1999 Posts located
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (henceforth North Korea) certainly seems to like being different from other countries. Whereas governments of virtually all the world’s countries regularly publish data on…
Recent developments on the Korean peninsula are raising expectations that the DPRK may finally be ready for a new era of political rapprochement and economic opening. This possibility is reflected…
The United States and Korea finished the eighth round of negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) in mid-March 2007, and the agreement is likely to be concluded eventually.1…
The U.S.-ROK bilateral economic relationship entered a new era 1 April 2007 when President George W. Bush notified the U.S. Congress of his intent to enter into a free trade…
Although it is happening more rapidly in South Korea, an aging society is a common feature in post-industrial societies around the world. With the number of retirees growing and the…
In March, Seoul suffered from the worst air pollution on record. Enough that the South Korean government has officially designated the problem as a "social disaster." But what is causing…
Over the past few years, Korea and Koreans have experienced incredible political, social, and diplomatic shifts. It is hard keeping up with all these new developments as a Korea Watcher,…
Even before the meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un in Hanoi, foreign policy practitioners and observers were talking about the difficulties of sequencing international sanctions relief for North Korea…
On August 13, South Korea and Vietnam celebrated the completed construction of the Vietnam-Korea Cooperation Center for Smart City and Construction Technology (VKC) in Hanoi. The VKC is symbolic in that it represents renewed bilateral cooperation following the COVID-19 pandemic and because it has withstood a shift in South Korean administrations. The center was initially…
Last Thursday, Korean chipmaker SK Hynix made history by developing a 10-nanometer (nm) transistor process for 16 GB Double Data Rate 5 (DDR5), the latest iteration of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips. By allowing for greater memory capacity and processing speeds for the corresponding central processing units (CPUs) that are used for cloud computation, this…
“You can either buy clothes or buy pictures.” (Gertrude Stein) The air will be filled with a different kind of buzz in Seoul this week as it hosts the third annual international art fair, Frieze Seoul. Over 110 leading art galleries worldwide will assemble for four days at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in…
The public sector financed 76 percent of healthcare in OECD countries in 2021 using compulsory health insurance and government programs (Figure 1, Panel A). Korea is an outlier in this regard, as only 62.3 percent of its health expenditures were covered through mandatory financing schemes. The low share of mandatory financing in Korea was offset…