Asia

Korea has once again been threatened by financial contagion that started in another country. In 1997, it began with Thai baht; this time, the trouble started on Wall Street. Since…

When the curtain fell on the XXIX Beijing Olympics, South Korean athletes, with 13 gold, 10 silver, and 8 bronze medals, had proven once again that, ranking seventh in the…

Black September, Meltdown Monday, America’s Financial 9/11, Financial Tsunami, Perfect Storm, worse financial crisis since the Great Depression 1929… Whatever the term used, recent events on Wall Street will certainly…

Adhering to the action-for-action framework of the February 13, 2007 agreement, North Korea and the United States traded symbolic actions last week that grabbed the headlines—explosive video footage of North…

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 –…

U.S. and South Korean companies continued to plow ahead and forge partnerships across several domains in Q2 despite uncertainty surrounding bilateral trade relations and policy. Bolstered by partnerships in technology, shipbuilding, clean energy, and artificial intelligence, new projects include Korean firms constructing U.S. containerships as well as unmanned surface vehicle (USV) development, providing greater support…

New South Korean President Lee Jae-myung takes office at a time of serious economic challenges in South Korea. Real GDP fell by 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2025, with private consumption, fixed investment and exports all reporting declines. The political crisis triggered by Yoon Suk Yeol and his martial law declaration late last…

According to the World Bank, certain minerals associated with battery technology are expected to see relative increases in demand of up to 500 percent by 2050 as part of the global transition to clean energy. Thus, sourcing critical minerals for the clean energy transition will be paramount to its success, particularly in the context of…

On June 10, Cuba’s first Ambassador to South Korea Claudio Monzón Baeza formally opened his country’s embassy in Seoul. The festive event was held with the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ director-general for Latin American affairs and included remarks from the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ director-general for Asia and Oceania. The Cuban diplomats…