Asia

After two years of sluggish growth, the Korean economy is now recovering. Economic activity began to revive in the early part of 2005 and accelerated throughout the year, reaching an…

The Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) and the Korea-European Union Free Trade Agreement (Korea-EU FTA) are the major FTAs for the Korean economy. Although both FTAs share many similarities,…

This study was undertaken to assess possible futures for the North Korean regime and the Korean peninsula that could affect U.S. and regional interests, and to consider which U.S. and…

This article is aimed at analyzing, in a comparative perspective, the economic reforms undertaken by Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) and Cuba since the demise of…

Volcanologist Dr. Kayla Iacovino traveled to North Korea in 2013 as part of a team that was collaborating with North Korean scientists to study Mt. Baekdu, one of Korea's most…

Nicholas Hamisevicz has been KEI's director of research and academic affairs for four years. Now, he is leaving KEI to pursue his Ph.D at Catholic University. But before he goes,…

Within China, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is a principle stakeholder in Beijing’s policy decision-making. In recent years, PLA officials have penned some of the more interesting, and forceful, articles…

Over the past few years, North Korea has been holding press conferences starring so-called re-defectors – people who fled to the South and chose to return. Researchers Steven Denney and…

Korea’s healthcare spending in 2000 was the lowest among the 38 OECD countries at less than 4 percent of GDP, reflecting the country’s relatively young population and the limited coverage of its National Health Insurance (NHI). However, adjusted for inflation, healthcare spending grew at an annual rate of 7.7 percent from 2000 to 2022, the…

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol offered a dramatically different vision of Korean unification in his Liberation Day speech on August 15, an annual observance in South Korea that marks the end of Japanese colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula. In his speech, President Yoon framed unification as completing the unfinished task of liberation and the…

The transformation of relations between South Korea and Japan during the past two-plus years is one of the signal accomplishments of the Yoon Suk-yeol administration. However, there remain doubts over the durability of this achievement. A troubling question remains whether the historical past of Japan’s colonial rule over Korea will again roil relations. The ongoing…

US-South Korea-Japan trilateral cooperation has been on an upswing since the Spirit of Camp David joint statement, published after US President Joe Biden hosted South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio at the eponymous presidential retreat in August 2023. “We commit to expand our cooperation trilaterally and raise our shared…