Politics

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…

“Previously, all the people used to sing the song We Are the Happiest in the World, feeling optimistic about the future with confidence in the great Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. I will work with devotion to ensure that the past era does not remain as a moment in history but is re-presented in the…

By Troy Stangarone In the Chinese zodiac, 2016 is the year of the Fire Monkey. Fire Monkeys are said to be ambitious and adventurous, as well as irritable. Despite Donald Trump’s not having been born in the year of the Monkey, looking back, his victory in the U.S. presidential election that year may yet seem…

By Jaeho Jeon The South Korean economy is drifting like a ship which has lost its captain while the ‘Choi Soon-sil Scandal,’ a civilian who has no official title, has shaken South Korea for over a month. President Park Geun-hye's approval rating has fell to 4 percent, an all-time low for elected Presidents in South…

By Troy Stangarone As it begins to sink in that the next U.S. president will be Donald Trump, one question that will be on the mind of those in Northeast Asia is what will Donald Trump’s North Korea policy look like? While North Korea was a more significant topic during the 2016 election than in…