This research deals with South Korea–Taiwan relations from 1949, when the concept of a “Pacific Pact” was first introduced, to 1954, when the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL) was formed. Thus far, studies on the regional order of East Asia during the early Cold War period have focused on U.S. policies toward East Asia and U.S. relations with individual East Asian states. In contrast, this present work examines the multilateral nature of the international relations in the region at the time. The extended cooperation, conflict, and competition between South Korea (ROK) and Taiwan (ROC) over the Pacific Pact from 1949 to 1954 vividly show how actively the two nations attempted to engage in the international arena to ensure their own security. Certainly, the primary purpose of this pact was not to form an autonomous regional alliance independent of the United States. In post-World War II Asia, the United States sought to reorganize a new regional order in Asia, with Japan at the center of this proposed order. Under these circumstances, Taiwan and South Korea, standing at the front line of the Cold War, were desperate to attract the U.S.'s attention. Once the two new nations had secured U.S. military and economic aid, however, they no longer pursued their former aggressive and expansive diplomatic strategies. After the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, signed on December 2, 1954, Taiwan discarded the Pacific Pact as an offensive and defensive treaty and concentrated on the APACL. South Korea, for its part, did not further pursue the Pacific Pact after the ROK–U.S. Mutual Defense Agreement was concluded on October 1, 1953.

South Korea and Taiwan maintained an exceptionally close relationship even after signing individual treaties with the United States. At times, the two nations competed to play a leading role in the international relations of Asia. Yet, their differences of opinion did not cross the line of cooperation between the two countries until the collapse of the Soviet Union brought an end to the Cold War system: South Korea then normalized relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1992.

The Western Capital (Sŏgyŏng) project was of ideological, cultural, and strategic significance for the Empire of Korea (1897–1910) struggling for survival in the age of imperialism. This study argues that Imperial Korea's understanding of its place in the civilized world of the past, present, and future inspired redeveloping P'yŏngyang as the secondary capital. The advocates cited the history of the city in particular and of the nation in general to legitimize the project. Also, status-conscious specialist chungin (“middle people”), a newly prominent social group with loyalist members, played active roles. Moreover, responding to the deteriorating Russo-Japanese relations, Korea began preparing the nation's secondary capital, located within a neutral zone that Russia proposed to Japan. From the outset, the critics of the project highlighted funding constraints, a heavy tax burden on the local population, and rapacious officials exploiting the situation. The Japanese victory over Russia in 1905 effectively ended the project, but the memory of P'yŏngyang's status as the secondary capital outlived the Empire of Korea and the subsequent Japanese colonial rule before the city became the national capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, established in 1948.

This article focuses on the literary criticism of the Edo-period scholar, Seita Tansō (1719–1785). Although a historian by vocation, Tansō additionally lectured extensively on the Chinese vernacular novel, Shuihu zhuan (Jp. Suikoden, En. The Water Margin). While earlier generations of Chinese fiction aficionados in Japan had also discussed Shuihu zhuan, early eighteenth-century analysis was primarily limited to philological explication—a task necessitated by the extensive use of colloquial language in the novel. In contrast to this tradition of philological exegesis, Tansō turned his attention to the ethical content and literary structure of Shuihu zhuan. Tansō was heavily influenced by the writing of the Chinese fiction commentator Jin Shengtan (1608–1661), and in this article, I discuss Tansō's use of Jin's fiction criticism in the construction of his own interpretation of the novel. I argue that the dissemination of Chinese novels in Edo-period Japan cannot be discussed without an understanding of Japanese engagement with Chinese narrative theory, and I identify Seita Tansō as an important figure in a transition from philological to more purely narratological analysis of Chinese vernacular fiction.

Major D.E.L. ‘Roy’ Homard, (Fig. 1) who died aged 94 on 20 May 2015, was an army engineer who played a critical role in two of the most significant British polar expeditions of the post-war era. He was also one of just 45 individuals to be awarded the Polar Medal with both Arctic and Antarctic clasps. (Awards of the Polar Medal include combined clasps. Data supplied by Glenn M. Stein FRGS).