The rise of Asia is regarded in most of the world as primarily an economic phenomenon. Asian economies have rebounded robustly since the 1997 financial crisis, with growth rates in many countries greatly exceeding the global average. Yet corruption remains a problem throughout the region, significantly cramping the extent and potential of Asia's "rise."

In the 2005 "Corruption Perceptions Index" produced by the watchdog group Transparency International, most of the 22 Asian nations received low rankings and scores. Indonesia, for example, is ranked 137th among 159 nations. India and China fare only somewhat better, ranking 88th and 78th respectively. (The United States, by comparison, ranks 17th in the world.) Corruption -- defined by the United Nations Development Program as the abuse of public power for private benefit through bribery, extortion, influence peddling, nepotism, fraud, or embezzlement -- not only undermines investment and economic growth; it also aggravates poverty. In India, even the

poor have to bribe officials to obtain basic services.

Graft also undermines the effectiveness of states. The World Bank, for example, has estimated that the Philippines government between 1977 and 1997 "lost" a total of $48 billion to corruption. Why is graft a serious problem in Asian countries? Can their leaders minimize it and thereby further improve and sustain economic growth -- or is this task hopeless? My research suggests that curbing corruption in most Asian nations is difficult, mainly because of a lack of political will. However, it is not an impossible dream, as the examples of Singapore and Hong Kong demonstrate.

This book explains the roots, politics, and legacy of Korean ethnic nationalism, which is based on the sense of a shared bloodline and ancestry. Belief in a racially distinct and ethnically homogeneous nation is widely shared on both sides of the Korean peninsula, although some scholars believe it is a myth with little historical basis. Finding both positions problematic and treating identity formation as a social and historical construct that has crucial behavioral consequences, this book examines how such a blood-based notion has become a dominant source of Korean identity, overriding other forms of identity in the modern era. It also looks at how the politics of national identity have played out in various contexts in Korea: semicolonialism, civil war, authoritarian politics, democratization, territorial division, and globalization

Based on a wide variety of unusual and only recently available sources, this book covers the entire Cultural Revolution decade (1966-76) and shows how the Cultural Revolution was experienced by ordinary Chinese at the base of urban and rural society. The contributors emphasize the comple interaction of state and society during this tumultuous period, exploring the way that events originating at the center of political power changed people's lives and how, in turn, people's responses took the Cultural Revolution in unplanned and unanticipated directions. This approach offers a more fruitful way to understand the Cultural Revolution and its historical legacies.

The book provides a new look at the student Red Guard movements, the effort to identify and cultivate potential "revolutionary" leaders in outlying provinces, stubborn resistance to campaigns to destroy the old culture, and the violence and mass killings in rural China.

"One Nation under God?" is a chapter in Religion and Religiosity in the Philippines and Indonesia: Essays on State, Society, and Public Creeds, edited by Theodore Friend and published by the Center for Transatlantic Relations, SAIS.

This comparative exploration looks at religion and politics in the social dynamics of Southeast Asia's two most populous nations. The Philippines and Indonesia are treated as one vast "Phil-Indo" archipelago. Eight leading scholars contribute interwoven and contending essays. The authors find that while neither country promotes a state religion, both lack partitions between church and state. Social dynamics of faith in each elude constitutional restrictions. In the Philippines, a Spanish tradition of an ecclesiastical state exists in tension with a Jeffersonian notion of separation of realms. In Indonesia, pre-Islamic concepts of a god-king fuse state and society, as modern initiatives surge from the premise of a prevailing Islamic community. Official religiosity pervades Indonesian national life, while Filipinos act out their private religiosity en masse, trying to overcome deficiencies in state and church. The book includes 38 photographs, in color and black and white, with commentaries that further illustrate the themes of each chapter.

Other contributors include Azyumardi Azra (University Islam Negeri, Indonesia), Jose M. Cruz (Ateneo de Manila University, The Philippines), Theodore Friend (Foreign Policy Research Institute), Robert W. Hefner (Institute for the Study of Economic Culture, Boston University), Vicente Leuterio Rafael (University of Washington), Jose Eliseao Rocamora (Institute for Popular Democracy, The Philippines), and David Joel Steinberg (Long Island University).

One of the few ways to get a taste of North Korea, short of leaping through numerous hoops to get a visa to visit the country, is to eat cold noodles (naengmyen). Most South Korean cities and even a few American ones offer several types of North Korean-style noodle restaurants. The version often prepared in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, is mul naengmyen, or cold noodles in broth. It is served in a large metal bowl and looks like a flowering mountain rising up from the sea. Artfully balanced atop the mound of noodles made from buckwheat flour are julienned cucumbers, several slices of beef, half a hardboiled egg, and a few pieces of crisp Korean pear. When prepared Hamhung-style -- named after the industrial city on North Korea's east coast -- noodles are made from sweet potato flour and often topped with raw skate, which has a slightly ammoniac flavor.

The signs in the South advertising Northern-style cold noodles are a reminder of the Korean War and the division of the peninsula. After the Korean War, refugees from the conflict set up stalls in the markets of Seoul to sell the "taste of the north" to those who could no longer travel there. The recipes they brought with them to the south were sometimes the only valuables they carried. In the 1990s, a new wave of North Koreans came to the South and established naengmyen restaurants. Hailing from the North lends a certain authenticity to the preparation of the dish. Whether prepared by the refugees of the 1950s and their descendents, the defectors of the 1990s, or North Koreans themselves in Pyongyang or Hamhung, cold noodles are something that North Koreans are widely credited with doing better than South Koreans.

But the way naengmyen is "consumed" in the South reveals the great disparity between the two countries. There are many jokes in South Korea about the number of North Korean defectors who have only this one marketable skill. Since cooking in Korea is largely a woman's job, the close association of North Koreans with the production and sale of cold noodles subtly feminizes and, according to patriarchal Korean values, devalues them. North Koreans are thus second-class citizens, both those who are unemployed (the majority) and those who are employed only to provide service to the real "breadwinners" of the country. Anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker relates how South Korean textbooks and popular culture often depict North Korea as the younger brother of the more advanced South Korean older brother. Given the cultural associations of naengmyen, wife to husband might be the more appropriate analogy. A recent Joongang Ilbo Photoshop cartoon reinforces this sexist gloss on inter-Korean relations by depicting South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun dressed as a Choson-era husband with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as his bride.

In a divided country, cold noodles serve as an important reminder of a common culture. They also represent a unique contribution that the economically weaker North Korea can bring to the reunification process. But however tasty Pyongyang-style mul naengmyen may be, cold noodles ensure neither a sustainable livelihood for every North Korean defector nor an equal place at the reunification table for North Korea.

This article examines Korea's politics of identity in the form of Asianism in the modern period, especially since Korea's incorporation into the modern world system in the late nineteenth century. Asianism, and regionalism generally, has become a salient policy strategy for the current South Korean government. However, Asianism has been a primary ideological current in modern Korea whose most recent incarnation should be understood in the larger historical context. This study traces the development of Asianism in four different periods: precolonial, colonial, Cold War, and postCold War. Initially emerging as a bulwark against Western encroachment, the Asianism narrative became irrelevant upon Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910 and only survived as a discourse about a glorified cultural past during colonial rule. Upon liberation, Asianism rescinded as the Japancentered regional order was replaced by a new Cold War alignment, capitalist (Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) versus communist (China and North Korea). Although discussion about Asianism and a new East Asian regional order have recently resurfaced, the historical legacy of colonialism, war, and national division has added much complexity to the debate. Explicating how the Asianism narrative emerged and evolved through these various historical contexts sheds light on the complexities and difficulties inherent in the current attempt to forge an Asian regional order. By looking at Asianism from a historical perspective, we can also better appreciate the continuity and discontinuity in Korea's politics of identity. While it is still uncertain what the foundation of a new Asianism will be, it is equally obvious that regional interactions will continue to be an important part of the global world order. This study concludes with policy implications of how a historically sensitive understanding of the development of an Asian regional identity can further interaction and integration of East Asian nations.