Asia

Real growth in 2006, at 5 percent, did not fully measure up to the more optimistic forecasts of a year ago but did represent a further recovery from the slump…

The most popular conversation topic in Korea these days is not North Korea’s nuclear program or the KORUS FTA, but the skyrocketing real estate prices. The real estate market has…

83/751. At press time, 83 days have passed since North Korea tested a nuclear device on October 9, 2006 and 751 days remain in the Bush Presidency. If the stalemate…

In 1996, Korea joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), marking Korea's rise into the ranks of the developed world. Only twenty years ago this year, Korea began…

Spanning nearly a century and multiple generations, Min Jin Lee's 2017 novel Pachinko tells the story of a Korean family struggling to find their place in Japan before, during, and after…

A woman in hanbok joyfully rises above Mt. Baekdu, arms raised, in a art piece entitled Umma Rises: Towards Global Peace. This is just one of many recent art pieces…

A group of women gossiping about the new neighbor. A feisty middle schooler using a homemade drone to prank his classmates. A young military officer seeking information from his past.…

With President Donald Trump finishing up his first official trip to Asia, including a stop in South Korea last week, this week's episode of Korean Kontext asks: what do South…

Newly installed Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru caused waves in October over comments he made before his election. In an article published by the Hudson Institute, he said that in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the lack of a mutual defense organization in the Indo-Pacific region increases the likelihood of conflict. “Under these circumstances,…

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…