KEI Contributor – Mark Tokola

This article was published in United States Institute of Peace on March 25, 2024. The September 13, 2023, meeting between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un in Russia’s Amur Oblast marked a…

KEI’s Vice President  Mark Tokola was interviewed on VOA’s Washington Talk. This interview was published on June 10, 2023. https://keia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/01000000-0a00-0242-e308-08db6945ecad_Trim.mp4   To watch the full clip on VOA, please click here.…

Directly addressing the question of how the U.S. government should respond to China’s hostile economic behaviors, KEI Vice President Mark Tokola published an op-ed on National Interest that outlines how…

In his latest column for the Asia Times, KEI Vice President Mark Tokola notes that there are four assumptions that underpin the U.S. approach to North Korea. There is a…

Does the forty-fifth president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, have a foreign policy, not least of all inclusive of the vital Northeast Asian region? The question is not…

With an outbreak of diplomacy under way for the Korean Peninsula, a review of North Korea’s approach to negotiations is timely. A summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and…

For the proverbial visitor from Mars, the political situation in Northeast Asia is inexplicable. Sitting amidst a group of relatively stable, wealthy, and powerful countries, is a small, poor, belligerent…

Today’s relationship between the United States and China is more varied, complex, and cooperative than the accumulation of headlines would lead one to believe. The news media and commentators spotlight…

A remarkably detailed joint statement emerged from the May 22, 2023, summit meeting in Seoul between President Yoon Suk Yeol and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel--the twin leadership of the EU.  The statement noted the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the EU and ROK; described common…

This is the first in a two part series looking at Korea’s Indo-Pacific Strategy and the Indo-Pacific Strategies of other governments. The second part can be found here. Over the past five years, Australia, Japan, the United States, the European Union, France, Canada, and South Korea, among others, have published separate Indo-Pacific strategies. Comparing them…

A video version of the 10 Issues to Watch for on the Korean Peninsula in 2023 with the blog's authors is available on KEI's YouTube channel. The most significant event to impact the Korean Peninsula in 2022 was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As in much of the world, the war had the effect of furthering…

It will take time for the ramifications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to become apparent, but we can see already that military force has, at least for the moment, swept aside international norms and diplomacy. The implications are not just European but global. Who now is going to convince Kim Jong-un that the world is…