Asia

The Trump administration has had no qualms about going against conventional U.S. policy norms and long-established rules of engagement. Thinking outside of the box has not been without its merits;…

During his visit to Asia in November 2017, President Donald Trump announced his vision of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” as the U.S. approach to the region. The Department of…

North Korea has been under international sanctions for several years. It is only under U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure,” however, that China, North Korea’s most important trade…

The summit on February 27-28 in Hanoi between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un ended on a sour note, casting doubt on the one-year old diplomatic process that had produced an…

2018 has been an incredibly eventful year for both the Koreas and the U.S.-Korea relationship: from North Korea’s participation in the Winter Olympics at the start of the year to…

Interest in the Korean peninsula is generally very narrow in the United States – it tends to be focused on North Korea and security issues, particularly the country's ballistic and…

Last Friday, on November 30, 2018, President George H.W. Bush passed away. In the days that followed, there were many discussions in the foreign policy community about the late president's…

What does a unified Korea look like? Beyond the question of whether the government of this new country will be a unitary or federal one, how will the people –…

Attendees at a reception last week by the South Korean Embassy at Tokyo’s New Otani Hotel, held to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between South Korea and Japan, were pleasantly surprised when Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba showed up to deliver a warm address. He was followed by former prime…

From June 16 to 17, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung attended the Group of Seven (G7) Summit in Kananaskis, Canada. This was Lee’s debut on the global stage just thirteen days after he was elected to office. Despite very little time to prepare for multilateral summit meetings, Lee’s attendance offered a timely opportunity to…

In March 2025, South Korea admitted for the first time that the government doctored paperwork and faked the identities of at least 367 children between 1964 and 1999 in a bid for political and economic gains. South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), an independent body established by the government to investigate historical injustices, described…

On May 28, 2025, the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) issued a permanent injunction against wide-sweeping tariffs imposed by the Donald Trump administration using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which included universal and reciprocal tariffs announced on “Liberation Day” as well as fentanyl-related tariffs. The CIT’s three-judge panel held that the U.S.…