Politics

North Korea is a country easy to approach emotionally. For anyone with even a little twinge of conscience toward human rights, it evokes disgust. For many in South Korea, who…

Since the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994 there have been numerous predictions that the collapse of the North Korean political system would be imminent, yet the Kim dynasty continues…

Despite an inferior information communication environment, North Korea has a high capacity to conduct robust cyber operations aimed at collecting foreign intelligence, disrupting foreign comput-ers, information and communication systems, networks…

This PDF is the full publication and contains all of the following sections: KEI Board of Directors KEI Advisory Council About the Korea Economic Institute of America Preface by KEI…

With the final rule regarding the CHIPS Act guardrails released on September 22, Korean chipmakers’ ability to receive U.S. subsidies while maintaining operations in China appears to be on firmer footing.  Korean chipmakers had been caught in a form of limbo ever since the U.S. Department of Commerce released the proposed guardrails in March 2023,…

The 18 August 2023 summit that brought together the leaders of Japan, South Korea and the United States at Camp David was rightly hailed as a breakthrough moment in consolidating trilateral security ties, especially after years of near-frozen relations. US officials stressed the importance of creating enduring institutions and structures among the three countries. These…

This is the eight piece in a series looking at how the issues identified in KEI’s annual “10 Issues to Watch for on the Korean Peninsula” series and other issues of note developed in 2022. The original “10 Issues” piece can be found here. Partisan shifts in Korea can give rise to subtle—and not-so-subtle—differences in Seoul’s…

It took 53 days of legislative vacuum for South Korea’s two political parties to finalize committee chair appointments for the second half of the 21st National Assembly. While immediate points of tension such as wrangling over a new police support organization may have shaped the partisan divide, these deadlocks are a perennial issue in South…