Korea Institute for National Unification

The ‘hub-and-spoke’ alliance structure led by the United States was – and remains – a major feature of security politics in the Asia-Pacific. This article links its ‘general interests’ with the larger issue of the Asia-Pacific's evolving multilateral regional order. After reviewing the concept of ‘hedging’, the first section problematises the literature that treats the US-led alliances which constitute the hub-and-spoke system mainly as instruments for the competitive side of a hedging strategy. The second section observes that they go beyond being instruments of threat response to becoming a more complicated network of regional multilateral order-maintenance and order-building. The third section claims that the United States and its regional allies have been utilising the hub-and-spoke alliance structure as a hedge against an undesirable multilateral order emerging in the region. The fourth section examines those arguments with reference to the East Asia Summit (EAS) and the Six Party Talks. The article concludes with some thoughts about what these findings mean for the future direction of the hub-and-spoke alliance structure in the Asia-Pacific.

Artemisinin, also called qinghaosu, is originally derived from the sweet wormwood plant (Artemisia annua), which is used in traditional Chinese medicine. Artemisinin and its derivatives (artemisinins) have been widely used for many years as anti-malarial agents, with few adverse side effects. Interestingly, evidence has recently shown that artemisinins might have a therapeutic value for several other diseases beyond malaria, including cancers, inflammatory diseases, and autoimmune disorders. Neurodegeneration is a challenging age-associated neurological disorder characterized by deterioration of neuronal structures as well as functions, whereas neuroinflammation has been considered to be an underlying factor in the development of various neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease. Recently discovered properties of artemisinins suggested that they might be used to treat neurodegenerative disorders by decreasing oxidation, inflammation, and amyloid beta protein (Aβ). In this review, we will introduce artemisinins and highlight the possible mechanisms of their neuroprotective activities, suggesting that artemisinins might have therapeutic potential in neurodegenerative disorders.

Alliance persistence in the face of the disappearance of mutual threat or the deterioration of mutual threat perceptions between allies comprises the major concern of this article. This article argues that an alliance (whose primary threat-centric rationale has significantly diminished, if not disappeared) persists if two conditions are met: (i) the alliance serves as an essential arrangement for pursuing an ‘order insurance strategy’ (which is termed in this article as ‘alliance for order insurance’) and (ii) the allies invest for such benefits with arrangements to ensure alliance preservation against challenges that arise as a result of alliance mismanagement (which is termed in this article as ‘insurance for alliance’). To test this argument, this article evaluates the persistence of the United States–Australia alliance in the post-Cold War period. Also, to achieve some basis for falsification, it explores the discontinuation of the United States–New Zealand leg of ANZUS since the mid-1980s and the United States–Philippines alliance during most of the 1990s.

The effects of dietary exogenous hydrophilic emulsifiers on the growth, nutrient digestibility, and carcass characteristics of broilers were evaluated. A total of 200 one-day-old broilers (Ross 308) were allotted to one of four treatment groups in a randomized complete block design in five replicates with 10 birds per pen during a 5-week growth experimental period. Birds were fed a corn-soybean meal-based diet with or without the addition of 0.025, 0.050, or 0.075% exogenous hydrophilic emulsifiers. The diets contained 3,025 and 3,075 metabolizable energy/kg for Phases 1 and 2, respectively. For each phase and the overall experimental period, body weight gain (linear, P<0.05) and feed conversion ratio (linear, P<0.05) improved in proportion to the dietary exogenous hydrophilic emulsifier level, while the average daily feed intake was not affected by dietary treatment. Improvement in growth performance by dietary treatments was observed during the last two weeks rather than the first three weeks of the growth phase. In carcass traits, abdominal fat content increased as dietary exogenous hydrophilic emulsifier level increased (linear, P<0.05), whereas dietary emulsifier level did not affect the relative weight of the liver, breast, and leg muscles. In conclusion, addition of dietary exogenous hydrophilic emulsifiers from 0 to 0.075% in broiler diets improved the growth rate and feed efficiency of broilers without any deleterious effects on nutrient digestibility, although a corn-soybean meal-based diet had less energy content (3,025 and 3,075 metabolizable energy/kg) for 0-3 weeks and 3-5 weeks, respectively.

In aging-in-place contexts, small difficulties in Activities of Daily Living (ADL) can accumulate, affecting well-being through fatigue, anxiety, reduced autonomy, and safety risks. This position paper argues that robotics for older adult wellbeing must move beyond "convenience features" and centre equity, justice, and responsibility. We conducted ADL-grounded semi-structured interviews with four adults in their 70s-80s, identifying recurrent challenges (finding/ organising items, taking medication, and transporting objects) and deriving requirements to reduce compounded cognitive-physical burden. Based on these insights, we propose an in-home robotic furnishing-agent concept leveraging computer vision and generative AI and LLMs for natural-language interaction, context-aware reminders, safe actuation, and user-centred transparency. We then report video-stimulated follow-up interviews with the same participants, highlighting preferences for confirmation before actuation, predictability, adjustable speed/autonomy, and multimodal feedback, as well as equity-related concerns. We conclude with open questions on evaluating and deploying equitable robotic wellbeing systems in real homes.

What kind of policy goals and orientation would a unified Korea adopt? A concerned US asks, would it become a China-friendly state? Or, would it be an anchor for the American–Asian alliance network at the expense of China’s security interests? To address these questions, this article begins by identifying six possible scenarios for the US-Sino relationship at the time of a unification that result from the combination of (1) the relative power capabilities between the US and China and (2) whether the US and China cooperate or conflict with each other. After describing the six scenarios, this article examines what policies the US and China would pursue toward the Korean peninsula in each scenario. Also, it contemplates how a unified Korea should respond to policies of the US and China in each scenario.