Digital Library

The changing global trade environment poses challenges to South Korea’s export-driven economy. World trade has stagnated relative to world GDP in recent years, while global foreign direct investment (FDI) has declined. Although Korea’s exports of goods and services have fallen from 52 percent of GDP in 2012 to 44 percent in 2024, their share is…

South Korea’s monetary elite hold portfolios that look a lot like the economy they oversee: global, dollar-exposed, and deeply tied to foreign markets. The foreign asset holdings of the new Bank of Korea (BOK) Governor Shin Hyun Song, disclosed during his confirmation process, are not an outlier. His portfolio reflects where Korean wealth is going,…

Russia’s dependence on North Korea’s military suggests significant problems in its war efforts in Ukraine. Russia’s GDP is ten times that of Ukraine. Its per capita income is three times higher. And yet the recent flurry of North Korea-Russia visits, the fraternal declarations, and the fanfare around the first anniversary of expelling Ukrainian forces from…

The August 2023 trilateral summit at Camp David marked a historic milestone in U.S.-South Korea-Japan relations, establishing new frameworks for crisis consultation, information-sharing, military exercises, and cooperation on critical supply chains. Two years on, the durability of that achievement is being tested by a turbulent second Donald Trump administration, rising Chinese assertiveness, an entrenched North…

The August 2023 trilateral summit at Camp David marked a historic milestone in U.S.-South Korea-Japan relations, establishing new frameworks for crisis consultation, information-sharing, military exercises, and cooperation on critical supply…

The case for South Korea hedging its relationship with the United States may be harder to dismiss. Washington's trade policies and the economic consequences of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran have raised the cost of close alignment at the same time they have weakened confidence in U.S. commitments. Seoul has options short of rupture, that…

Shin Hyun Song has almost no room for error. The new Bank of Korea (BOK) governor inherits a won that has held above 1,500 to the U.S. dollar for most of the year, foreign exchange (FX) reserves that have slipped to twelfth in the world, and a U.S. tariff deal that will hang USD 350…

A Supreme Court ruling striking down tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a subsequent ruling by the Court of International Trade ordering tariff refunds, new Section 301 investigations targeting South Korea, and the approval for over USD 20 billion in South Korean investment commitments reshaped the U.S.-South Korea economic relationship in the…

Negotiations between the United States and Iran to end the war were expected to resume over the past weekend. After the first round of talks, held last weekend under Pakistan’s mediation, broke down, the United States began a counter-blockade of the Strait of Hormuz to cut off Iran’s oil exports—its major source of revenue. In…