Asia

This paper examines policies in the renewables sector across various countries and where political tensions could generate suboptimal outcomes for the sector’s development. In its analysis of supply- and demand-side…

With North Korea becoming increasingly politically isolated, there are few channels through which the international community can remain engaged. Despite the distaste most have for Pyongyang politics, more than 24…

This paper compares Sino–South Korean management of bilateral economic and political tensions; it argues that China’s WTO entry has provided an external institutional framework for managing disputes on the economic…

On 19 December 2003, the leader of Libya, Col. Muammar El-Qaddafi, shocked the world by abruptly stating that his country was renouncing its attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction…

On this week’s episode, we welcome back Victoria Kim, a researcher and multimedia journalist. When she last joined us in 2016, Victoria discussed her project “Lost and Found in Uzbekistan:…

The Trump Administration is once again considering using Section 232 to impose tariffs on imported goods based on a threat to national security. The President originally used this provision to…

On August 1, the remains of what are believed to be 55 American servicemen lost during the Korean War finally returned home, arriving in Hawaii to begin the long process…

Ghosts and goblins are everywhere in Korean folktales, causing havoc for people through their antics. Equally common are the shamans who act as intermediaries, helping offer solutions to life's supernatural…

Over the last half decade, the Korean Peninsula has seen the prospect of war during Donald Trump’s period of “fire and fury,” but also a period of negotiations that resulted in a series of North-South and U.S.-North Korea summits. While war was avoided, those efforts at negotiation ultimately failed. The aftermath of those failed negotiations,…

After more than two years since the start of the pandemic, COVID-19 has finally been detected in North Korea. Despite strict border controls limiting the movement of people and goods to prevent entry of the novel coronavirus, state media reported on 12 May that the Omicron BA.2 variant had been found in a sample taken…

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…