Asia

North Korea and Russia are seen as posing an increasingly dangerous military threat as we enter 2015, and the responses of other states to them are widely perceived as realist…

Over the past sixty years, the two Koreas have embarked on completely different paths in almost every respect. One developed into a successful example of democracy with remarkable economic growth,…

Moving from the powerful and abstract construct of ethnic homogeneity as bearing the promise for unification, this chapter instead considers family unity, facilitated by the quotidian and ubiquitous tools of…

North Korea is a country easy to approach emotionally. For anyone with even a little twinge of conscience toward human rights, it evokes disgust. For many in South Korea, who…

In this episode we speak with Doug Goudie, Director of International Trade Policy at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Mr. Goudie draws from his experiences to share his perspective…

In this episode we hear from Tami Overby, Vice President for Asia at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and former President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea. Ms.…

Now in its tenth year, KEI’s Opinion Leaders Seminar (OLS) is an annual gathering of some of the world’s foremost policymakers and scholars on the U.S.-South Korean alliance. In this…

An exclusive interview with Dr. Alon Levkowitz, author of the most recent edition of the Korea Economic Institute’s Academic Paper Series. His paper, titled “The Republic of Korea and the…

There are a plethora of studies on South Korea as a middle power. Some argue Korea needs to change to fit the term, some reinvent the term to fit Korea, and still others just use the term without questioning. Very few ask why we bother at all. The modern term “middle power” is an historically…

Korea has faced persistent labor shortages since the late 1980s, centered on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which tend to pay low wages for low-skilled, non-regular jobs. SMEs have faced increasing difficulty in replacing retiring workers with young people, given the large education gap between generations. In 2021, 69% of the population aged 25 to…

The drop in Korea’s total fertility rate to 0.78 in 2022 has heightened concerns about the impact of rapid population aging and decline. Despite numerous government initiatives, such as introducing free early childhood education and care in 2012, the fertility rate has continued to edge down. Korea’s median age jumped from 33.6 years in 2005…

On July 18, 2023, U.S. Army soldier Pvt Travis King, who was on a civilian tour of the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone that marks the boundary between South Korea and North Korea) bolted from the tour group and sprinted onto the North Korean side of the boundary.  He was chased by soldiers guarding the south side…