Korea, South

With the Trump-Kim Summit in Singapore still on the calendar at least for the moment, pundits and analysts alike have been predicting the outcomes or sharing their advice for how…

With the exception of Gangnam Style, few mainstream radio stations have ever even thought to play Korean pop music. But in the last year or so, the United States has…

On February 9, years of hard work will culminate in the opening of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. A month later, on March 8, the 2018 Winter…

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…

By Phil Eskeland This was a very interesting week in Washington – three seminal events happened (no, the visit of Prince Harry doesn’t count) that were linked in some fashion to the surprise resignation of House Speaker John Boehner announced last month. First, on October 26th, the House of Representatives reauthorized a little known agency…

By Jenna Gibson Last month, the Korean Ministry of Education announced major changes to the way South Korean students will learn English. Some of them are positive, and can potentially help ease the overwhelming classroom workload for Korean students. But these new policies may also have some unintended side effects. Schools will be cutting the…

By Phil Eskeland Yesterday, for just the fifth time in his tenure, President Barack Obama took the highly unusual step of vetoing a bill that passed the normally grid-locked Congress.  This time, he vetoed the annual defense authorization bill, one of the bills that must pass Congress each year in order to give defense policy…

By Jenna Gibson Earlier this month, three U.S. senators took on North Korea (DPRK) by introducing a broad sanctions bill aimed at addressing concerns about cyberwarfare and the North’s continued nuclear ambitions. Known as the North Korean Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act (S. 2144), this bill would codify the sanctions put in place by presidential…

Please join KEI and KIEP for a discussion about the first 10 years of KORUS and the future of the U.S.-Korea economic relationship.