Asia

In partnership with the East-West Center and the CHEY Institute for Advanced Studies, KEI launched a new edition of Korea Matters for America / America Matters for Korea, a premier…

KEI’S SPECIAL PROJECT ON THE SOUTH KOREAN NUCLEAR ARMAMENT DEBATE South Korea’s nuclear armament debate received renewed attention in 2023. But, this issue is one that has animated Korean politics,…

In Korea, public institutions play a critical role in the national economy.  Korean public institutions not only provide public services to the market but also influence various private enterprises by…

South Korea aspires to achieve the status of a global vaccine hub as a national strategic policy priority. South Korea’s biomanufacturing industry has ramped up the development and production of…

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…

In a previous post, we provided data on the shifting composition of the Politburo, based on a classification of personnel into six different career paths: military, diplomatic, party, state, economic and provincial. We showed that since the failed Hanoi summit of 2018, the share of military personnel has returned to levels not seen since the…

What Happened Last week, the police failed to stop an ex-convict from murdering two women despite having placed him under surveillance using an ankle monitor. The public response to this incident reflected growing anxiety around a series of violent crimes targeting vulnerable groups such as women and children. A growing segment of the public sees the current sentencing as inadequate to deter violent…

The New Southern Policy Plus (NSP Plus) was announced by President Moon Jae-in at the 21st ASEAN-ROK Summit on November 12, 2020. While maintaining emphasis on economic partnerships, the NSP Plus identifies collective recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and sustainability as critical areas for cooperation. It expands on the original NSP’s three-pillar framework of “People,…

One prominent strand of North Korea watching takes the form of tracking individual personnel movements: the ups and downs associated with retirements, purges and the promotion of new favorites. Yet there is persistent doubt about whether these movements are really consequential, particularly in a highly personalist political system. We can get a somewhat more rounded…