Asia

Korea is on the front line between two contrasting proposals for regionalism based on economic integration. On the one side is the Chinese effort to establish an exclusive economic bloc…

Changes in political leadership are often associated with readjustments or reversals of policy, the impact of which can be both wide-ranging in scope and long-lasting in duration. Foreign policy, which…

The death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il on December 17, 2011 has prematurely set in motion the leadership changes that were anticipated in 2012. To be sure, a leadership…

The year 2011 closed with several symbolic events in predicting Japan’s relations with the Korean peninsula. When President Lee Myung-bak held summit talks with Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko on December…

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 Joy Kim South Korea is currently the world’s 15th largest economy. This fact strikes many as amazing given that Korea’s Gross National Product (GNP) per capita increased by more than 243 times over the span of 50 years, from $82 in 1961 to $20,000 in 2006. The baby boom generation who were born in…

By Nicholas Hamisevicz The surprise news to start the week is that Vice Marshall Ri Yong Ho, chief of the general staff of North Korea’s army as well as a member of the Political Bureau and the Central Military Commission, was relieved of all his positions due to “illness.” During the last year of Kim…

By Chad 0'Carroll Chosun Ilbo columnist Kim Dae-joong wrote yesterday that because South Korea is surrounded by three nuclear weapons countries (DPRK, China and Russia), it should consider acquiring nuclear weapons. He argued that new laws passed in Japan meant that Tokyo “wants to develop nuclear weapons”, leaving the ROK as the only country in…

By Elizabeth Hervey Stephen In a recent piece in the Asia Sentinel, which was re-posted in The Irrawaddy, Philip Bowring correctly noted that South Korea is facing a population crisis with sustained low fertility in the range of 1.2 children per woman.  As one solution to the birth dearth, he proposes looking toward reunification with North…