical storm intensity through most of Wednesday. Before reaching Japan’s main islands, the storm passed over the southern island of Okinawa, leaving 15 people with minor injuries in its wake.

    Over a 24-hour period, the storm dumped as much as 50 centimeters (20 inches) of rain on the central Japanese Owase region. Heading into Thursday morning, the JMA warns that additional accumulations of up to 20 centimeters (8 inches) are possible across multiple areas, including the Japanese capital. In response to the rapidly deteriorating conditions, the agency has issued its highest-level flood alerts for numerous regions across central and eastern Japan, issuing urgent calls for residents in low-lying communities and along riverbanks to evacuate immediately to higher, safer ground.

    Local authorities have already activated emergency protocols. In downtown Tokyo, residents living adjacent to the Zenpukuji River received mandatory evacuation advisories. Broadcast footage from local networks shows the river’s muddy, swollen banks approaching capacity, with water on the cusp of spilling over into surrounding neighborhoods.

    The severe rainfall has already paralyzed daily life across the affected region. Surface street traffic has ground to a halt in Tokyo, hundreds of domestic and international flights have been grounded, and regional and commuter rail services have either been suspended entirely or face significant delays. Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, the primary utility provider for the capital region, reports that more than 5,000 residential properties have lost power amid the stormy conditions.

  • Watch: Man attacked by bear at steel works in Japan

    Watch: Man attacked by bear at steel works in Japan

    A dangerous wildlife incident has disrupted operations at a Japanese steel manufacturing facility after a brown bear launched an unprovoked attack on site Tuesday, leaving one man with direct injuries and three additional people hurt in the chaos. As of the latest updates, the aggressive animal has not been captured and is still roaming within the secured boundaries of the factory compound, prompting urgent safety warnings for all workers at the location. Local emergency response teams have been dispatched to the site to conduct a systematic search for the bear, while factory management has implemented temporary restricted access to areas of the plant that are considered high-risk. The extent of the victims’ injuries has not yet been released to the public, but authorities have confirmed that all injured people have received emergency medical care following the attack. Wildlife experts note that such bear incursions into industrial spaces in Japan have become more frequent in recent years as habitat overlap between humans and wild animals increases, highlighting growing challenges for balancing industrial activity and wildlife conservation in rural and semi-rural industrial zones. Safety officials are urging all on-site personnel to remain vigilant and report any sightings of the animal immediately to response teams, who are working around the clock to apprehend the bear before another incident can occur.

  • A wall of nametags at a South Korean park testifies to adoptees’ longing for their birth mothers

    A wall of nametags at a South Korean park testifies to adoptees’ longing for their birth mothers

    Against a misty, rain-dampened backdrop in Paju, a South Korean city just miles from the North Korean border, dozens of Korean adoptees who grew up across North America and Europe recently gathered at a former U.S. military base to add their names to a quiet, powerful memorial. Their goal: after decades apart, to leave a trace that a birth mother still searching for them might find.

    The site, Omma Poom Park — its name translates to “mother’s embrace” in Korean — is home to a growing cobblestone monument covered in mesh, where adoptees hang handcrafted ceramic name tags that carry their details. As of the recent gathering, more than 900 tags hang like unmailed, waiting letters, a quiet testament to the mass separation of children from their parents that created what experts call the world’s largest adoptee diaspora.

    Each hand-painted tag includes the adoptee’s full name, year of birth, and place of birth in Korea. Color coding marks the decade an adoption was finalized: most tags are red or sky blue, matching the peak decades of foreign adoption from South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. White tags are reserved for adoptees who died without ever being reunited with their biological families. Among the dozens of tags, one laminated handwritten note flutters, left by anonymous birth parents searching for a daughter they named Bora: “You are not alone. You have a mother and a father. I’m so sorry and I love you.”

    The history of foreign adoption from South Korea stretches back to the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War, when the first wave of children sent abroad were mixed-race kids born to Korean women and U.S. soldiers, who were widely stigmatized as outcasts in Korean society at the time. Adoption numbers surged in the 1970s, when the country’s former military dictatorship pushed for large-scale foreign placement of full-Korean children, most often born to unwed mothers or families living in extreme poverty. From the 1970s through the mid-2000s, thousands of Korean children were sent to Western homes every year, with adoption numbers peaking at more than 6,600 placements annually in the 1980s, as the authoritarian government sought to reduce domestic population pressure.

    After a yearslong advocacy campaign led by Paju-based photographer Lee Yong-nam and adoptee support nonprofit Me & Korea, Omma Poom Park opened to the public in June 2025. Lee, now 72, first became invested in adoption justice after spending decades searching for a Black-Korean childhood friend who was adopted to the United States as a child. “Adoptions continued unchecked and now the pain is surfacing,” he explained of the adoptees who travel to the park to add their names to the wall, most of whom are younger than the war generation that first saw widespread adoption.

    On a neighboring hill overlooking the park, a converted former U.S. Army building operates as a dedicated museum that holds nearly 1,000 adoptee profiles, each featuring a photo, birth details, and a personal message to the adoptee’s birth mother.

    One of those profiles belongs to Angela Lee-Pack, who was adopted by a family in Ontario, Canada, in 1971 when she was just 2 years old. Growing up, Lee-Pack endured severe abuse at the hands of her adoptive mother, including being locked in a closet without food, and later experienced further abuse in a second foster home before leaving at 15 and struggling for years to build a stable adult life. “I think about you every day and only wish the best for you,” she wrote to her biological mother. “I hope one day I will be able to know who I am.”

    Lee-Pack has traveled to South Korea twice to search for her birth mother, posting flyers across Seoul and the southern city of Jeonju. During her first trip in 2019, a man contacted her believing she was the daughter of his late uncle. The lead gave her hope, but it slowly and painfully unraveled: eventually, the man tracked down a woman in her 70s whose background matched Lee-Pack’s adoption records, but she denied ever giving up a child and refused to meet. Lee-Pack collapsed in her hotel room and cried for hours. “Every time I look in the mirror I wonder who she is and what she looks like,” she said. “The thoughts never end.”

    For Nicole Rieth, who was adopted to a family in Michigan at 4 months old in 1989, becoming a mother of two sons pushed her to launch her own search for her birth mother. Her adoption records note that she was the third child of a Seoul couple who surrendered her shortly after birth in 1988, citing extreme financial hardship at a time when the government was aggressively pressuring families to limit their number of children. Rieth first began her search in 2024, but letters sent by her adoption agency to her birth mother’s last known address went unanswered. She is now continuing her search through South Korea’s National Center for the Rights of the Child, a government agency, in the hopes that her sons will one day know the cultural heritage she never got to grow up with.

    “I kind of don’t allow myself to hope because the whole journey has been a roller coaster of hoping, finding something out, and diving down into hopelessness, getting a glimmer of a maybe,” Rieth said. “And yet I want to exhaust every effort … so that there are no regrets.” For her, the act of putting her name on the wall at Omma Poom is not about forcing a relationship with her birth mother. “I’ve just always wanted to know who I looked like, because I’ve never had that before,” she explained.

    Decades of unregulated adoption have left deep, lasting scars on both adoptees and their biological families. At the peak of foreign adoption, South Korean authorities largely turned a blind eye to rampant systemic fraud, including illegal procurement of children from hospitals and orphanages and deliberate falsification of children’s origins to speed up international placements. Tens of thousands of children were falsely labeled as abandoned orphans to make them eligible for adoption, leaving generations of adoptees with no clear information about their identity, family history, or the circumstances of their separation. On the other side, birth mothers were often pressured to surrender children born out of wedlock, some were separated from their children without their full consent, and many spent decades searching only to learn their children were sent overseas with falsified paperwork.

    The recent gathering at Omma Poom came just weeks after a group of birth mothers formally asked South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to open an investigation into the illegal adoptions of their children, joining hundreds of existing fraud and abuse claims filed by adoptees across the globe.

    Jalyn Smith, who was adopted to Michigan in 1993, had her adoption agency locate her birth mother in 2021. According to adoption records, the woman had surrendered Smith after separating from Smith’s biological father — but she declined to meet or have any contact. Five years later, Smith is continuing her search, and chose to add her name to the memorial wall. “Hanging it up, I felt proud,” Smith said. “I feel proud to be part of this community, though it comes with a lot of conflicting feelings of sadness and anger and grief.”

  • Rubio says US will only provide sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for nuclear concessions

    Rubio says US will only provide sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for nuclear concessions

    In remarks before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid out an uncompromising new set of terms for any future agreement with Iran, tying any rollback of US economic sanctions exclusively to Tehran’s full surrender of its nuclear enrichment program. The hardline position directly rejects Iran’s longstanding demand that economic relief, including the unfreezing of billions of dollars in Iranian assets held abroad, be included as a core component of any phased ceasefire deal.

    Rubio emphasized that the existing sanctions regime against Iran is directly tied to its nuclear activities, particularly its production of highly enriched uranium. “If they agree to give up those things, there will be sanctions relief,” he told committee members, adding that Tehran must commit to either accepting strict, long-term limitations on its enrichment work or abandoning the program entirely.

    The top US diplomat noted that Iran has recently signaled a willingness to discuss elements of its nuclear program that it had previously refused to negotiate, though he declined to share specific details of any backchannel discussions. His account conflicts sharply with an official statement issued by Tehran just last Friday, which flatly denied that any nuclear negotiations are currently underway.

    Rubio’s comments also make clear that the US is in no position to release the billions in frozen Iranian assets that Tehran has demanded as a prerequisite to extending a current ceasefire. Last week, Ali Bagheri Kani, deputy secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, reiterated that the release of these funds is a “legal right” of the Iranian people, and Iranian state media has made clear that any ceasefire agreement will not be finalized without concrete economic concessions from the West.

    Beyond the nuclear file, Rubio also issued a firm rejection of Iran’s reported plans to impose tolls on commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global chokepoint for oil and natural gas shipments. “They have to announce very clearly, ‘The straits are now open, we’re not charging a toll’”, Rubio said, adding that Washington also demands Iran stop firing on passing commercial vessels and assist in removing mines that US officials claim Iran has placed across large stretches of the waterway. Iran has not yet publicly responded to Rubio’s claims about mined waters.

    Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), coastal states may only claim up to 12 nautical miles of territorial waters. At its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz is just 21 nautical miles wide, split between territorial waters controlled by Iran and Oman. International law explicitly bars coastal states bordering international straits from restricting transit or charging tolls on vessels passing through the waterway. Even so, legal experts interviewed by Middle East Eye note that Iran could find loopholes to impose charges – framing them as “piloting fees” or “service charges” – if it secures cooperation from Omani authorities.

    The current diplomatic impasse comes against a backdrop of massive political upheaval in Iran following the outbreak of war. Early in the conflict, Israeli assassinations killed longtime Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian officials who had previously led nuclear talks with Western powers, including former national security advisor Ali Larijani. The new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, was severely wounded in an Israeli strike that killed most of his family, and has not appeared in public since the conflict began. He currently communicates with Iranian leadership and negotiators through an indirect, secure messaging system, and has only addressed the Iranian public via written press statements. Rubio told senators that US intelligence assesses the new supreme leader is taking an increasingly active role in guiding Iran’s negotiating positions. “I think there are indications out there that he is increasingly engaging at some level,” Rubio said.

    Earlier in the conflict, former US President Donald Trump noted that negotiations with Tehran were complicated by political uncertainty, saying Washington did not have a clear picture of who held decision-making power in the country amid the post-assassination leadership reshuffle.