Asia

The Fall 2024 issue of Korea Policy, Broadening the Alliance: New Frontiers in US-South Korea Cooperation, is a special issue focused on the US-ROK alliance. The issue is motivated by…

The Joe Biden and Yoon Suk-yeol administrations have embraced the expansion of economic cooperation within the US-ROK alliance, leading to the emergence of South Korea as a valued technology partner…

The security alliance between the United States and South Korea, once focused primarily on military defense, is evolving to include economic security and technological cooperation. The evolving partnership between the…

This paper elucidates how Washington and Seoul cooperate on AI and quantum technologies, both recognized as critical emerging technologies essential to their national interests. Technology cooperation is denoted as government-to-government…

For many years, South Korea has been a homogeneous country. But with more foreigners coming to live in Korea, that is starting to change. In fact, the Korea Institute for…

In early July, the United States and South Korea announced that they had come to an agreement to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system near the city…

With Election 2016 well underway, KEI's very own Phil Eskeland has been closely following how both the Republican and Democratic parties have been talking about foreign policy and Asia. He…

In the late 1930s, nearly 200,000 ethnic Koreans were forcibly removed from the Soviet Far East, packed into trains and sent to Central Asia. More than 70 years later, their…

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…

In a previous post, we provided data on the shifting composition of the Politburo, based on a classification of personnel into six different career paths: military, diplomatic, party, state, economic and provincial. We showed that since the failed Hanoi summit of 2018, the share of military personnel has returned to levels not seen since the…

What Happened Last week, the police failed to stop an ex-convict from murdering two women despite having placed him under surveillance using an ankle monitor. The public response to this incident reflected growing anxiety around a series of violent crimes targeting vulnerable groups such as women and children. A growing segment of the public sees the current sentencing as inadequate to deter violent…

The New Southern Policy Plus (NSP Plus) was announced by President Moon Jae-in at the 21st ASEAN-ROK Summit on November 12, 2020. While maintaining emphasis on economic partnerships, the NSP Plus identifies collective recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and sustainability as critical areas for cooperation. It expands on the original NSP’s three-pillar framework of “People,…