Asia

The sudden announcement of a North Korea-U.S. summit in March 2018 upended all previous diplomacy concerning North Korea’s nuclear program. In return for a bilateral presidential summit, Pyongyang has agreed…

Romance, humor, tension — everyone loves a good sitcom, even North Koreans. But in North Korea, TV dramas are more than mere entertainment. They play a crucial political role by…

Companies in industrialized nations have embraced environmental protection and sustainability as part of their international competitive strategies. The trend toward proactive environmental management has also grown in Korean firms, as…

Forged in the blood and strife of the anti-Japanese struggle during the colonial era, the North Korean revolution, with Kim Il-sung at its core, was built on the ethos of…

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 Nicholas Hamisevicz From the Hack North Korea contest to smuggling in USBs and launching balloons over the DMZ, there have been many ways people have tried to get outside information to the North Korean people. Recently, an effective strategy was simply to have a powerful wireless Internet signal that anyone can access. This move,…

By Troy Stangarone On September 23, South Korean President Park Geun-hye and more than 120 world leaders attended the United Nations Climate Summit in New York during the annual opening of the General Assembly. The summit, held as a prelude to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris next year where world leaders hope…

This is the second in a 2 part series looking at the North Korea Sanctions Enforcement Act of 2014 (H.R. 1771). The first piece is available here. By Stephan Haggard To date, U.S. sanctions on North Korea have had both a strategic and defensive purpose. The strategic aim is to sharpen the choices Pyongyang faces…

By Nicholas Hamisevicz & Phil Eskeland With the expectation of the confirmation of Mark Lippert to be the United States’ next Ambassador to the Republic of Korea (South Korea), he will face a series of challenges and opportunities in his new role. In his prepared testimony and at his nomination hearing, Mr. Lippert rightly discussed…