North America

Long before BTS and Psy made their debut, a handful of entrepreneurs were laying the foundations for what would become the Korean Wave in the United States. With Korean pop culture…

Korea today leads the world in autos and electronics, but newly emerging manufacturers and protectionism threaten the country's position as a leading exporter. In search of innovative industries that will…

K-pop had an explosive year in 2018, but it didn't arise from a vacuum. Since 1998, one web community – Soompi – has been sharing the latest information about Korea's…

For the latest episode, Korean Kontext spoke to Korean-American actor James Kyson. Having made waves for his performance as Japanese character Ando Masahashi on hit NBC television series “Heroes”, Korean Kontext…

KEI’s 2021 Report on American Attitudes on the U.S.-ROK Alliance and North Korea Policy summarizes results from a survey commissioned by KEI and conducted by YouGov on May 6th to…

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…

The Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI), with the generous support of the Korea Foundation, organized six “Vision Group” roundtable conversations with leading American scholars and commentators to discuss the…

Commentators have pointed to the “Trump Effect” for falling international student enrollment in the U.S. higher education sector. When taking a closer look at student mobility trends from South Korea,…

By Robert R. King The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service a few days ago published a working paper updating and reassessing international food security in the decade 2020-2030 in light of the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.  The report focuses on 76 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin American which are most…

On January 11, the Korea Economic Institute (KEI) published a report on the future of the U.S.-Korea relationship with recommendations from leading American scholars and policy practitioners. The report comes from six "Vision Group" roundtable conversations that KEI hosted between December 2019 and November 2020 with the support of the Korea Foundation. During these meetings,…

Throughout the course of roughly a century since Koreans initially migrated to the United States, only two Koreans were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1992, Jay Kim became the very first Korean American to serve in Congress. Almost three decades later in 2018, incumbent Andy Kim became the second Korean American to…

By Yong Kwon, Soojin Hwang, and Rachel Kirsch  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 negotiations with North Korea and high-stakes face-off over trade with China, the impeachment inquiry may affect the…