This study examines how the post-cold war geopolitical context penetrated through the struggles and empowerment of North Korean female defector entrepreneurs in South Korea. Reconceptualizing the notion of intersectionality, the study focuses on a grey area of informality and the resilience of these women. Based on in-depth interviews and participant observations, the findings indicate that these women leveraged geopolitical limits to develop their entrepreneurial assets. Informality developed through their involvement in Jangmadang and cross-border mobilities via informal brokerage. Through human-trafficked marriages, they stayed in China, learning the Chinese language and working in South Korean companies. The disadvantages of the job market and gender roles motivated them to start their businesses. The research emphasizes the complex ways in which agency, mobility, and geopolitics intersect.

We addressed the research question, how does the host community perceive the effects of Rohingya influx to Bangladesh, from their perspectives using a questionnaire survey, key informant interviews, and focus group discussions. Bangladesh sheltered over a million Rohingyas, fleeing genocide and serious crimes against humanity, on humanitarian grounds. The local people welcomed them and offered direct support and assistance. Our findings suggest that their immediate sympathy for Rohingyas faded over time due to various factors. An overwhelming majority perceived the Rohingyas as pressure on their land and resources and being deprived on numerous grounds outweighed the disproportionate economic incentives of the influx. The findings offer fresh insights into the challenges of hosting refugees in the local communities because of the diverse impacts of forced displacement.

This article is a study of the legacy of the Korean War, as well as being a case study on the first instance of regime transition in the cold war era. This study compares the incorporation of “Reclaimed Areas” (subokjigu) by South Korea with the incorporation of “Newly Liberated Areas” (sinhaebangjigu) by North Korea comprehensively from the aspects of occupation, politics, economics, and national identity. Both South Korea’s transplantation of capitalism in the Reclaimed Areas and the expansion of North Korea’s “people’s democracy” (inminminjujui) took place unilaterally and in a cold war fashion. Changes to the national identities in each region took place in silence and conformity, paradoxically illustrating the pain and suffering felt while each region was incorporated into an unyielding regime.

In 2001, the Finnish Parliament approved the plan for a high-level nuclear waste (HLW) repository in Finland, the first move of its kind worldwide. This article analyzes the historical background of radioactive waste policy formation in Finland, comparing it to that of (West) Germany in the cold war context and after. Military ambitions and non-proliferation, political culture and civil society, and energy policy are considered. In Germany, reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel (SNF), which could make nuclear armament possible, was pursued until 1989 and often spurred opposition movements. Finland, in contrast, renounced reprocessing around 1980. In addition, there was a notable absence of a strong nationwide anti-nuclear movement in Finland against the backdrop of the cold war.

Contrary to its humanist image, Hidankyo, the Japan Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers Organizations, has engaged in contentious politics against the state for decades. This article traces the little-known history of the Hidankyo movement from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s, introducing how this organization formed in relation to the movement to ban nuclear bombs in the mid-1950s and how it grew into an independent social movement organization with clear policy demands after overcoming an organizational crisis triggered by the cold war politics of the 1960s. The movement slogan for Hidankyo, “no more hibakusha,” did not naturally emerge from the sufferers’ experience with the atomic bombings, but was substantiated through their struggles to confront their adversaries, most importantly the Japanese government.

The history of Australia’s attempts to acquire a nuclear deterrent capacity transpired both within and outside the spirit of the international Atoms for Peace program. While this article reprises a range of scholarship to provide a historical overview, it provides for the first time a level of detail not previously disclosed concerning the mechanisms, costs, and approaches of successive Australian governments in their estimations of obtaining an indigenous nuclear capacity. One such revelation concerns Australia’s “back-door” acquisition option by hosting Peaceful Nuclear Explosions, ostensibly for civil engineering purposes, and their provision of preassembled thermonuclear technologies and devices. During the international and bilateral negotiations for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Australia was deeply concerned that the draft Treaty would limit or deny this option.

The history of nuclear weapon testing by the major nuclear powers during the cold war is intimately tied to the history of military colonialism in the 20th century. For each of the first five nuclear powers (U.S., USSR, UK, France, and China) the process of selecting a site for nuclear weapon testing was driven more by the location of a small group of politically marginalized people unable to object to being exposed to dangerous levels of radioactive fallout, to the loss of their homes, and the contamination of the land and seas providing their primary food sources, than it was by scientific and military requirements. Invariably these populations were constituted of people of a different racial, ethnic or religious group than that of the colonial power. This article examines the selection of nuclear test sites for each of the five major nuclear powers both in the reaches of their military empires and their own domestic landmasses.