Foreign Relations

Science diplomacy is becoming increasingly popular in foreign policy. Branching out of public diplomacy, science diplomacy is a sophisticated and knowledge-based toolkit to secure and promote foreign policy objectives. Unlike…

The sudden announcement of a North Korea-U.S. summit in March 2018 upended all previous diplomacy concerning North Korea’s nuclear program. In return for a bilateral presidential summit, Pyongyang has agreed…

Forged in the blood and strife of the anti-Japanese struggle during the colonial era, the North Korean revolution, with Kim Il-sung at its core, was built on the ethos of…

The ROK-Japan relationship seemingly found a floor after the downward spiral that marked the end of the Lee Myung-Bak presidency and the first three years of President Park Geun-hye. Seoul…

South Korea’s National Police Agency hosted the second annual Korea-ASEAN International Crime Capacity Building Program between July 4 and 15, 2022. Ongoing efforts to transfer policing know-how to participating Southeast Asian countries supported the previous administration’s initiative to bolster ties with the region. It also represented South Korea’s use of its good governance record to…

In the last two posts on Korea and the war in Ukraine, I showed that Moon administration moved relatively quickly to join the international sanctions regime and was rewarded by inclusion on Russia’s  "unfriendly nations" list. I also argued that the costs of standing on international legal principle were softened by the fact that the…

A recent hearing by the Congressional Human Rights Commission expressed hopes for a breakthrough in South Korea’s refugee policies under the Yoon administration. Despite its growing international status and economic power, the country retains an extraordinarily low refugee acceptance rate of 1.5%. South Korea’s refugee policies have been so far shaped by political expedience, not…

As of June, South Korea’s gasoline prices increased 31% from last year. The country’s complete dependence on imports means that it is not only extremely sensitive to global shocks in supply but also shifts in the South Korean won’s (KRW) exchange rate. Foremost, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine negatively affected the global supply of energy. Russian…