Korea, South

October 2015 will mark 25 years since the official reunification of East and West Germany. Meanwhile, the Korean Peninsula remains divided. South Korean President Park Geun-Hye has referenced Germany many…

In the recent agreement between Seoul and Pyeongyang to defuse tensions along the DMZ, the two governments included a promise to "vitalize" non-governmental organization (NGO) exchanges in various fields.   …

Volcanologist Dr. Kayla Iacovino traveled to North Korea in 2013 as part of a team that was collaborating with North Korean scientists to study Mt. Baekdu, one of Korea's most…

Over the past few years, North Korea has been holding press conferences starring so-called re-defectors – people who fled to the South and chose to return. Researchers Steven Denney and…

By Joy Kim South Korea is currently the world’s 15th largest economy. This fact strikes many as amazing given that Korea’s Gross National Product (GNP) per capita increased by more than 243 times over the span of 50 years, from $82 in 1961 to $20,000 in 2006. The baby boom generation who were born in…

By Nathan Lee While the Leap Day deal this past February offered a glimpse of optimism into U.S.-North Korea relations, its failure was an outcome that surprised few. Under the agreement, the U.S. would have provided 240,000 metric tons of food aid to North Korea, and North Korea would have allowed international nuclear inspectors to…

By Nicholas Hamisevicz The surprise news to start the week is that Vice Marshall Ri Yong Ho, chief of the general staff of North Korea’s army as well as a member of the Political Bureau and the Central Military Commission, was relieved of all his positions due to “illness.” During the last year of Kim…

By Elizabeth Hervey Stephen In a recent piece in the Asia Sentinel, which was re-posted in The Irrawaddy, Philip Bowring correctly noted that South Korea is facing a population crisis with sustained low fertility in the range of 1.2 children per woman.  As one solution to the birth dearth, he proposes looking toward reunification with North…

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.