Foreign Relations

Despite President Park Geun-hye’s efforts to improve inter-Korean relations, Kim Jongun’s North Korea has never shown any willingness to give up its nuclear ambitions and continuously refuses to become a…

Provocations by North Korea can take various forms: weapons tests, acts of direct violence, cyber attacks, threatening force buildups, etc. Individually and as a group, states are debating how they…

Southeast Asia is the region where Japan has been most deeply engaged in the postwar era. Japan has provided over half of its official development assistance (ODA) to the region,…

Korea’s Knowledge Sharing Program (KSP), launched in 2004, is a policy-oriented development cooperation program in which Korea shares its development experience and knowledge to support the institutional and capacity building…

By Chad O’Carroll When South Korea picks either a progressive or conservative leader next month, we will know the full extent of the impact of President Obama’s re-election on the next four years on the Korean peninsula. Whether Obama and the next leader of South Korea will be able to sustain the current momentum of…

By Sarah K. Yun  On November 8, China will begin its once-in-a-decade leadership transition at the 18th Party Congress. The current vice president Xi Jinping is expected to be named the general secretary and de facto leader of the country, while Li Keqiang is set to become prime minister, largely overseeing economic policies.  Xi is…

By Joyce YunSun Kang With “Gangnam style” now attracting over 650 million views, Psy (real name: Park Jae-sang) has done what no other South Korean singer has been able to do: successfully break into the mainstream U.S. market. But was this simply a YouTube video gone viral, or something else? Social media played a large…

By Thomas C. Hubbard Nearly five years ago, when Lee Myung-bak had just been elected President of Korea, I participated in a study group sponsored by Stanford University and The Korea Society aimed at drawing up a blueprint for a “New Beginning” in U.S.-Korea relations. The goal was to help the new administrations coming into…