Asia

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 Kyle Ferrier The Federal Reserve’s move to increase its benchmark interest rate hardly came as a surprise. Though the March 15 rate increase is only the third since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, it is the second in three months and we are likely to see at least two more incremental rises this…

By Mark Tokola When dealing with a country with a leadership that is as singularly top-down as North Korea, it is worthwhile to try to understand what makes their leader tick.  If we understood Kim Jong-un’s goals, preferences, and biases, we would be in a better position to understand whether negotiations on denuclearization are possible,…

By Troy Stangarone After three months of deliberations, the Constitutional Court has unanimously accepted the National Assembly’s impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. Since the scandal surrounding President Park and her confidant Choi Soon-sil first broke last fall, South Korea has gone through an extended political crisis. Protesters have gone to the streets in record numbers…

By Jaeho Jeon More and more Koreans are saying that they don’t trust Korean companies. The anti-corporate sentiment has existed in the past, but it is spreading more rapidly after the ‘Choi Soon-sil scandal.’ According to a survey by Edelman, a communications marketing firm, last month only 29 percent of Koreans said they trust corporations.…