Foreign Relations

While the use of the term “Indo-Pacific” is relatively new, debates about its use echo longstanding arguments about how the region should be defined: who is in, who is out,…

KEI’s 2023 Report on American Attitudes Toward the Korean Peninsula summarizes results from a survey commissioned by KEI and conducted by YouGov from August 22nd to August 29th, 2023. The…

Korea-Russia economic relations are redolent of Ricardo’s classic observations about trade between Britain and Portugal in the mid-19th century, which generated the very concept of comparative advantage. Korea is an advanced industrial state with a deep manufacturing base and far-flung global production networks. Russia relies heavily on the export of raw materials, and by no…

The Moon administration had three overlapping--yet subtly distinct--motives in responding to the invasion of Ukraine. The first is a global public goods rationale: to stand against a blatant violation of international norms. This rationale has figured centrally in South Korean policy statements so far, and has put Korea in a follower position, looking to the…

On May 2, South Korea and Norway kicked off the annual defense industry cooperation talk in Seoul with a focus on Oslo’s prospective acquisition of Korean tanks. Both players hope to also deepen bilateral and regional cooperation through joint defense research. This is representative of Korea’s broader effort to play a bigger role in the…

Incoming President Yoon Suk-yeol's delegation arrived in Tokyo on April 24 for meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and other top officials. Building on Yoon's message of engaging in a "future-oriented" partnership with Washington and Tokyo beyond the Korean Peninsula, the engagement suggested a subtle but important shift in the focus of the trilateral…