Asia

Growing up as a Korean-American, I was often asked, “Where are you from?” This question became a kind of standard line that opened or punctuated many first encounters. Sometimes, the…

In less than a year, the fate of the six-party talks has swung around from the lowest ebb when North Korea conducted its nuclear test to the current high point…

It may be premature right now to talk about post–free trade agreement (FTA) relations between the United States and Korea. The U.S.-Korea FTA still has some way to go before…

The past decade in the Korea-U.S. alliance relationship has not been smooth. Since the late 1990s, Koreans have been raising issues related to the past or current actions of the…

    In the mid-1990s, North Korea experienced a famine that by some estimates wiped out 10 percent of the population. Though many at the time thought the regime would…

      Over the last decade, China has become an increasingly important country for South Korea has it has emerged as Seoul’s largest trading partner and a leading player…

    On April 8, North Korea withdrew all of its workers from the Kaesong Industrial Complex, temporarily placing on hold the last form of cooperation between North and South…

South Korea’s nuclear energy industry has for decades been facilitated through close cooperation with counterparts in the United States under what is known as a “123 Agreement”.  Today South Korea’s…

This is the ninth in a 10 part series looking at how the issues identified in KEI’s annual “10 Issues to Watch for on the Korean Peninsula” series developed in 2021. The original “10 Issues” piece can be found here. When it comes to digital sex crimes in South Korea, it feels irresponsible to designate…

This is the eight in a 10 part series looking at how the issues identified in KEI’s annual “10 Issues to Watch for on the Korean Peninsula” series developed in 2021. The original “10 Issues” piece can be found here. The state of the Korean labor market The onslaught of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020…

This is the seventh in a 10 part series looking at how the issues identified in KEI’s annual “10 Issues to Watch for on the Korean Peninsula” series developed in 2021. The original “10 Issues” piece can be found here. In many ways, K-pop in 2021 was not terribly different from K-pop in 2020: a…

This is the sixth in a 10 part series looking at how the issues identified in KEI’s annual “10 Issues to Watch for on the Korean Peninsula” series developed in 2021. The original “10 Issues” piece can be found here. Korea has dealt with the COVID-19 shock better than most other OECD countries, with no hard…