Foreign Relations

Changes in political leadership are often associated with readjustments or reversals of policy, the impact of which can be both wide-ranging in scope and long-lasting in duration. Foreign policy, which…

The death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il on December 17, 2011 has prematurely set in motion the leadership changes that were anticipated in 2012. To be sure, a leadership…

The year 2011 closed with several symbolic events in predicting Japan’s relations with the Korean peninsula. When President Lee Myung-bak held summit talks with Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko on December…

Leadership has great bearing on the way the states active in Northeast Asia address sensitive questions related to the Korean peninsula. How should the shared goal of denuclearization of North…

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…