Asia

North Korea has recently shown signs of rapprochement with the outside world by agreeing to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula at the six-party talks. The changing dynamics of the…

Data from 2004 show the grain harvest in North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; DPRK) consisted of a bit more than 4.4 million tons. A nationwide campaign was announced…

A controversy has arisen over entrenched regionalism in Korean politics and its resolution. There are basically two opposing views: One is the top-down institutional approach that emphasizes reforms in the…

Social change may be evolutionary or revolutionary or, at times, both. Similarly, administrations may be caught up in and attempt to manage change, or institute it, or both. Although there…

  In this episode, we talk with Dr. Adam Cathcart of the University of Leeds and of Sino-NK about China-North Korea relations. Dr. Cathcart has just written an Academic Paper Series report…

      President Obama wasn’t the only leader who had to make important visits to multiple Asian countries this past April. Australia’s Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, had to make an important…

  The Francis Effect is everywhere. Time Magazine named Pope Francis their 2013 Person of the Year, another magazine dedicated specifically to covering Pope Francis has been started in Italy,…

Public opinion can help to both shape and inform public policy. A president with strong approval numbers across ideological divides has significant scope to make policy decisions. While a national…

Last month was the fifth anniversary of North Korea's assassination of Kim Jong-nam using VX, a deadly nerve agent. On 13 February 2017, the half brother of Chairman Kim Jong-un was attacked by North Korean proxies in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. Experts say that the deployment of a horrific weapon outside of…

In a previous post, we asked the question of whether the Korean electorate was becoming more polarized, looking at the ideological differences across all citizens and those who identified most strongly with the two major parties. Our findings were that politics was becoming somewhat more polarized, but more sharply among partisans than the general public.…

The New Southern Policy (NSP) is considered one of President Moon Jae-in’s signature foreign policies, along with the New Northern Policy (NNP). It was implemented in November 2017 shortly following his inauguration to foster stronger diplomatic and economic ties with Southeast Asia and India,[1] and consequently bolster South Korea’s independence in leading its foreign relations.…

In a response to a question from KCNA, the state-run North Korean news agency, the North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson said “The root cause of the Ukraine crisis totally lies in the hegemonic policy of the U.S. and the West which indulge themselves in high-handedness and arbitrariness towards other countries.” The response of the spokesperson…