Asia

In recent years, South Korea has been addressing climate change, including through investments in hydrogen, the Green New Deal, and international pledges to cut emissions by 40 percent from 2018…

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…

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…

As the world becomes more globalized, culture is not only being exchanged, integrated, and fused but also returned in a new form. Korean fried chicken is an example of how an American dish became transformed in Korea and returned to the United States. Fried chicken was introduced to Korea through American troops stationed in the…

What Happened In May 2021, South Korea reached almost 16 million 5G subscribers. South Korea’s ICT ministry stated plans to create around 1,800 companies that specialize in new 5G services over the next 5 years to power tech services such as remote-controlled factories, self-driving vehicles, virtual reality, and more. Yet, 5G mobile users have filed lawsuits against mobile carriers arguing…

What Happened A July 2021 report from the Bank of Korea showed that housing prices in the country have surged by 47% since 2017. The Moon administration implemented a series of regulations over the past four years to cool the overheated housing market. The central bank chief expressed concerns that low interest rates - adopted to cope with the…

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, South Korean music studios adapted to the public health crisis by moving K-pop concerts online. Building on the initial success of these online concerts, Korean entertainment giant CJ ENM aims to deliver an even more ambitious service to a global audience and potentially break into the platform industry…