Asia

On February 25, Lee Myung-bak was sworn in as the President of the Republic of Korea. In front of a crowd of some 60,000 gathered, including U.S. Secretary of State…

Korea is a tough economic competitor. Its meteoric rise over just 30 years from one of the poorest in the world to the ranks of the OECD helped earn Korea…

On December 19, the voters of South Korea elected Lee Myung-bak, the previous mayor of Seoul and a former business executive, to be the next president. The candidate of the…

Anyone who has spent time in the bustling streets of Seoul is familiar with the scene: commuters crowding into Daewoo buses, while salary men hurry home in their Hyundai sedans…

Not everyone in Korea or foreigners abroad want to hear about national advertising initiatives that focus on mainstream issues like K-Pop, Hallyu or ancient Korean Kimchi culture. Instead, many want…

On January 11, 2013, the Korea Economic Institute of America recently led Washington DC’s celebration of Korean American Day by hosting a luncheon event to honor two Korean Americans for…

With North Korea announcing to the world that it will be attempting to launch a second satellite for 2012, many analysts have been speculating as to why Pyongyang is so…

In this episode we spoke to The Economist’s South Korea correspondent, Daniel Tudor. Having been based in Korea for over a decade, Tudor has just finished writing one of the…

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol called to congratulate Donald Trump shortly after the US presidential election, telling the president-elect that the first Trump administration had set the foundation for US-Korea-Japan trilateral cooperation. Yoon later told the press he expected cooperation “would proceed well even during the [second] Trump administration.” Although some of the personnel…

The debate over sovereign artificial intelligence (AI) highlights the need and desire for nations to develop their own AI systems, including large language models (LLMs), tailored to their unique cultural and historical contexts. This idea has gained traction in Seoul, where US LLMs like ChatGPT have often fallen short in addressing questions that require a…

Contributors (last name alphabetical): Je Heon (James) Kim, Joo Young Kim This timeline is a second part of a series that covers “major events” in the aftermath of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law on December 3, 2024. This part covers the events from Prime Minister Han Duck-soo’s assumption of the Acting Presidency until his impeachment. The timeline will periodically update in reverse…

Both North Korea and South Korea sought to redefine their relationship in 2024. In the past, both countries have publicly affirmed that the unification of the two Koreas is a national priority, but the two governments have engaged in low-level hostilities and high-level denunciations, while little concrete effort has been made to bring the two…