Asia

Seoul has gradually adopted a more outspoken position regarding the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and framed it in increasingly expansive terms—as a regional and global…

The development of the concept of the Indo-Pacific strategy, since its adoption by the United States in 2017, has primarily been driven by the emergence of China as an object…

While the use of the term “Indo-Pacific” is relatively new, debates about its use echo longstanding arguments about how the region should be defined: who is in, who is out,…

In this episode of Korean Kontext, guest host Kyle Ferrier, KEI's director of academic affairs and research, sits down with Korea Society President Tom Byrne. Before joining the Korea Society…

Ever since Myanmar's political and economic opening several years ago, countries have been looking to get in on the ground floor to build ties with this emerging economy in Southeast…

Ever since last summer, when South Korea and the United States announced they would be deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system to the peninsula, China…

Much has been discussed about the power of outside information to open the eyes of the North Korean people and convince them of the truth about the outside world. Some…

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…