Asia

China-North Korea trade accounts for the majority of North Korea’s international trade and is considered significant for the economic development and social stability of North Korea. Due to the fourth…

Much is made in Western circles of North Korea’s economic dependence on China amid questions of whether and how much leverage this gives Beijing. In an end game, however, Pyongyang…

Russia shares a border with the Korean Peninsula, and its declared interest is to maintain peace and stability in the region. During Soviet times, its Korean policy was based on…

On February 10, 2016, the South Korean government announced the closure of the Gaeseong Industrial Complex, a symbol of its engagement policy and inter-Korean rapprochement. The move was part of…

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…

The United States and South Korea scored nearly identical GDP results in the first quarter of 2025 according to newly updated but still preliminary data. Both showed slightly negative change from the fourth quarter of 2024; the United States declining at a negative 0.2 percent rate and South Korea at a negative 0.8 percent rate,…

After months of political uncertainty, South Korea has a new president. Lee Jae-myung, the former mayor of a wealthy Seoul satellite city who leveraged that experience into a governorship of the country’s most populous province and chairmanship of the Democratic Party (DP), won a decisive 49.4-percent victory over the ruling party’s leading candidate. Lee’s victory…

South Korea’s political vacuum has been filled by a politician with a mandate to lead but who faces innumerable simultaneous and overlapping domestic and international challenges. Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung won South Korea’s snap election on June 3, 2025, in a race that was never seriously in doubt. Buoyed by a sizable majority in…

On May 20, 2025, the UN General Assembly held its first-ever “high-level session” devoted to the human rights abuses of North Korea. This latest action ups the ante in calling for reform of North Korea’s abysmal human rights record. Every year since 2004, the General Assembly has adopted resolutions criticizing North Korea and calling for…