North America

In 2023, KEI has set out on its “Rethinking Korea initiative,” which explores the evolution of U.S.-Korea relations, Korea’s place in the world, and rapid changes in Korean society itself.…

This week, Congress introduced 2 articles of impeachment against President Trump. One for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress. The ongoing confrontation between the White House and…

The ongoing confrontation between the White House and U.S. Congress will likely engross President Donald Trump’s political attention in the months ahead. Given his central role in executing highly delicate…

What does it mean to be Korean? Is a person's Korean identity contingent on their birth on the Korean Peninsula, their parents’ ethnicity, or their ability to speak Korean?  100…

The United States and South Korea are close allies, committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and home to advanced industrial economies. Pragmatic cooperation on clean energy technologies would aid their…

For the United States and South Korea, aligning efforts in biotechnology and biomanufacturing within the strategic alliance will support shared goals for technological leadership, economic competitiveness, and supply chain resiliency.…

Although the US-ROK alliance is critical for the security of the Indo-Pacific region, the close bilateral military relationship has not historically extended into outer space. Policies and regulations dating to…

In the past decade, the US and South Korea faced a relatively narrow set of challenges in cyberspace, notably North Korea’s cyber crime facilitating sanctions evasion. In the next decade,…

There appears to be a bright spot amid the global market turmoil after President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcements on April 2. In the first-ever phone call between Trump and his acting South Korean counterpart, Han Duck-soo, the two leaders mentioned shipbuilding as a potential area of cooperation in the aftermath of the tariff…

The South Korean won has reached record lows against the U.S. dollar in recent days, just as heavy U.S. tariffs against what President Donald Trump says is an unsustainable South Korean trade surplus threaten the country’s exports. The issue, however, is not new. The won—now close to 1,500 to the dollar—was hit hard by the…

The first blog post of this series for the Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI) assessed the propriety of the White House’s estimate of South Korean tariffs on U.S. goods and its imposition of reciprocal tariffs at 25 percent. There are several ways that the Donald Trump administration could have derived the number, but it…

The market roiled, web searches spiked, and the media was in a frenzy after President Donald Trump unveiled his “Liberation Day” tariffs. Not surprisingly, the 10 percent baseline tariff on all goods with an additional “discounted” reciprocal tariff generated mostly negative reactions. As the president held up a large placard explaining that nearly every country…