2004 Posts located
North Korea has recently shown signs of rapprochement with the outside world by agreeing to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula at the six-party talks. The changing dynamics of the…
Data from 2004 show the grain harvest in North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; DPRK) consisted of a bit more than 4.4 million tons. A nationwide campaign was announced…
A controversy has arisen over entrenched regionalism in Korean politics and its resolution. There are basically two opposing views: One is the top-down institutional approach that emphasizes reforms in the…
Social change may be evolutionary or revolutionary or, at times, both. Similarly, administrations may be caught up in and attempt to manage change, or institute it, or both. Although there…
In this special episode of Korean Kontext, KEI's Juni Kim sat down with three North Korean defectors who have settled in South Korea. Each of them has a different story…
On May 10, former human rights lawyer Moon Jae-In officially became the next president of South Korea, filling an office that had been empty since former President Park Geun-Hye's impeachment…
The upcoming presidential election in Korea on May 9th will place many key issues under the microscope. One meriting serious consideration that has featured less prominently in the political discourse…
After the closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex last year, economic ties between North and South Korea have all but ceased. And as sanctions measures continue to tighten, the international…
Investment Announcements July 24, 2023: Samsung SDI announced plans to establish a second EV battery manufacturing “Gigafactory” facility as part of their StarPlus Energy joint venture with Stellantis. September 27, 2023: Samsung SDI announced it will inject $1.98 billion as part of its investment into a battery factory, reportedly near Kokomo, IN where its gigafactory…
Two decades ago, South Korea was rarely called a middle power. Today, it invites ridicule to suggest South Korea is anything but a middle power. Given the concept’s ambiguity and lackluster academic credentials, why did the definition become so widely applied? The immediate answer is obvious. South Korea started to be labeled a middle power…
There are a plethora of studies on South Korea as a middle power. Some argue Korea needs to change to fit the term, some reinvent the term to fit Korea, and still others just use the term without questioning. Very few ask why we bother at all. The modern term “middle power” is an historically…
Korea has faced persistent labor shortages since the late 1980s, centered on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which tend to pay low wages for low-skilled, non-regular jobs. SMEs have faced increasing difficulty in replacing retiring workers with young people, given the large education gap between generations. In 2021, 69% of the population aged 25 to…