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…

When Kim Jong-il died in 2011, the world held its breath as North Korea entered uncharted waters. No other communist dictatorship in the last century – for that matter no…

On June 25, 1950, North Korea launched a surprise invasion of South Korea and started a war that is still technically ongoing. But it was – as North Korea’s Kim…

The North Korean economy is changing – we know this because of widely reported growth of private markets since the famine of 1990s. But black markets and illicit activities are…

In May, The Korean-born Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitcher Ryu Hyun-jin was named The National League Pitcher of the Month. When you think of Asians and baseball, you might think first…

By Sarah K. Yun  On November 8, China will begin its once-in-a-decade leadership transition at the 18th Party Congress. The current vice president Xi Jinping is expected to be named the general secretary and de facto leader of the country, while Li Keqiang is set to become prime minister, largely overseeing economic policies.  Xi is…

In this week's Asan Institute for Policy Studies public opinion poll Ahn Cheol-soo and Moon Jae-in remain deadlocked in the race for the race to be the progressive standard bearer in the December presidential election. Ahn and Park Geun-hye also remain neck and neck in a hypothetical two way race, with Park leading a three…

By Luke Herman As the Kim Jong Un regime completes its eighth month in power following Kim Jong Il’s death in December 2011, there seem to be a number of differences between how this succession is being carried out with how it was carried out in 1994. For one thing, it has proceeded at a…

By Clare Hubbard The 2012 Heritage Foundation/ Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom ranks North Korea last, after Cuba and Zimbabwe, with an economic freedom score of 1.  However, in the mid-1990s famine when women and men had to focus on securing food by generating income and bartering for staples and foodstuffs, small-scale markets…