1940 Posts located
This paper assesses the potential for South Korea to be a regional leader in advancing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing, and supporting sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific region. Many…
South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s New Southern Policy (NSP)—the most recent effort by Seoul to boost relations with Southeast Asian countries and India and diversify its relationships beyond four major…
This paper addresses the U.S.-South Korea alliance in the context of Asia’s evolving security architecture. At the crux of the issue is the Biden administration’s desire to uphold the rules-based…
This paper examines South Korea’s foreign policy towards China before, during, and after the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense dispute to investigate the limits of South Korea’s…
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…
Despite being thousands of miles apart, the Korean Peninsula and Ukraine share a land border with Russia. Given their respective ties to Moscow, both South and North Korean governments have toed around the sidelines of the Ukraine crisis—with Seoul publicly supporting a diplomatic solution while quietly considering additional humanitarian aid to Kyiv, and Pyongyang issuing…
The Ukraine accounts for 11.8% of the world’s wheat market and has long been known as the “breadbasket of Europe.” However, the potential outbreak of conflict between Russia and the Ukraine has implications for Ukraine’s wheat trade with all nations, including South Korea. The Ukraine is the 2nd largest exporter of wheat to South Korea,…
North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly, the country’s parliament, adopted the government budget for the new year at its session February 6-7. The budget law was approved with a pledge to develop the economy and improve the people’s wellbeing despite the “persevering struggle” against international sanctions and the COVID pandemic. A particularly noteworthy aspect of the…
This post was revised on August 21 , 2023 to reflect additional research by the authors. Additional analysis can be found in authors' article Political Polarization in Korea. Korea’s democracy is clearly a success story. Along with Taiwan, it is one of the few Asian countries that transitioned to democratic rule in the 1980s and…