Japan

This month, the world was reminded once again that the relationship between the Republic of Korea and Japan is deeply fractious. Japan has imposed restrictions on the export of chemical…

With the world's attention on Singapore on June 12, U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un walked across a stage flanked by American and North Korean…

Spanning nearly a century and multiple generations, Min Jin Lee's 2017 novel Pachinko tells the story of a Korean family struggling to find their place in Japan before, during, and after…

President Donald Trump is off on his longest international trip yet, stopping in Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. There, he is expected to tackle a range of…

Joseph Biden will be inaugurated on Wednesday, 20 January, bringing the Trump era to an end. Under the 45th president, American alliances faced significant stress from his skepticism of multilateralism and preference for transactional agreements. The U.S.-ROK alliance was no different, with friction arising between Seoul and Washington from time to time. As the Biden…

In the next few days, the United Nations General Assembly will approve a resolution on “The Situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”  The text of the 11 page resolution reviews the human rights abuses that the UN Commission of Inquiry on North Korea’s human rights documented (2013-2014), as well as…

The agreement between Korea and Japan on the issue of comfort women, announced in 2015, seemed like an amazing breakthrough on a sensitive topic in the bilateral relationship. But in the five years since then, the agreement has largely fallen apart, and other disagreements over the legacy of Japanese control of the Korean Peninsula have…

By Troy Stangarone North Korea’s decision to put in place strict border controls and quarantines at the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak in China continues to have a significant effect on trade as new March trade figures with China show even sharper declines than the figures for the January-February period. According to China’s General Administration…