Asia

The tax burden in Korea—at 26 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) —was well below the average of the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)…

There may have been no one who anticipated the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, once one of the top five global investment banks. The shocking news reverberated through the Korean financial…

Korea’s economy in 2008 was adversely impacted by high commodity prices, especially oil, and by financial and real shocks started by the collapse of housing prices in the United States…

The twenty-first century has already been dubbed the Asian century. Although this nomination may be premature, it is certain that its fi rst decade belongs to Asia. This is reflected…

Despite all the attention around the upcoming second summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, we in the United States still know very little about North Korea, its people, and…

As we approach the second US-DPRK Summit, the media in the United States is so focused on the dynamics between President Trump and Kim Jong-un that the interests and motivations…

When people talk about South Korea’s foreign policy, they are more often than not focused on how Seoul engages with its immediate neighbors on denuclearization. However, as a global trading…

Amid the maelstrom of the drama around diplomacy with North Korean, it’s easy to forget that South Korea and the United States are engaged in a fairly serious trade dispute…

If we thought North Korea and Russia grew too close for comfort in 2023, they continued to surprise the world this year by taking bold and unprecedented steps to elevate their relations to new heights. The highlights are the new “DPRK-Russia Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership,” signed during Putin’s visit to Pyongyang in June, and…

The Yoon Suk-yeol administration’s signal foreign policy achievement is arguably the forging of trilateral security cooperation between the Republic of Korea (ROK), Japan and the United States. During the past year, the leaders of all three nations have moved unusually quickly to institutionalize the structure of cooperation. The desire to consolidate progress seems to have…

This year began with a trip by Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro to visit Korean shipyards and court Korean investment in US shipbuilding. In June 2024, Hanwha Ocean made a bid to purchase Philly Shipyard and secure a foothold for Korean shipbuilding in the United States. While Hanwha Ocean had previously bid for…

As multiple conflicts abroad caused ripples through the world of commerce and trade, the United States and South Korea came into the year broadly aligned on strategies to derisk and diversify supply chains, extending efforts to limit single country reliance on key material imports and integrating national security with economic security. Investments in advanced manufacturing…