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…

For the over 1.5 million Korean-Americans living in the United States today, what part do sports play in the American experience? For that matter, what role do sports have in…

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…