Human Rights

The Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI), with the generous support of the Korea Foundation, organized six “Vision Group” roundtable conversations with leading American scholars and commentators to discuss the…

KEI’s 2020 Report on American Attitudes Toward the Korean Peninsula focuses on U.S. views on relations with South Korea, U.S. awareness of South Korean brands and cultural products, and views…

The states of Southeast Asia are on the front lines of competition not only in regard to the balance of military and political power, as analyzed in Section I, but…

Although coercion is a key element in the governing strategy of the North Korean party-state, the authorities in Pyongyang do not hold political power at the barrel of a gun…

In March 2025, South Korea admitted for the first time that the government doctored paperwork and faked the identities of at least 367 children between 1964 and 1999 in a bid for political and economic gains. South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), an independent body established by the government to investigate historical injustices, described…

On May 20, 2025, the UN General Assembly held its first-ever “high-level session” devoted to the human rights abuses of North Korea. This latest action ups the ante in calling for reform of North Korea’s abysmal human rights record. Every year since 2004, the General Assembly has adopted resolutions criticizing North Korea and calling for…

Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) are two news agencies funded by the U.S. federal government that provide information to global audiences, especially those in countries without free and independent media. But in mid-March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that targeted their funding. Their parent agency, the United States Agency…

On April 22, Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled an organization chart and released an official statement that journalists described as a “sweeping plan” to restructure the Department of State. Reflecting the hyperbolic rhetoric of the second Donald Trump administration, the statement said, “In its current form, the department is bloated, bureaucratic and unable to…