Asia

South Korea is currently engaged, once again, in a large-scale, expensive modernization of its military that aims to provide the country with a more robust and self-sufficient defense. The timing…

Globalization is a hallmark of the twenty first-century world. As transportation and telecommunications grow in both efficiency and level of performance and as the ambit of the Internet expands, it…

The penetration of the Internet in Korean society is usually seen as a positive development, perhaps even a model for other countries; more efficient bureaucracy, more political figures making use…

In the field of international security, few connections have been made between the Korean peninsula with the Middle East. Traditional regional studies literature focuses on Korean issues within the Asia…

In this episode of Korean Kontext, I have the opportunity to speak with Richard V. Allen, who, in the weeks preceding his official instatement as National Security Advisor to President-elect…

In this episode we hear from author Mike Kim, who speaks with Korean Kontext about his experiences living and working with North Korean refugees on the China-North Korea border. Mike…

We bring the Korean Kontext studio to the U.S. Department of State to speak with Kathleen Stephens, current U.S. Ambassador to South Korea. Ambassador Stephens shares with us her personal…

In this episode we speak with Ambassador John Everard, who served as Ambassador of Great Britain to North Korea from 2006-2008. Ambassador Everard experienced firsthand life as one of only…

KEI Communications Director Jenna Gibson, host of Korean Kontext, recently interviewed Justice Michael Kirby who led the United Nations’ Commission of Inquiry on human rights in North Korea. The following is a partial transcript of that conversation. The rest of the conversation can be found at http://keia.podbean.com/. Jenna Gibson: It’s now been two years since…

By Mark Tokola Since the United Nations’ “Situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” (usually shorthanded to “COI” for commission of inquiry report) came out in September 2015, commentators have sometimes hypothesized that one of its positive effects could be that North Korean prison officials might moderate some of their brutality…

By Troy Stangarone With the global economy slowing and Korean merchandise exports and imports down in 2015 we recently looked at how U.S.-Korea trade compared to Korean trade in general and U.S. trade more broadly. However, Korea has one of the world’s most expansive network of free trade agreements. In this post we explore how…

By Kyle Ferrier North Korean provocations are generally accepted to have a minimal impact on South Korea’s economy, yet in early 2016 these geopolitical risks have corresponded with losses in Seoul. South Korea’s stock exchanges, tracked by the KOSPI Index, closed 0.26% lower on January 6, the day of the claimed hydrogen bomb test, but…