Asia

North Korea has recently shown signs of rapprochement with the outside world by agreeing to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula at the six-party talks. The changing dynamics of the…

Data from 2004 show the grain harvest in North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; DPRK) consisted of a bit more than 4.4 million tons. A nationwide campaign was announced…

A controversy has arisen over entrenched regionalism in Korean politics and its resolution. There are basically two opposing views: One is the top-down institutional approach that emphasizes reforms in the…

Social change may be evolutionary or revolutionary or, at times, both. Similarly, administrations may be caught up in and attempt to manage change, or institute it, or both. Although there…

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…

Yoon Suk Yeol was inaugurated on May 9th as Korea’s twentieth president. He takes office at a difficult with the global economy disrupted by the war in Ukraine and an increasingly threatening North Korea, which has launched 16 missile tests thus far this year. Meanwhile, inflation has accelerated to 4.8% (year-on-year), its fastest pace since…

Korea-Russia economic relations are redolent of Ricardo’s classic observations about trade between Britain and Portugal in the mid-19th century, which generated the very concept of comparative advantage. Korea is an advanced industrial state with a deep manufacturing base and far-flung global production networks. Russia relies heavily on the export of raw materials, and by no…

The Moon administration had three overlapping--yet subtly distinct--motives in responding to the invasion of Ukraine. The first is a global public goods rationale: to stand against a blatant violation of international norms. This rationale has figured centrally in South Korean policy statements so far, and has put Korea in a follower position, looking to the…

South Korea’s strong economy is a significant pull factor for foreign workers, but despite a declining workforce and a need for foreign workers, Seoul implements some of the strictest immigration controls among the OECD countries. Prior to immigration reform initiated in 2004, South Korea maintained exclusionary practices towards long-term immigration for foreign workers through “side-door”…