Korea, South

In April 2023, the United States and South Korea marked the 70th anniversary of an alliance that has served the strategic interests of both countries. Their relationship has expanded beyond…

Building on last year’s “Rethinking Korea initiative,” in 2024 KEI will continue to explore the evolution of US-Korea relations, Korea’s place in the world, rapid changes in Korean society, and…

Despite being industrial powerhouses, Korea and Japan are both resource-poor nations with limited domestic sources of energy. Powering their economies required both to develop supply chains for fossil fuels, nuclear…

KEI is pleased to hold a program on Economic Security and U.S.-China Competition: The View From North Korea. One country is conspicuously missing from existing discussions about the dilemmas and…

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.