Foreign Relations

Achieving unification has been one of the most important national goals of all South Korean presidents. President Park is no exception, and clarifies that building a foundation for national unification…

This is the full PDF of the 2015 edition of Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies. Please click here to download the individual chapters included in this publication. At the Korea Economic…

For a variety of reasons, North Korea at times behaves in a provocative fashion. This chapter starts with a discussion of the concept of provocation and its nature. A careful…

When speaking to a Korean audience, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) invariably inserts the Korean phrase katchi kapshida ( 같이 갑시다), “we go together,” at some point in…

After months of political uncertainty, South Korea has a new president. Lee Jae-myung, the former mayor of a wealthy Seoul satellite city who leveraged that experience into a governorship of the country’s most populous province and chairmanship of the Democratic Party (DP), won a decisive 49.4-percent victory over the ruling party’s leading candidate. Lee’s victory…

The second Donald Trump administration’s rapid start has put South Koreans on alert regarding the implications for managing U.S.-South Korea relations. Under normal circumstances, South Korea’s president would be near the front of the line outside of the Oval Office. But Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law last December and his subsequent impeachment have…

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol called to congratulate Donald Trump shortly after the US presidential election, telling the president-elect that the first Trump administration had set the foundation for US-Korea-Japan trilateral cooperation. Yoon later told the press he expected cooperation “would proceed well even during the [second] Trump administration.” Although some of the personnel…

The visit by Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio to South Korea earlier this month created a few ripples. No major announcements were made, and the two leaders pledged to continue efforts to bolster ties. In South Korea, the opposition Democratic Party issued a somewhat ritual denunciation of the Yoon Suk-yeol government for “undermining national interest…