CNN – Asia/Pacific

By Gawon Bae and Emiko Jozuka, CNN North Korea has fired an unidentified projectile into waters off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday. According to the Japanese government, the projectile may have been a “ballistic missile,” it said in a tweet. The Japan Coast Guard said

By Jessie Yeung and Hannah Ritchie, CNN Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Chow Hang-tung was sentenced to 15 months in prison on Tuesday for her part in organizing an unauthorized vigil to commemorate the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Chow is a former vice chairwoman of the now-disbanded organization Hong Kong Alliance, which since

By Sana Noor Haq and Emiko Jozuka, CNN Kane Tanaka, the world’s oldest living person, turned 119 years old on Sunday, according to a Twitter post published by her great-granddaughter, Junko Tanaka. “Great achievement. (Kane Tanaka) reached 119 years of age,” Junko tweeted, with a photograph of her great-grandmother, whom she saw in December. “I

By Gawon Bae, CNN An unidentified man who crossed the heavily armed border from South Korea into North Korea on Sunday is presumed to be a North Korean defector who made the journey in the opposite direction more than a year ago, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry. In a statement Monday, the Defense

By Gawon Bae and Angus Watson, CNN North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has again admitted there is a “food problem” in the country, during a speech which brought an important five-day meeting of his Korean Worker’s Party to a close. The year-end address, summarized by state media outlet KCNA on Saturday, made brief reference

By Angus Watson, CNN A stampede at one of India’s holiest shrines left at least 12 people dead on New Year’s Day, a local official said. Thousands of devotees were at the Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine in Jammu, northern India when the stampede happened around 2:30 a.m. local time Saturday. Another 16 people were injured

By Jessie Yeung, CNN Hong Kong has confirmed its first Omicron cluster, bringing an end to its long streak of zero locally transmitted cases and prompting fears of a wider outbreak as the city prepares to ring in the new year. Two cases of local transmission were detected on Thursday — a 76-year-old and a

By Niamh Kennedy and Rob Picheta, CNN The former President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani said he was given “no more than two minutes” to get ready to flee Kabul in August, during the Taliban’s rapid takeover of the country’s capital. Ghani told BBC’s Radio 4 “Today” program that his national security adviser informed him he

CNN By Nectar Gan and CNN’s Beijing Bureau Police in southern China paraded four suspects through the streets for allegedly smuggling people across sealed borders in breach of pandemic control measures — a controversial act of public shaming that triggered backlash on Chinese social media. On Tuesday, four people wearing hazmat suits, face masks and

By Nectar Gan and CNN’s Beijing Bureau Police in southern China paraded four suspects through the streets for allegedly smuggling people across sealed borders in breach of pandemic control measures — a controversial act of public shaming that triggered backlash on Chinese social media. On Tuesday, four people wearing hazmat suits, face masks and goggles

By Brad Lendon, CNN Is the Korean War about to come to an end? Some people might answer: “Didn’t that happen in 1953?” Others may know that it was only an armistice that brought hostilities to a halt in 1953 — but there’s never been a treaty to end the conflict between North Korea (and

By Jessie Yeung, CNN Cantopop star and prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Denise Ho was arrested at her home on Wednesday morning by the city’s national security police. She was one of six people arrested in an early morning operation, all linked to online media organization Stand News. Police later confirmed at a news conference

By Brad Lendon, CNN Taiwan should be invited to the world’s largest naval exercise next year, according to the US’ 2022 defense spending blueprint signed into law by President Joe Biden this week. The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) says the invitation would supplement US efforts to support the self-governed democratic island in the

By Ehsan Popalzai, CNN The Taliban have banned women from taking long-distance road trips in Afghanistan on their own, requiring that a male relative accompany them for any distance beyond 45 miles, according to a Taliban official speaking to CNN. Mohammad Sadiq Hakif Mahajer, spokesman for the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the

By Brad Lendon, CNN The defense ministers of Japan and China on Monday agreed to set up a joint communication hotline by the end of 2022, a news release from Japan’s Defense Ministry said, amid tensions between the East Asian neighbors. China’s Defense Ministry confirmed the hotline agreement in a statement without giving a date

By CNN’s Beijing Bureau and Nectar Gan China’s Xi’an has further tightened lockdown measures and rolled out a fifth round of mass testing as it reported the highest daily count of local symptomatic Covid infections in a Chinese city since March 2020. Xi’an, an ancient city in northwestern Shaanxi province, reported 175 new local symptomatic