Asia

The four papers in Section 1 compare hedging behavior in countries on the frontline between the rising power China and the reigning hegemon, the United States. The first paper by…

Faced with growing youth unemployment and public dissatisfaction with labor market conditions, representatives from South Korean labor, management, and government finalized an agreement to reform the domestic labor regime in…

Since the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994 there have been numerous predictions that the collapse of the North Korean political system would be imminent, yet the Kim dynasty continues…

KEI is proud to release newest work in its Academic Paper Series, Does the Korean Economy Depend Too Much on Samsung? by Dr. Hyoung Tae Kim. In his most recent…

This interview originally aired in 2014.  With the retirement by Yi So-yeon, South Korea’s remaining astronaut, many have turned attention to Korea, wondering whether there is a future for its…

In this episode, we spoke with Kevin O'Donnell, who, after decades on a private sector career path, became the first-ever Peace Corps country director for South Korea, followed by a…

As North Korea's largest trading partner and political ally, China is a crucial factor in any potential solution to curb North Korea's weapons programs. President Trump expressed hope earlier this year…

In December 1950, while fighting the advancing Chinese army and bitter Korean winter, Colonel Edward Forney and other American and Korean officers managed to evacuate all troops as well as…

Last Thursday, Korean chipmaker SK Hynix made history by developing a 10-nanometer (nm) transistor process for 16 GB Double Data Rate 5 (DDR5), the latest iteration of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips. By allowing for greater memory capacity and processing speeds for the corresponding central processing units (CPUs) that are used for cloud computation, this…

“You can either buy clothes or buy pictures.” (Gertrude Stein) The air will be filled with a different kind of buzz in Seoul this week as it hosts the third annual international art fair, Frieze Seoul. Over 110 leading art galleries worldwide will assemble for four days at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in…

The public sector financed 76 percent of healthcare in OECD countries in 2021 using compulsory health insurance and government programs (Figure 1, Panel A). Korea is an outlier in this regard, as only 62.3 percent of its health expenditures were covered through mandatory financing schemes. The low share of mandatory financing in Korea was offset…

The overwhelming majority of refugees who flee North Korea are generally those who live in border areas adjacent to China and do not have prominent government or economic positions. Few are from Pyongyang because it is very difficult for citizens to travel within the country unless police and internal security officials approve the travel. Meanwhile,…