For many social media aficionados across Southeast Asia, this has not just been the Lunar Year of the Dragon, but also the Year of a pygmy hippopotomus from Thailand named Moo Deng. How would this baby hippo-gone-viral do in our annual assessment of Asia’s Year in Review, which we once again premiered on international business network CNBC?
In 2023, we gave “best year” to India’s space agency, ISRO, for building on a record of “frugal engineering” and lifting spirits with a successful mission to the moon. Worst year went to Asia’s forgotten men and women, including in Afghanistan and Myanmar, increasingly overlooked as the news headlines move on.
Here’s our look at the Indo-Pacific region’s year that was.
Best Year: Moo Deng, Thailand’s viral sensation
To say that the female baby pygmy hippo Moo Deng — Thai for “bouncy pork” — took the world and 2024 by storm, would be an understatement.
Born in July at Thailand’s Khao Chew Open Zoo, the “hyper-viral” baby pygmy has seen her memes, photos and videos go global.
Fan accounts on X, Tik Tok, and Facebook continue to proliferate. And even NBC’s long-running US comedy show Saturday Night Live got in on the “Moo Deng mania.” Asian American star Bowen Yang impersonated the baby hippo on the show’s “Weekend Update” segment, lamenting the hazards of instant fame. But, Moo Deng isn’t just another pretty face. She correctly predicted the winner of the 2024 US presidential race, by selecting the fruit and vegetable plate bearing Trump’s name over that of one for rival Kamala Harris.
For bringing a bit of hope and joy to a region and world that could use a lot more reasons for good cheer, the designation of “Best Year in Asia” for 2024 goes to Moo Deng.
Good Year: the Korean Wave
When Fil-Am singer-songwriter Bruno Mars and New Zealand and Korean singer Rosé teamed up in 2024, their blockbuster song “Apt.” would dominate music charts, underscoring how much of the region and world continued to embrace “Hallyu,” South Korea’s wave of wildly popular cultural exports. (FACT CHECK: No warning from Malaysian gov’t vs Rosé & Bruno Mars’ song ‘APT’)
K is for Korean. Whether “K-pop” music, “K-dramas,” “K-beauty” products, or Korean fried chicken and other “K-food,” 2024 proved a good for this expanding wave of business that has grown well beyond superstar musical groups BTS and Blackpink.
More than 300 Korean movies and series are now available for streaming on Netflix alone, including Squid Game Season 2, and contract marriage melodrama When the Phone Rings. The romantic drama Queen of Tears starring Kim Soo Hyun and Kim Ji Won was a 2024 global sensation, clocking more than 690 million viewing hours on Netflix. And the world was dramatically introduced to K-literature, with Korean author Han Kang in 2024 becoming the first Korean and first Asian woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
This tsunami of soft diplomacy that has elevated South Korea’s global presence is also big business. The global economic benefit to Korea of “Hallyu” is now projected to hit US$198 billion by 2030, according to a BusinessKorea report on a white paper released this July by TikTok and market research firm Kantar. (READ: South Korea to launch Hallyu visa for K-pop and K-drama fans)
Mixed Year: Democracy and incumbency in Asia
The countdown to the 2025 Philippines general election continues. But elections were already very much on the 2024 calendar across the region — from India and Japan to Indonesia, and Pakistan and Sri Lanka to Taiwan. At year’s end, however, it has proven a decidedly mixed year for not just incumbent politicians but for democracy itself.
The year began with longtime leader and Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina winning reelection overwhelmingly in an election boycotted by the opposition, only to resign and flee the country months later after weeks of students protests.
As a perhaps bewildered world looked on, the year ended with South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol declaring martial law eight months after his party lost big in general elections. The National Assembly would successfully move both to force the lifting of martial law and then to impeach him as well as his acting successor. The K-drama continues.
Yet, elections cemented a vibrant democracy in Taiwan, forced India’s President Narendra Modi to govern with a coalition, surprised the Pakistan incumbent, and heralded in the peaceful transition of presidential power in Indonesia to former General Prabowo Subianto. Diverse, mixed democratic trajectories for a diversity of democracies in Asia characterized 2024.
Bad Year: East Asia’s babies
In marked contrast to the situation in relatively youthful and growing nations like India and the Philippines, aspiring grandparents in East Asia might well have a critical question. Where are all the babies?
In South Korea, China, and Japan as well as Taiwan and Hong Kong, record-low fertility rates continued to prove a major concern in 2024. Fertility rates across East Asia remained well below that needed for a stable if not growing population. The longterm economic consequences could well be significant as nations contend with shrinking workforces and aging populations.
Women are having very few to no children. Changing gender roles, long work hours, the high cost of housing, education, and childcare are all cited as some of the factors behind this East Asia demographic trend. According to the Korean Ministry of the Interior and Safety, South Korea is also now officially a “super-aged” society, as the proportion of citizens aged 65 or older now accounts for 20% of the population.
Strikingly, starting in 2023 and continuing in 2024, dog strollers continued to outsell baby carriages in South Korea, a further sign of the country’s shrinking birth rate.
Worst Year: Asia’s climate casualties
Twenty years ago, on December 26, 2004, a devastating Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami killed more than 200,000 in a single day. In contrast, 2024 was a year of mounting casualties from typhoon, floods, heat waves and droughts.
This included Severe Tropical Storm Enteng (Yagi). One of the strongest storms to hit Southeast Asia in years, Enteng left a path of death and devastation in November. From the Philippines through southern China and Vietnam, and onto Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar, the storm killed hundreds and devastated communities and livelihoods.
Floods from the yearly monsoon rains also left millions displaced and hundreds dead in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and Nepal, making this year one of the deadliest in recent memory. And, if it was not record-breaking rainfall, it was drought accompanied by scorching temperatures leading to months of severe water shortages.
With extreme weather events seemingly more the norm and their victims too often increasingly unnoticed and forgotten, the region’s climate casualties garner the dubious distinction of Worst Year in Asia.
Here’s to a more hopeful and joy-filled 2025 for all the Philippines, Southeast Asia and all our world. – Rappler.com
Curtis S. Chin, a former US ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, is managing director of advisory firm RiverPeak Group.
Jose B. Collazo is an analyst focusing on the Indo-Pacific region.
Follow them on X at @CurtisSChin and @JoseBCollazo.