Asia

In recent years, North Korea has faced economic shocks from UN sanctions and the pandemic. As Dr. Jongkyu Lee (Senior Fellow at the Korea Development Institute) writes in his new…

Following a record number of North Korean missile launches, as well as tests by South Korea, assertions have been widely and uncritically made that Seoul is participating in an inter-Korean…

Although the Korean Peninsula has been divided for over 70 years, North and South have not been able to make lasting progress in terms of reconciliation. While there are multiple…

Why is South Korea pilot-testing its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), and what made it shift from non-issuance to consideration? This paper investigates the Bank of Korea (BOK)’s CBDC-related developments…

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…

In 2023, KEI has set out on its “Rethinking Korea initiative,” which explores the evolution of U.S.-Korea relations, Korea’s place in the world, and rapid changes in Korean society itself.…

In 2023, KEI has set out on its “Rethinking Korea initiative,” which explores the evolution of U.S.-Korea relations, Korea’s place in the world, and rapid changes in Korean society itself.…

In 2023, KEI has set out on its “Rethinking Korea initiative,” which explores the evolution of U.S.-Korea relations, Korea’s place in the world, and rapid changes in Korean society itself.…

The Tokyo summit that brought together South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on 23 March 2023 successfully cleared away much of the accumulated debris of the last five years of dysfunctionality. The two-day official visit — the first by a South Korean president in a dozen years — checked off…

I’m currently completing a book on North Korea watchers - the community of scholars, analysts, government officers, NGO advocates and journalists who, for one reason or another, commit a portion of their lives to watching North Korea. After twenty-five years in government, academia and consultancy, with much of my time working on Korean Peninsula affairs,…

Elizabeth Salmón, the recently-appointed UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, submitted her first report to the UN Human Rights Council on March 9.  The report is set to be discussed on March 20 as part of the Council’s broad human rights agenda in Geneva from…

One of the most exciting corporate drama in recent memory has unfolded in South Korea’s business world, complete with a founder accused of siphoning money, activist shareholders making waves, intra-family drama, and industry titans battling for pole position. Best of all, it involves SM Entertainment (SME), the production company  widely credited with the creation of…