2004 Posts located
On February 25, Lee Myung-bak was sworn in as the President of the Republic of Korea. In front of a crowd of some 60,000 gathered, including U.S. Secretary of State…
Korea is a tough economic competitor. Its meteoric rise over just 30 years from one of the poorest in the world to the ranks of the OECD helped earn Korea…
On December 19, the voters of South Korea elected Lee Myung-bak, the previous mayor of Seoul and a former business executive, to be the next president. The candidate of the…
Anyone who has spent time in the bustling streets of Seoul is familiar with the scene: commuters crowding into Daewoo buses, while salary men hurry home in their Hyundai sedans…
In March, a curious protest took place in Seoul. Private kindergartens were going on strike. Protests by industry groups or workers are not uncommon in South Korea, but something about…
North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations Kim Song demanded that the United States release a North Korean vessel that is currently held by authorities in American Samoa, warning that…
It’s been nearly one year since the Singapore Summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un and the two countries are at an impasse. North Korea signals no intention of giving…
What if our understanding of North Korea is inadvertently colored by the very resources that we rely on to deepen our knowledge of the country? What does this say about our policies…
Investment Announcements July 24, 2023: Samsung SDI announced plans to establish a second EV battery manufacturing “Gigafactory” facility as part of their StarPlus Energy joint venture with Stellantis. September 27, 2023: Samsung SDI announced it will inject $1.98 billion as part of its investment into a battery factory, reportedly near Kokomo, IN where its gigafactory…
Two decades ago, South Korea was rarely called a middle power. Today, it invites ridicule to suggest South Korea is anything but a middle power. Given the concept’s ambiguity and lackluster academic credentials, why did the definition become so widely applied? The immediate answer is obvious. South Korea started to be labeled a middle power…
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…