Asia

Despite years of sanctions and isolation, foreign goods and modern consumer technologies continue to flow into North Korea providing elites with luxury goods and fueling the fragile economy. Countries such…

Winston Churchill coined the term “summit” in the early 1950s to define meetings between leaders of great powers in the Cold War. While summits have allowed needed personal contacts for…

While the initial focus may be on the humanitarian and safety needs of Japan after the Fukushima nuclear accident, South Korea has a major stake in the future of nuclear…

For much of the past month, the world has sat transfixed as the Arab World has begun to transform before our eyes. Having started in Tunisia, the call for political…

Although it is happening more rapidly in South Korea, an aging society is a common feature in post-industrial societies around the world. With the number of retirees growing and the…

In March, Seoul suffered from the worst air pollution on record. Enough that the South Korean government has officially designated the problem as a "social disaster." But what is causing…

Over the past few years, Korea and Koreans have experienced incredible political, social, and diplomatic shifts. It is hard keeping up with all these new developments as a Korea Watcher,…

Even before the meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un in Hanoi, foreign policy practitioners and observers were talking about the difficulties of sequencing international sanctions relief for North Korea…

The Sangdong tungsten mine in South Korea holds one of the world’s largest single-mine tungsten reserves. After closing in the early 1990s—largely due to cheaper Chinese tungsten flooding world markets and undermining South Korea’s price competitiveness—the mine is set to resume operations next year. This revival follows the acquisition of the Sangdong mining rights by…

In the early 21st century, global value chains (GVCs) grew longer and became reliant on low-cost countries for assembly, employing just-in-time production methods. These practices were tested during events like the US-China trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, many companies shifted their GVC strategies toward a focus on resilience and diversification. As this…

This is the first of two pieces exploring the continental-maritime balance on and around the Korean Peninsula Attention has turned to the re-emergence of a Cold War-like division in East Asia, with China, North Korea, and Russia on one side and the United States, South Korea, and Japan on the other. More recent reports of…

North Korea’s won has fallen in half against the US dollar since July for unclear reasons. An internal North Korean document collected by Daily NK blames perverse psychology for the trouble and warns that the won must be protected from further devaluation, suggesting high-level concerns of destabilizing inflation and a potential new banking crisis. The…