Nepal, the world's second most water‐rich country, nevertheless struggles to provide sufficient domestic electricity. Despite Nepal's potential to become the hydropower source for South Asia, it still relies heavily on importing electricity from India. This paper investigates why Nepal's hydropower capacity is inadequately utilized from both domestic and international perspectives and finds that domestic factors such as geo‐climate features, weak infrastructure, political instability, and institutional deficiencies significantly hinder Nepal's hydropower development. From an international perspective, Nepal's geopolitical bonds and energy dependency with India and the regional power‐sharing configuration have significantly influenced its hydropower policy‐making. Furthermore, this paper proposes how Nepal could sustainably develop its hydropower for self‐sufficiency by establishing better policy instruments, attracting foreign investments, and upgrading its electricity infrastructure.

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North Korea and China’s relations have, from time to time, been addressed by the international media as ‘symbolic brothers’, and often come into the academic discussion in the context of the ‘Korean War’ (1950-1953). It is captured in the larger debate, with North Korea as a by-product or satellite state of China, but the socio-political view of a created society has not been addressed much. The major development that took place during the time was the symbolic production of terminology such as ‘blood-brothers’ or as close as ‘lips and teeth relations’ which has reciprocal leverage in each-other’s politics. In this case, social constructivism asserts that knowledge undergoes construction through human activity and individuals create meaning through their interactions. The paper takes a constructivist approach as a socio-political view on the Korean War, emphasizing the role of social factors such as identity in the construction of interest and action. It argues that it was the social construction of inter-subjective belief and shared understanding that shaped North Korea-China relations.

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