Asia

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…

Trade ties between the United States and many East Asian countries have faced a high degree of uncertainty since Donald Trump took office in early 2017. The world is now…

Since entering office in 2017, President Trump has upended longstanding tenets of U.S. trade policy and launched the most aggressive set of new U.S. tariffs and trade restrictions since at…

The U.S.-South Korea relationship has traditionally been characterized as a security alliance, meeting the interests of both countries for a stable Korean Peninsula. Economically, Korea was a major recipient of…

From 1966 to 1981, around 2,000 Peace Corps volunteers lived and worked in South Korea. After returning to the United States, many volunteers wanted a way to share their Korean…

October 2015 will mark 25 years since the official reunification of East and West Germany. Meanwhile, the Korean Peninsula remains divided. South Korean President Park Geun-Hye has referenced Germany many…

The Eugene Bell Foundation has been working in the DPRK for 20 years. Now they focus on multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), a deadly disease that is incredibly expensive and time-consuming to…

In the recent agreement between Seoul and Pyeongyang to defuse tensions along the DMZ, the two governments included a promise to "vitalize" non-governmental organization (NGO) exchanges in various fields.   …

By Kyle Ferrier Last week, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) released its Summary of Objectives for the NAFTA Renegotiation, providing a window into how the administration may pursue updating the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA). Because USTR is taking a different approach on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) than…

By Phil Eskeland  Last March, President Donald Trump directed the Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to prepare an Omnibus Report on Significant Trade Deficits within 90 days.  South Korea has been identified as a country that would be included in this report based on 2016 data that shows…

By Patrick Niceforo  Since the end of the Korean War, more than 200,000 children from South Korea have been adopted around the world. A crowdsourced map shows Korean adoptees in the United States, Norway, and Australia, among other countries. With the peak of overseas Korean adoption in the 1980s, it is unsurprising that Korean adoptees have…

By Troy Stangarone In late June, President Donald Trump signaled a shift in the administration’s North Korea policy when he tweeted that “While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea, it has not worked out. At least I know China tried.” Little more than a week later…