Korea, South

Seoul has gradually adopted a more outspoken position regarding the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and framed it in increasingly expansive terms—as a regional and global…

From K-pop to K-drama and food, Korean culture has taken the globe by storm. Korean artists are topping the Billboard charts, Korean films are winning Oscars, and Korean kimbap at…

Countries with advanced semiconductor industries are caught in the middle of growing U.S.-China competition in technology focused on advanced computing. While some countries with key technology companies in the toolmaking…

The United States and the Republic of Korea have been celebrating the 70th anniversary of the alliance and the 120th anniversary of Korean immigration to the United States throughout 2023.…

New economic analysis by Michael Clemens at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) challenges the prevailing narrative around South Korea’s demographic challenges. Once the fodder of wonky demographers and social scientists, South Korea’s population is now world-renowned for its extreme drop in birthrates and aging society, a topic I covered last year for KEI.…

South Korean media coverage surrounding the latest monthly trade data released by the government struck a positive tone regarding the overall trajectory of the Korean economy, which experienced a significant increase in semiconductor and automotive exports. Trade has an outsized role in the South Korean economy—total trade relative to South Korean GDP was approximately 90…

Korea’s healthcare spending in 2000 was the lowest among the 38 OECD countries at less than 4 percent of GDP, reflecting the country’s relatively young population and the limited coverage of its National Health Insurance (NHI). However, adjusted for inflation, healthcare spending grew at an annual rate of 7.7 percent from 2000 to 2022, the…

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol offered a dramatically different vision of Korean unification in his Liberation Day speech on August 15, an annual observance in South Korea that marks the end of Japanese colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula. In his speech, President Yoon framed unification as completing the unfinished task of liberation and the…

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.