Foreign Relations

The year 2007 displayed remarkable progress in Korea-U.S. economic relations on many different levels. At the global level, our two countries have worked closely together to meet international challenges. For…

Korea’s economy in the year 2005 demonstrated that it is picking up significant positive momentum, although the full-year performance in 2005 showed mixed results. Korea’s real gross domestic product (GDP)…

This article is aimed at analyzing, in a comparative perspective, the economic reforms undertaken by Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) and Cuba since the demise of…

This paper compares Sino–South Korean management of bilateral economic and political tensions; it argues that China’s WTO entry has provided an external institutional framework for managing disputes on the economic…

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…

South Korea, Japan, and the United States have pledged to deepen security cooperation in response to growing threats from North Korea. On June 11, the nations convened at a Trilateral Ministerial Meeting and issued a joint statement condemning North Korea’s provocative posture and reaffirming their commitment to nuclear non-proliferation. But this trilateral alignment repeats the…