Digital Library

By Ben Hancock In the face of budget cuts, the education offices of South Korea’s two most populous regions announced in the second half of last year plans to reduce their roster of native English-speaking teachers in coming years. While the scale of the cutbacks in Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi Province is still unclear,…

By Chad 0Carroll The death Kim Jong-il has rekindled debates about the prospects for Korean unification following a period of relatively little public discussion on the matter in South Korean circles.  As a result of the difficulties that Kim Jong-un is anticipated to encounter in cementing his hold on power in coming months, some analysts…

The stagnation of the six-party process has produced great anxiety in Russia over the future of the Korean peninsula. Indeed, in September 2010, even before the attack on Yeonpyeong and…

Japan has been a core member of the six-party talks from their inception but has pursued its own set of interests that do not always align with other participants. The…

China’s ideal outcome for North Korea is a Goldilocks state—one that is not so strong to challenge China or so weak that its implosion threatens Chinese interests. China’s multifaceted approach…

The six-party talks have been hindered by political shifts in the states involved, and especially by changing levels of support for the talks in Washington and Seoul. But the talks…

Even though inter-Korean economic cooperation has been growing steadily for the past two decades, the volume of inter-Korean trade is still small compared to the other emerging Asian economies’ trade…

North Korea badly needs change but whether that change can and should be induced or forced from the outside is open to question. This paper proceeds from the perspective that…