Korea, South

In this episode of Korean Kontext, I have the opportunity to speak with Richard V. Allen, who, in the weeks preceding his official instatement as National Security Advisor to President-elect…

We bring the Korean Kontext studio to the U.S. Department of State to speak with Kathleen Stephens, current U.S. Ambassador to South Korea. Ambassador Stephens shares with us her personal…

Hello again after the holiday break! Just before the holidays I spoke with Hawon Lee, who was just wrapping up his nearly four years as Washington D.C. Bureau Chief of…

In this episode, we are joined by Balbina Hwang, currently a visiting professor at Georgetown University and the National Defense University here in D.C. Ms. Hwang is here to speak…

By Joyce YunSun Kang With “Gangnam style” now attracting over 650 million views, Psy (real name: Park Jae-sang) has done what no other South Korean singer has been able to do: successfully break into the mainstream U.S. market. But was this simply a YouTube video gone viral, or something else? Social media played a large…

In this week's Asan Institute for Policy Studies public opinion poll Ahn Cheol-soo and Moon Jae-in remain deadlocked in the race for the race to be the progressive standard bearer in the December presidential election. Ahn and Park Geun-hye also remain neck and neck in a hypothetical two way race, with Park leading a three…

By Luke Herman As the Kim Jong Un regime completes its eighth month in power following Kim Jong Il’s death in December 2011, there seem to be a number of differences between how this succession is being carried out with how it was carried out in 1994. For one thing, it has proceeded at a…

By Clare Hubbard The 2012 Heritage Foundation/ Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom ranks North Korea last, after Cuba and Zimbabwe, with an economic freedom score of 1.  However, in the mid-1990s famine when women and men had to focus on securing food by generating income and bartering for staples and foodstuffs, small-scale markets…

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.