United States of America

During the last two years ago, U.S.-South Korea relations have strengthened in ways that many Korea watchers did not expect. With a liberal President Barack Obama entering office, some feared…

Last year was a momentous year for the Korean Peninsula. As the world worked its way out of the global and financial crisis of 2008-2009, South Korea demonstrated its global…

Incredible change in the global economy over the past decade has shattered virtually everyone's expectations of what the next fifty years will look like, and Korea is no excpetion. The…

When the global financial crisis tore through world economies, national budgets around the world were immediately funneled to stabilize and revive the energy-intensive industries impacted by the market maelstrom. Yet,…

By Jenna Gibson  Every language has "untranslatable words" - a word that perfectly encapsulates a feeling or situation which lacks an exact equivalent in other languages. German's "schadenfreude" famously describes the feeling of deriving pleasure from another person's pain. Korean has plenty of these words. Some commonly cited examples are 정 (jung), a deep love…

By Juni Kim Notoriously chilly relations between South Korea and Japan received encouraging news this week. In a new joint survey conducted by the South Korea-based East Asia Institute and the Japan-based Genron NPO, fewer South Koreans and Japanese hold negative impressions of each other than in previous years. South Korean unfavorable impressions of Japan…

By Jenna Gibson After a rough 2015 marred by a major health scare, tourism to South Korea has bounced back and then some. In newly released data from the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO), 8.1 million tourists entered South Korea so far in 2016, a 21 percent increase over the same period in 2015. If the…

By Jenna Gibson In Thailand, students applying to college will soon have the option of using Korean as their foreign language. Beginning in 2018, Korean will become the seventh foreign language available on the test, along with Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, French, German, and Pali. English communication is also a required part of the exam. This…

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.