Asia

The Kim-Putin summit in April 2019 and the abortive Trump-Kim summit in February 2019 compel us to review Korean issues from the regional security standpoint, rather than primarily as a…

During the period leading up to the turn toward diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula that began in 2018, China and Russia achieved close cooperation in addressing the North Korean nuclear…

The Japanese government makes no secret of its intensifying security concerns. The Ministry of Defense’s most recent annual white paper includes the assessment that, “The security environment surrounding Japan has…

In 2018, research was underway in Northeast Asia on several trilateral and multilateral initiatives for cross-border infrastructure connectivity involving China, Russia, both Koreas, and Japan. Infrastructure included railway lines, cross-border…

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…

By Juni Kim Inter-Korean relations have been marked by significant setbacks in recent years. The alarming rate of both nuclear and missile tests by North Korea has strained relations between the two Koreas and previous avenues of cooperation, like the Kaesong Industrial Complex, have been discontinued. North Korea’s recent string of provocations have only deepened…

By Nathaniel Curran When Google’s AlphaGo computer program beat South Korea’s top Go (baduk) player Lee Sedol last March, it didn’t take long for AI experts to hail the event as a milestone in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Nor did it take long for China’s top player, Ke Jie, to issue his own challenge…

By Troy Stangarone Since Moon Jae-in won the South Korean presidency in May, North Korea has conducted five missile tests. This is somewhat of a quickened pace of tests, with five tests in the four weeks of the Moon presidency, but not unprecedented by North Korean standards. North Korea conducted seven tests, for example, in…

By Jenna Gibson At the end of May, Korea’s largest media company announced it would be opening a Turkish unit to help create and promote local content for the Turkish market. They already have plans to film Turkish versions of popular Korean movies, and hope to move forward with more Korean-Turkish co-productions in the future.…