1929 Posts located
An intensifying backlash against Xi Jinping’s makeover of China and Donald Trump’s makeover of the United States has muddied thinking about the national identity struggle recently building between the world’s…
If we understand geopolitics as “representations of space” as well as “spatial practices,” then the Indo-Pacific region can be understood as a newly emerging geopolitical hotspot in which major powers…
When supporters of China’s President Xi Jinping point to his many accomplishments they highlight his impressive anti-corruption drive, the end of the one-child family policy, the intensive monitoring of social…
This chapter examines the nature and motivations of North Korea’s sharp power toward South Korea. Unlike China or Russia, to secure long-term survival, North Korea ultimately needs cooperation from the…
President Donald Trump is off on his longest international trip yet, stopping in Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. There, he is expected to tackle a range of…
As a communist state, North Korea has promised to provide its people with basic services, including healthcare and medical treatment. However, particularly in recent years, the cash-strapped Kim regime has…
With North Korea becoming an increasingly dangerous threat to the U.S. and its allies, it can be all too easy to overlook North Korea’s origins and how its foreign policy…
Many of the news stories about North Korea that make their way into the Western media fall into one of two categories: 1) breaking news about provocations and the nuclear…
The Yalu River floods have receded, but Kim Jong-un might still feel underwater. The North Korean won has fallen nearly in half against the US dollar in informal markets this month and similarly against the Chinese yuan, as reliably reported by Daily NK and Asia Press. This development suggests inflation is on the way in…
President Yoon Suk-yeol’s speech on the commemoration of Liberation Day outlined a revised unification vision based on the values of freedom and democracy. To this end, President Yoon committed to enhancing unification education for South Korean youths, raising North Koreans’ awareness of freedom, continuing humanitarian aid to North Korea, and establishing an inter-Korean working group.…
New economic analysis by Michael Clemens at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) challenges the prevailing narrative around South Korea’s demographic challenges. Once the fodder of wonky demographers and social scientists, South Korea’s population is now world-renowned for its extreme drop in birthrates and aging society, a topic I covered last year for KEI.…
Korea’s healthcare spending in 2000 was the lowest among the 38 OECD countries at less than 4 percent of GDP, reflecting the country’s relatively young population and the limited coverage of its National Health Insurance (NHI). However, adjusted for inflation, healthcare spending grew at an annual rate of 7.7 percent from 2000 to 2022, the…