Asia

Japan’s Indo-Pacific Strategy predates that of the U.S. In fact, Abe Shinzo gets credit for envisioning it as early as 2007, during his first brief tenure as prime minister. When…

Over the past decade, the “Indo-Pacific” concept has replaced the late 20th century “Asia-Pacific” as a central frame of reference for strategy and external policy. Definitions vary. Some cast the…

KEI’s 2023 Report on American Attitudes Toward the Korean Peninsula summarizes results from a survey commissioned by KEI and conducted by YouGov from August 22nd to August 29th, 2023. The…

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…

Yoon Suk Yeol was inaugurated on May 9th as Korea’s twentieth president. He takes office at a difficult with the global economy disrupted by the war in Ukraine and an increasingly threatening North Korea, which has launched 16 missile tests thus far this year. Meanwhile, inflation has accelerated to 4.8% (year-on-year), its fastest pace since…

Korea-Russia economic relations are redolent of Ricardo’s classic observations about trade between Britain and Portugal in the mid-19th century, which generated the very concept of comparative advantage. Korea is an advanced industrial state with a deep manufacturing base and far-flung global production networks. Russia relies heavily on the export of raw materials, and by no…

The Moon administration had three overlapping--yet subtly distinct--motives in responding to the invasion of Ukraine. The first is a global public goods rationale: to stand against a blatant violation of international norms. This rationale has figured centrally in South Korean policy statements so far, and has put Korea in a follower position, looking to the…

South Korea’s strong economy is a significant pull factor for foreign workers, but despite a declining workforce and a need for foreign workers, Seoul implements some of the strictest immigration controls among the OECD countries. Prior to immigration reform initiated in 2004, South Korea maintained exclusionary practices towards long-term immigration for foreign workers through “side-door”…