The texts presented in this file are the result of work that has been produced in the context of the ICSEM project to compare social business models at global level. This large-scale research project, launched in 2013, now covers more than 50 countries around the world and brings together around 200 researchers. Supported primarily by the Belgian federal scientific policy within the framework of the Pôle d’attraction Interuniversity (PAI) on social enterprise, the ICSEM project is also supported in France by the Fondation du Crédit Coopératif and the CDC Group. Before leading to in-depth comparative analyses (2016-2018), the first wave of ICSEM work focused on the identification, in each country, of the main emerging models of social enterprise, the analysis of the contexts in which they are rooted and the trajectories through which most of them experience gradual institutionalisation. We chose to focus on some of the Asian countries participating in the ICSEM project. These countries were divided into two groups: one from North-East Asia and the other from Southeast Asia. The three countries presented in this first group belong to the North East Asian bloc; in particular, they share a culture deeply rooted in confucianist philosophy, whose values still largely shape society. While two of them — South Korea and Japan — are quite close to France in various respects, particularly in terms of the level of economic development and income distribution, China stands out very clearly and represents, in terms of its size, level of development and political system, an example of a very particular kind in this whole. These three North Asian countries are characterised by a cooperative and associative tradition, whose roots are very old, but which has long remained under the strict control of the administration and political power, whether it was communist ideology in China or anti-communist in Japan, and even more so in Korea. It is only relatively recently that this public authority has been blurred in Japan or Korea, that it has diminished in China and that autonomous cooperative and associative organisations have emerged and developed, until they are gradually legally recognised. These countries have sought in new forms of public-private partnership a response to common social issues, often at the frontier of employment and social policies, or in connection with territorial, community development or environmental issues. With this in mind, new interest has emerged for social enterprises, associations or new forms of cooperatives, such as consumer cooperatives, medical cooperatives, rural cooperatives and social cooperatives. In this respect, Korea is undoubtedly the most advanced country of the three, with the introduction of several measures to promote social enterprise, which was identified as an important employment policy tool in the late 1990s. Following the introduction of a specific law to promote social enterprise in 2006, various complementary regional or sectoral measures have emerged. The Korea article points out that one of the effects of this dynamic has been, among other things, to generate interest in the cooperative model, resulting in particular in 2012 in the adoption of a general cooperative law offering greater recognition and new opportunities for the cooperative model.