United States of America

During the past decade, the United States and Korea have pursued free trade agreements (FTAs) with a number of bilateral trading partners. For the United States, the Korea-U.S. (KORUS) FTA…

The dramatic events of recent months—and, above all, North Korea’s second nuclear test and long-range missile launch—demonstrated once again that the Barack Obama administration and the international community at large…

In the spring of 2009, North Korea’s second nuclear test, its long-range missile tests, and its provocative rhetoric once again threatened stability in Northeast Asia. Once again, North Korea engaged…

Two years and nine months have passed since Korea and the United States put their signatures on the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA). Nei- ther Korea nor the United…

By Yea Ji Nam In December 2018, close to a hundred thousand taxi drivers took to the streets around the National Assembly to protest against the launch of a mobile ride-sharing service from Kakao Mobility. Amid these rolling protests, two elderly taxi drivers set themselves on fire to bring attention to the challenges facing Korea’s…

By Robert R. King BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) has just released an excellent report on the trafficking of North Korean defectors:  “The North Korean women who had to escape twice” by BBC Korea editor Su-Min Hwang.  The report gives first-hand details of North Korean defectors in China who were trafficked and provides an account of…

By Juni Kim At approximately 7:20 a.m. on January 2nd, a minor 2.8 magnitude earthquake was detected by seismologists close to the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Korea. Although the last nuclear test occurred in September 2017, Woo Nam-cheol, the Korean Meteorological Administration’s geological analyst in South Korea, attributed the quake to the after-effects…

By Troy Stangarone If 2017 was the year of “fire and fury,” 2018 saw the United States and North Korea turn from the rhetoric of war to diplomacy as U.S. President Donald Trump met North Korean Chairman Kim Jong-un at the first ever U.S.-North Korea summit in Singapore. If 2018 was the year the diplomacy…

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.