Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at how the Japan-China rift is impacting South Korea, potential U.S. intervention over Iran’s rising death toll, and continued Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Not Taking Sides
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi welcomed South Korean President Lee Jae-myung to her home prefecture of Nara on Tuesday, marking the second time that the two leaders have met since Takaichi took power last October. Tokyo hopes the two-day summit will bolster bilateral ties amid Japan’s deepening rift with China. But Seoul’s unwillingness to take a side may deny Takaichi the win she’s hoping for.
Japan’s relationship with China began to deteriorate in November, when Takaichi—just one month after taking office—characterized a possible future Chinese attack on Taiwan as a “survival-threatening situation” that could permit Japan to take military action. The statement sparked a slew of retaliatory measures from Beijing, including travel bans, export restrictions, and the summoning of Japan’s ambassador.
Takaichi has not backed down in the face of Chinese threats and has instead looked to South Korea for support. However, Seoul remains hesitant to give up its ties with Beijing, particularly as South Korea seeks China’s assistance in pursuing denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula; last week, Lee became the first South Korean president to visit China since 2019, during which he asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to pressure North Korea to de-escalate.
“Chinese President Xi Jinping evidently holds a very negative view of Japan’s position on the Taiwan issue,” Lee told local media on Monday. “In my view, that’s a matter for China and Japan to address and not something we need to get involved in.” Previously, Lee had said that “when the time and circumstances are right, we will look for an appropriate role to play.”
Meanwhile, Beijing is eager to sidle closer to Seoul, in what experts suggest could be a strategy to further isolate Tokyo. China has repeatedly pointed to its shared history with South Korea to accomplish this; during World War II, Japan occupied Korea while waging a brutal war against China.
That argument, though, may not be as effective as Beijing hopes. “Although we have painful past experiences, it has been 60 years since the normalization of diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan, and we are starting a new 60 years,” Lee told Takaichi on Tuesday. “In the current complex and turbulent international order, cooperation between South Korea and Japan is more important than ever.”
However, efforts to foster closer Japan-South Korea relations may be hindered by the two countries’ internal politics. On Tuesday, Japanese stocks hit an all-time high and the country’s currency tumbled amid speculation that Takaichi is looking to dissolve parliament later this month in a bid to restore her Liberal Democratic Party’s majority.
At the same time, South Korean prosecutors requested on Tuesday that former President Yoon Suk-yeol receive the death penalty if he is found guilty of orchestrating an attempted insurrection in December 2024. South Korea has not carried out a death sentence in nearly 30 years. The court is expected to rule on the case in February.
Today’s Most Read
- America’s War Chest in Waiting by Chris Hughes
- Trump’s 3 Options to Turn the Screws on Europe by Agathe Demarais
- Iran’s Currency Crisis Could Be the Regime’s Downfall by Alireza Nader and Nik Kowsar
What We’re Following
Mounting death toll. Iranian officials told the New York Times on Tuesday that around 3,000 people had been killed since mass anti-government protests first erupted on Dec. 28, though some reports suggest the number may be far higher. What started as demonstrations against high inflation and a plummeting currency have snowballed into a larger movement calling for the downfall of the Iranian regime. Experts have characterized the recent protests as one of the staunchest challenges to Tehran’s leadership in years.
U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened U.S. military intervention if Iranian authorities continue their deadly assault on protesters. Late Monday, the White House announced 25 percent tariffs on goods from any country that conducts business with Iran, drawing fierce criticism from China, which purchases Iranian crude.
Trump on Sunday said he’d spoken to the “leaders of Iran” the day before to discuss potential negotiations, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Monday that Tehran was open to negotiations. But on Tuesday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he had “cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS.”
“HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” the U.S. president added, without providing further details.
Kyiv’s harsh winter. Russian forces launched overnight missile and drone attacks across Ukraine on Tuesday in one of Moscow’s biggest operations since the start of the year. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the assault primarily targeted energy-generation facilities and substations, including a thermal power plant—killing at least four people and knocking out heat for hundreds of thousands of residents amid the country’s grueling winter.
“Russia is deliberately trying to inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction of the Ukrainian people,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X, adding that such targeting of civilian infrastructure violates Article 2 of the Genocide Convention. Moscow denies targeting these sites.
Russia’s continued assault on critical infrastructure has forced Ukraine’s Energy Ministry to introduce emergency power cuts to the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Zaporizhzhia. Areas of Ukraine recorded temperatures as low as minus 15 degrees Celsius (or 5 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday.
Rising CO2 emissions. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increased by 2.4 percent in 2025, according to new estimates published by the Rhodium Group research firm on Tuesday, marking a significant pivot after two years of declining emissions. Analysts pointed largely to cold winter temperatures and growing electricity demand as the primary causes. Electric utilities, for instance, burned around 13 percent more coal last year than they did in 2024.
Although experts suggested that federal climate actions did not have an immediate impact on 2025 figures, Rhodium Group concluded that the Trump administration’s push for fossil fuels and policy of climate change denialism would likely contribute to the United States’ dramatic slowdown in emissions reductions going forward.
The United States is the second-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world. China, the United States, India, the European Union, Russia, and Indonesia together accounted for 64.2 percent of global fossil fuel consumption and 61.8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2024.
Odds and Ends
Pray by day, party by night. Guilherme Peixoto, better known as Padre Guilherme, is a Portuguese Catholic priest who has embraced DJ music to spread a message of peace and coexistence to young people. “The Psalm asks us to praise the Lord with all instruments, so now you have this new instrument that came that is electronic music,” Guilherme said on Saturday, before performing a sold-out show in Beirut, during which images of the late Pope Francis and late Pope John Paul II as well as white doves were projected onto screens.