As we approach the second US-DPRK Summit, the media in the United States is so focused on the dynamics between President Trump and Kim Jong-un that the interests and motivations of another key player has gone under-discussed: China.

It was Kim’s meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing earlier this year that alerted the world to Pyongyang’s intentions to advance the second Summit meeting with the United States. China is also North Korea’s most prominent economic partner.

And yet we do not give enough thought to how China may be approaching the situation on the Korean Peninsula.

Our guest today, Dr. Lee Seong-hyon, is the Director of the Center for Chinese Studies and Department of Unification Strategy at the Sejong Institute. He sat down with KEI’s Juni Kim to provide us with his views on how China approaches the tensions on the Korean Peninsula and its broader ambitions in the region vis-a-vis the United States.

He also led a seminar discussion on this very topic at the Korea Economic Institute in October 2018 - which you can see in full here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qcVf-A8FzE

When people talk about South Korea’s foreign policy, they are more often than not focused on how Seoul engages with its immediate neighbors on denuclearization. However, as a global trading power, South Korea’s foreign policy interests extends beyond the Peninsula.

In particular, President Moon Jae-in has been focused on building a more robust relationship with nations in Southeast Asia. Dubbed “The New Southern Policy,” South Korea is committed to working with ASEAN nations to build a more prosperous future. But will it be able to compete against China and Japan with their massive investments through One Belt One Road and the Asian Development Bank? And how will Korea navigate the geographically, politically, and economically fragmented community? What does South Korea bring to the table, and what does the region offer to South Korea?

Our guest today, Senior Coordinator of the Presidential Committee on New Southern Policy Park Jae-kyung shares with Korean Kontext his outlook on the region and where he sees Korea's advantages.

Also watch the panel discussion between Mr. Park and figures from U.S.-ASEAN Business Council, U.S. Department of State, Asan Institute for Policy Studies, and others discuss U.S.-ROK cooperation in Southeast Asia and India here: https://youtu.be/rmXWkn8fEEE

Amid the maelstrom of the drama around diplomacy with North Korean, it’s easy to forget that South Korea and the United States are engaged in a fairly serious trade dispute over tariffs that Washington imposed on imported solar panels and washing machines. 

This has caused significant tensions at a time when these long-time security allies need to be in lock step to advance the denuclearization of North Korea.

Our guest today, Dr. June Park, is a political economist who has been carefully monitoring trade dispute for years. She is currently an adjunct professor of Global Affairs at the George Mason University Korea and a Non-resident James A. Kelly Korea Fellow at the Pacific Forum.

She is the author of a KEI report on the effects of the ongoing trade war on Korea’s solar panel industry, which you can find in the link below:

http://www.keia.org/sites/default/files/publications/kei_aps_june_park_190102_final.pdf

Dr. Park speaks with KEI's Junil Kim on what factors are driving the current trade frictions and what could be done to alleviate these tensions.

Long before BTS and Psy made their debut, a handful of entrepreneurs were laying the foundations for what would become the Korean Wave in the United States. With Korean pop culture now a global sensation, Korean Kontext sits down with one of these pioneers - Michael Hong, CEO and Co-founder of the global content distributor Digital Media Rights.

In our discussion, Michael touches on the cultural and technological changes that accelerated the spread of Korean entertainment content. And also what the Korean Wave meant to him personally as a Korean-American from Queens, NY.

Michael Hong is this year's honoree at KEI's Korean-American Day. If you have not yet checked out Korean Kontext's interviews with our other honorees - Susan Kang of Soompi and Charlotte and Dave Cho of Sokoglam - we highly recommend you go back and listen.

Korea today leads the world in autos and electronics, but newly emerging manufacturers and protectionism threaten the country's position as a leading exporter. In search of innovative industries that will allow Korea to punch above its weight in the global market, cosmetics are seen as a possible contender. Enter Sokoglam: an online market place curating K-beauty products in the United States. Their founders, Charlotte and Dave Cho, sit down with Korean Kontext to discuss how they built the business and where they hope to take the industry in the future. 

This is the second of three episodes with honorees from KEI's Korean-American Day celebration. If you haven't yet, we highly recommend the first episode with Susan Kang, the founder of Soompi.

K-pop had an explosive year in 2018, but it didn't arise from a vacuum. Since 1998, one web community - Soompi - has been sharing the latest information about Korea's thriving pop culture scene and steadily building a community. It would be no exaggeration to claim that a lot of South Korea's soft power is built on this community. 

Korean Kontext sits down with Soompi's founder, Susan Kang - who is also the 2019 Korean-American Day honoree for her contributions to advancing awareness of Korean culture in the United States. But as the interview with her reveals, the community she built was more than a place for K-pop fans to gather - it was a safe place, a home away from home, and a place of understanding. And perhaps that's the biggest takeaway from the Korean Wave: that we are not all that different from one another.

2018 has been an incredibly eventful year for both the Koreas and the U.S.-Korea relationship: from North Korea’s participation in the Winter Olympics at the start of the year to the Trump-Kim Summit in June, things moved at a dizzying speed.

But it was more than just the summitry - there were developments on social and economic fronts. South Korea’s foreign policy looked to Southeast Asia, women rallied against harassment, and people debated the country’s energy mix. This and much more on this final episode of the year.

Interest in the Korean peninsula is generally very narrow in the United States - it tends to be focused on North Korea and security issues, particularly the country's ballistic and nuclear weapons developments. Given the security challenges, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but how do we begin to engage with a society that we don’t quite understand? What are the aspirations of the North Korean people? What is their world view?

Making the task particularly difficult, North Korea is a notoriously isolated country - doing field studies in the country is not an option. But there is one discipline that presents a window into the collective imagination and perceptions of the North Korean society: literature.

Dr. Dafna Zur joins Korean Kontext to address how literature can be used to better understand North Korea - and also tells us about the complex history of children’s literature on the Korean Peninsula. 

Also check out her lecture at the Library of Congress on science fiction in North Korea: https://youtu.be/mH8RPQWd-ho

Last Friday, on November 30, 2018, President George H.W. Bush passed away. In the days that followed, there were many discussions in the foreign policy community about the late president's handling of the many dramatic events during his tenure: the collapse of the Soviet Union, unification of Germany, democratization of Eastern Europe, the Gulf War, etc. Here, the Korean Peninsula often gets sidelined - however, President Bush senior should be remembered for strengthening not only the U.S.-Korea relationship but also extending critical support to the nascent democratic institution in South Korea. Moreover, it was during the Bush administration that the two Koreas joined the United Nations and began discussing the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. To talk about these developments in greater detail, KEI sat down with Donald Gregg who served as ambassador to South Korea between 1989 and 1993. 

A good accompanying piece for this episode is the article on President H.W. Bush's legacy in Korea by our president, Ambassador Kathleen Stephens, on KEI's Peninsula Blog. Find the post here

What does a unified Korea look like? Beyond the question of whether the government of this new country will be a unitary or federal one, how will the people - separated not just by time, but also increasingly language and worldview - interact with one another? This goes to the heart of the research by Christopher Green (PhD candidate, Leiden University) and Steven Denney (PhD candidate, University of Toronto) who are examining how the broader Korean perspective on what defines a Korean nation is evolving over time.

You can find their research paper for KEI's Academic Paper Series here