Annals of Coloproctology (ACP) is an academic and scholarly journal related to colorectal diseases, and covers various fields ranging from diagnosis, treatment, and basic research on colorectal diseases. ACP is an excellent professional journal that has been widely read by doctors treating colorectal diseases as well as by many basic researchers and is registered in many international academic journal indexes such as ESCI, PubMed, PubMed Central, KoreaMed, KoMCI, CrossRef, Scopus, and Google Scholar.

ACP has been published bimonthly as the official journal of the Korean Society of Coloproctology (KSCP) but as of the issue in April 2020, it comes to be published as an official journal of both the Asia-Pacific Federation of Coloproctology (APFCP) and the KSCP. The APFCP is a representative society related to colorectal diseases in the Asia Pacific region, and I as the editor-in-chief of the ACP, am very honored and delighted to have ACP become the official journal of the APFCP. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to President of APFCP and Dr. Maeda who is co-chief-editor of ACP.

This issue in April 2020 is going to be the first issue of ACP as the official journal of both the KSCP and the APFCP. It is needless to say that the importance of colorectal diseases, which are increasing day by day in the Asia Pacific region. At this point, I feel a heavy responsibility as one of the editors of ACP about the fact that ACP has become the official journal of the APFCP.

Editors of ACP will faithfully play the role of co-editors of the APFCP, and will do their best to make ACP stand out as a representative journal of the Asia-Pacific region and further a global journal.

In this sense, this special issue contains several excellent articles submitted to ACP by each member country of the APFCP. In the future, I hope that many excellent research articles from countries in the Asia-Pacific region will be published in ACP, so that ACP can contribute to the studies of colorectal diseases in the Asia-Pacific region.

Thank you.