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…

KEI has bid farewell to 6 of its 9 family members this year. The faces and personalities are changing, but KEI’s commitment to excellence remains. We have a basic philosophy…

KEI recently completed its seventeenth annual Ambassadors’ Dialogue program. The tour was the third featuring Lee Tae-sik, the Republic of Korea’s Ambassador to the United States, and Alexander Vershbow, United…

KEI recently completed its sixteenth annual Ambassadors’ Dialogue program (previously called the Korea Caravan), featuring Lee Tae-sik, the Republic of Korea’s Ambassador to the United States, and Alexander Vershbow, United…

In a speaking tour to seven major U.S. cities during May 3 through May 11, the Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the United States and the Ambassador of…

Over the past two decades, the United States has played a uniquely important role in sustaining the global movement for truth, justice, and accountability for the people of North Korea. Today, that movement is in crisis. In an unprecedented turn of events, the Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB) and partners across the…

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…