Asia

South Korean–Middle Eastern relations have been neglected in the literature throughout the years, mainly owing to the focus on Korea’s relations with the United States and Asian states and the…

An old Korean proverb says that when two whales fight it is the shrimps whose backs are crushed. Maybe that proverb best describes Korea’s situation on the trade front these…

The Domestic and International Politics of Spent Nuclear Fuel in South Korea: Are We Approaching Meltdown?

Geography alone would give Russia a prominent role in the Korean peninsula. The Russian Federation currently shares a recently demarcated 17-kilometer common border along the Tumen River with the Democratic…

June 25, 2020 marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. The conflict on the Korean Peninsula has been going on for so long that we sometimes…

2020 is starting off dramatically with the escalation of tensions in the Middle East – The world held its breath while the United States and Iran exchanged both blows and…

While it is frustrating to see North Korean projectiles flying out to sea and Pyongyang’s erratic, unpredictable reactions in negotiations, we cannot forget where things stood in 2017 – the…

30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, people’s aspiration to establish a pluralistic liberal democracy appears to be under scrutiny around the world – anti-immigration policies dominate political…

In a previous post, we provided data on the shifting composition of the Politburo, based on a classification of personnel into six different career paths: military, diplomatic, party, state, economic and provincial. We showed that since the failed Hanoi summit of 2018, the share of military personnel has returned to levels not seen since the…

What Happened Last week, the police failed to stop an ex-convict from murdering two women despite having placed him under surveillance using an ankle monitor. The public response to this incident reflected growing anxiety around a series of violent crimes targeting vulnerable groups such as women and children. A growing segment of the public sees the current sentencing as inadequate to deter violent…

The New Southern Policy Plus (NSP Plus) was announced by President Moon Jae-in at the 21st ASEAN-ROK Summit on November 12, 2020. While maintaining emphasis on economic partnerships, the NSP Plus identifies collective recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and sustainability as critical areas for cooperation. It expands on the original NSP’s three-pillar framework of “People,…

One prominent strand of North Korea watching takes the form of tracking individual personnel movements: the ups and downs associated with retirements, purges and the promotion of new favorites. Yet there is persistent doubt about whether these movements are really consequential, particularly in a highly personalist political system. We can get a somewhat more rounded…