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 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…

By Jenna Gibson On April 13, South Koreans will head to the polls to choose who will fill the 300 seats that make up their parliament, the National Assembly. Like the elections currently taking place here in the United States, the campaign is focused on important issues such as ramping up economic growth and addressing…

KEI Communications Director Jenna Gibson, host of Korean Kontext, recently interviewed Dr. Stephan Haggard of the University of California-San Diego on the North Korean economy, the role of black markets, and the potential impacts of new UN sanctions. The following is a partial transcript of that conversation. The rest of the conversation can be found…

By Eunchong Moses Park On April 13, 2016, South Korea will hold elections for the 20th National Assembly. Despite the tension from North Korea’s nuclear test and satellite launch earlier this year, the election has been fought largely on domestic issues rather than foreign policy. With the campaign now underway, the National Election Commission has…

By Jenna Gibson Twenty five years ago today, South Korea established the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), officially cementing its unprecedented transition from aid recipient to donor. It’s a story that Koreans are rightly very proud of – in the 1960s, still reeling from the Korean War, the country’s per capita income was less than…