Asia

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (henceforth North Korea) certainly seems to like being different from other countries. Whereas governments of virtually all the world’s countries regularly publish data on…

Recent developments on the Korean peninsula are raising expectations that the DPRK may finally be ready for a new era of political rapprochement and economic opening. This possibility is reflected…

The United States and Korea finished the eighth round of negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) in mid-March 2007, and the agreement is likely to be concluded eventually.1…

The U.S.-ROK bilateral economic relationship entered a new era 1 April 2007 when President George W. Bush notified the U.S. Congress of his intent to enter into a free trade…

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 Andrew Kwon According to reports, this past weekend’s Xi-Obama Summit went “terrific.” While the two leaders spoke on sensitive issues, like cyber attacks, they found additional common ground on North Korea. They agreed to continue to pressure North Korea on its nuclear ambitions, but how far is China willing to go? In the past few…

By Troy Stangarone With K-Pop finally making its global breakout with Psy’s international smash hit Gangnam Style, one might have expected there to be a residual effect on how people around the world see South Korea. However, a recent poll by the BBC [1]on global views of 16 countries and the EU found South Korea…

By Troy Stangarone After December’s satellite launch, February’s nuclear test, and months of talk of war, is North Korea finally beginning to turn the corner in the first full scale crisis under Kim Jong-un? As was previously documented on The Peninsula, despite the increasingly provocative rhetoric coming out of Pyongyang in recent months, there was…

By Park Jinho In the aftermath of a successful summit meeting between Korea and the U.S., the Park Geun-hye administration is preparing for a summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The key strategic points to consider are how to define Korea’s role and which responsibilities to share with China and the U.S. as well.…