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In this episode we speak with Mr. Ken E. Gause, currently a senior research analyst with the International Affairs Group and Iranian Studies Program at CNA Strategic Studies in Alexandria,…
As reported in the previous issue of Korea Insight (“The Bulldozer Moves In: Lee Myung-bak is Inaugurated as the Republic of Korea’s President”), President Lee moved to streamline the government…
On February 25, Lee Myung-bak was sworn in as the President of the Republic of Korea. In front of a crowd of some 60,000 gathered, including U.S. Secretary of State…
On December 19, the voters of South Korea elected Lee Myung-bak, the previous mayor of Seoul and a former business executive, to be the next president. The candidate of the…
In 1996, Korea joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), marking Korea's rise into the ranks of the developed world. Only twenty years ago this year, Korea began…
A curious feature of advanced industrial states is anxiety about the future of democracy, not only abroad but at home as well. These worries—encapsulated in the concept of backsliding--have been particularly evident in the United States following the challenges posed by the Trump administration. The bruising fight over Brexit in Britain and the rise of…
In the last two posts, we have provided data on the share of military personnel in the Politburo and analyzed in more detail the diversity of military backgrounds, some tied to the weapons program, but others linked more clearly to the military-industrial complex, technology and internal security. Here, we consider several intepretations of these developments,…
In a previous post, we provided data on the shifting composition of the Politburo, based on a classification of personnel into six different career paths: military, diplomatic, party, state, economic and provincial. We showed that since the failed Hanoi summit of 2018, the share of military personnel has returned to levels not seen since the…
One prominent strand of North Korea watching takes the form of tracking individual personnel movements: the ups and downs associated with retirements, purges and the promotion of new favorites. Yet there is persistent doubt about whether these movements are really consequential, particularly in a highly personalist political system. We can get a somewhat more rounded…