Asia

In recent years, North Korea has faced economic shocks from UN sanctions and the pandemic. As Dr. Jongkyu Lee (Senior Fellow at the Korea Development Institute) writes in his new…

Following a record number of North Korean missile launches, as well as tests by South Korea, assertions have been widely and uncritically made that Seoul is participating in an inter-Korean…

Although the Korean Peninsula has been divided for over 70 years, North and South have not been able to make lasting progress in terms of reconciliation. While there are multiple…

Why is South Korea pilot-testing its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), and what made it shift from non-issuance to consideration? This paper investigates the Bank of Korea (BOK)’s CBDC-related developments…

In this episode, Korean Kontext speaks with Ms. Jie-ae Sohn, President of Arirang TV & Radio, Korea’s first English language international broadcast system. Ms. Sohn worked as the former CNN…

Preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons has emerged to be one of the key foreign policy priorities of the Obama administration. Despite efforts among Western powers to form a united…

By the time you read this, the KORUS FTA will have entered the implementation stage. To celebrate, Korean Kontext caught up with two of the main movers-and-shakers behind the deal…

This episode of Korean Kontext has a distinctly British flavor, featuring interviews with two leading Ambassador’s that work closely on UK and Korea related affairs. While recently in London, Korean…

By Nicholas Hamisevicz “Survive and advance” is a phrase often associated with the month of March with the NCAA basketball tournament in the United States, but the phrase could be applied to the month of April for events on the Korean peninsula. The two Koreas, as well as the other countries involved in Northeast Asia,…

By Nicholas Hamisevicz March was expected to be a difficult month for inter-Korean relations with the joint U.S.-ROK military exercises taking place and the lack of progress between the two Koreas in January and February. Unfortunately, events in March suggest even more difficult times ahead for relations between North and South Korea even without military…

By Matthew Nitkoski According to former National Assembly Speaker Park Kwan-yong, the United States will soon turn away from its North Korea denuclearization strategy and focus on nuclear non-proliferation issues. His comments come at a time when North Korean advancements in warheads and delivery mechanisms are forcing regional states to reassess their capabilities and reconsider…

By Mark Tokola One March 26th newspaper headline read: “South Korea Seeks Membership in Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.”  Another newspaper’s headline read: “Decision to Join China-Led Bank Tests South Korea’s Ties to U.S.”  The latter probably drew more readers because, face it, stories about multilateral lending institutions rarely stir excitement.  Stories about potential rifts between…