Asia

President Lee Myung-bak won a landslide victory in 2007. His popularity before the election was obvious, and it came as a surprise to almost no one that he won by…

Korea and Japan are two key allies of the United States in East Asia. These two countries are “window models” of postwar democratization and economic advancement in a free world.…

On 19 October 1983 in Kim Jong-il’s office at the Central Party Building in Pyongyang, a private conversation took place between Kim and two South Korean filmmakers: director Shin Sang-ok…

The world can only hope the recent U.S.-North Korean bilateral discussions will revive the six-power talks and lead to Pyongyang’s renunciation of its nuclear weapons ambitions. Hope, however, is not…

  With the recent retirement by Yi So-yeon, South Korea’s remaining astronaut, many have turned attention to Korea, wondering whether there is a future for its space program. According to Daniel Pinkston of the…

      Since the famine of the 1990s, North Korea has continued to face periods of chronic food shortages. However, the humanitarian needs of the people in North Korea…

    North Korea has engaged in various forms of economic reforms and marketization attempts such as establishing Special Economic Zones and obtaining Foreign Direct Investment. Yet, many of North…

    In this episode, we talk with Dr. Yiagadeesen Samy of Carleton University on income inequality in South Korea and its affect on Korea’s economy. Dr. Samy is an economist…

By Nicholas Hamisevicz For a month often associated with summer doldrums, a lot of things were happening on the Korean peninsula in August 2014. Events such as Pope Francis’s visit to South Korea, the joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises, a clash between the two Koreas in the West Sea, negotiations over the North Korean cheerleaders…

By Joseph Dahl Two pieces of Congressional legislation, while still in their nascent stages, have the potential to reshape U.S. policy on North Korea. A bill known as H.R. 1771, or the North Korean Sanctions Enforcement Act of 2014, recently passed the House, and a bill specifically addressing North Korea’s human rights was introduced by…

Troy Stangarone of the Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI) recently interviewed Jérome Sauvage, the Deputy Director of the United Nations Development Program’s Representation Office in Washington, DC and previously the UN Coordinator in the DPRK, on the humanitarian situation in North Korea for KEI’s Korean Kontext podcast series. In the interview, Deputy Director Sauvage…

By Kenneth Lee In recent years, the United States expressed interested in deploying the Theater High Altitude Area Defense missile system or THAAD, onto the Korean peninsula to counter North Korea’s growing missile threats.  Earlier in June, General Curtis Scaparrotti of United States Forces Korea was quoted in Yonhap News saying he personally “recommended the…