Asia

In recent years, North Korea has faced economic shocks from UN sanctions and the pandemic. As Dr. Jongkyu Lee (Senior Fellow at the Korea Development Institute) writes in his new…

Following a record number of North Korean missile launches, as well as tests by South Korea, assertions have been widely and uncritically made that Seoul is participating in an inter-Korean…

Although the Korean Peninsula has been divided for over 70 years, North and South have not been able to make lasting progress in terms of reconciliation. While there are multiple…

Why is South Korea pilot-testing its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), and what made it shift from non-issuance to consideration? This paper investigates the Bank of Korea (BOK)’s CBDC-related developments…

  When Marja Vongerichten was 19, she met her birth mother for the first time since being adopted at age three. The first thing they bonded over, Marja says, was…

Born in Brooklyn, Chef Edward Lee always loved cooking. And after graduating from college with an English literature degree, he returned to that love and became an award-winning chef. Not…

In the decades following the Korean War, North Korea initiated a top-secret project to kidnap ordinary people from Japan, reeducate them, and turn them into international spies for the regime.…

Every year on January 13, the Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI) sponsors a luncheon in Washington, DC to mark Korean American Day and recognize the local and national Korean…

By Phil Eskeland Last night’s debate between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and businessman Donald Trump highlights trade as a top tier political issue in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.  In past general election presidential debates, trade was barely mentioned.  This time, trade was front and center. With recent polling showing more Americans, particularly…

By Christopher Hurst As the residents of Gyeongju began cleaning up the damage caused by two powerful earthquakes earlier this month, a 4.5 magnitude aftershock struck on September 19. The tremors began on September 12 at 7:44 pm local time, when a 5.1 magnitude earthquake jolted Gyeongju. Less than an hour later there was a…

By Jenna Gibson Any student of Korea policy knows “The Two Koreas,” by Don Oberdorfer.  Famous both for its physical heft and its incredible detail, this book is regularly referenced as the go-to history book in Korea policy circles. It is bittersweet now to read the optimistic final chapter on North-South relations, but that does…

By Kyle Ferrier After North Korea’s second “satellite launch” in February this year I looked at how North Korean provocations have impacted the South Korean economy over time through the KOSPI index and the won/dollar exchange rate. The findings suggested financial markets in Seoul have not necessarily become accustomed to  provocations, as judged by a…