Canada, Russia and the United States have expressed a renewed interest in the region, and East Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea and China are now increasingly fixated on prospects offered by the Arctic; however, Arctic and East Asian nations have not yet engaged in extensive discussions about competing and complementary activities and responsibilities in the Far North. This volume is an outcome of an international collaborative project that launched a focused and detailed conversation about the historic, contemporary and future dimensions of East Asian countries’ relationships and interests in the Arctic. Bringing together leading experts from Japan, China, South Korea, Russia, the United States and Canada, it draws policy-making and scholarly attention to East Asia’s growing interests in the Far North, and identifies political, economic, legal and security connections between the two regions.

Kimie Hara is professor and the Renison Research Professor at the University of Waterloo, where she is also director of East Asian Studies at Renison University College.

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Ken Coates was raised in Whitehorse and has a long-standing interest in northern themes.  Titles include Canada’s Colonies, The Sinking of the Princess Sophia (with Bill Morrison), The Modern North (with Judith Powell), North to Alaska (on the building of the Alaska Highway) and many academic books.  He has worked on north-centred television documentaries and served as a consultant to northern governments and organizations.  He is currently Professor of History and Dean of Arts, University of Waterloo.

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"A timely and instructive tour d’horizon of evolving Arctic issues from an informed perspective highlighting East Asian, Russian and American dimensions. Sober in tone without being alarmist or drawing premature conclusions, it opens a refreshingly wide array of topics from climate change, resource dynamics, shipping routes and territorial claims to governance, local development and ecospheric- and geopolitics — a challenging and distinctively twenty-first-century agenda." Paul Evans, Professor, Institute of Asian Research and Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia

"Much has been written about the Arctic in recent years; this compendium brings a fresh view to the issues by giving the reader an opportunity to hear from Asian contributors. Authors from the United States and Canada round out the complex picture that em