2004 Posts located
China and the Republic of Korea (ROK) have experienced periods of conflict and cooperation since officially forging “partnership” relations in 1998. From a historical perspective, Korea was among the most…
South Korean views of Japan are neither uniform nor unified. Considering that national strategic identities are competing even within a single country, it is not strange at all that South…
While the sources of contention are deep and enduring, relations between Japan and South Korea have been especially troubled in the last few years. The two countries are grappling with…
American ideals coupled with the commercial self-interest of American business and industry drove the policy of engagement, and even after the 1989 massacre of student protesters at Tiananmen Square, sustained…
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…
What Happened Last week, the Justice Ministry announced a revision to a law that would allow singles to adopt children. This plan was announced in light of new census data, which shows nearly a third of households in Korea are single-person households. The new adoption bill comes after the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family passed new regulations that allow children…
On August 31, 2021, South Korea’s National Assembly approved the amendments to the Telecommunications Business Act (전기통신사업법), which essentially imposes new restrictions and mechanisms of greater regulatory scrutiny over the operators of app markets (e.g., Apple’s ‘AppStore’ or Google’s ‘Play Store’). Hailed as the first successfully implemented measure against the giants operating global app markets,…
In the last two posts, we have provided data on the share of military personnel in the Politburo and analyzed in more detail the diversity of military backgrounds, some tied to the weapons program, but others linked more clearly to the military-industrial complex, technology and internal security. Here, we consider several intepretations of these developments,…
South Korea’s dominant position in the global market for auto manufacturing and chip fabrication are well known. Less well-known is the country’s increasingly expanding gaming industry. In 2019, South Korea’s gaming industry brought in USD 6.9 billion from abroad - approximately 10 times that of the country’s vaunted pop music industry. Now, Korea’s gaming companies are looking…