The purpose of this article is two-pronged. First, it seeks to identify the factors that seem to lower trust in the USA among South Koreans. These factors weaken the traditionally solid Korea-USA alliance and have led a US expert to call South Korea a "runaway ally." Second, this article empirically tests various explanations of trust using a nationwide survey of South Koreans conducted in 2005. This article employs multiple regression analysis to test the hypothesized relationships. The results indicate that the following factors have a statistically significant impact on trust in the USA: ideological anti-Americanism, short-and long-term factors related to the activities of Americans or the USA, national self-esteem, and American pop culture.

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Many are today arguing that the 21st century will be “the Asian Century,” and much ink has been spilled over the splendid achievements of Asia as evidence of such arguments. However, this paper suggests some reservations regarding that argument, though also some distant hopes. First of all, we do not know yet what Asia really is, as there are too many geographical Asias. More effort should be made to conceptualize the geographical, or geopolitical, boundaries of Asia, which are both too blurred and too intertwined among sub‐identities within Asia, and without. Second, Asia still has a lot of matters that need to be resolved by Asians themselves before the optimistic and audacious expression “Asian Century” can be legitimately used. In resolving those matters by themselves through international cooperation, the conceptual boundary of Asia could become clearer and a shared Asian geopolitical identity would have more possibility of emerging.

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