KEI Live

This week, Congress introduced 2 articles of impeachment against President Trump. One for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress.

The ongoing confrontation between the White House and U.S. Congress will likely engross President Donald Trump’s political attention in the months ahead. Given his central role in executing highly delicate negotiations with North Korea and high-stakes face-off over trade with China, the question on many people’s minds is how the impeachment inquiry may affect the U.S. government’s execution of foreign policy. Our guest today, KEI Senior Director Troy Stangarone, addresses this topic head-on. 

This is part two of the episodes dealing with impeachment - specifically addressing how the impeachment will affect U.S. negotiations with North Korea. 

If you haven’t listened to part 1 on the precedents set by the impeachment inquiries against Presidents Nixon and Clinton, I highly recommend you going back and listening to the episode. You can find it here:

https://www.podbean.com/eu/pb-yymkb-ca17b9

The ongoing confrontation between the White House and U.S. Congress will likely engross President Donald Trump’s political attention in the months ahead. Given his central role in executing highly delicate negotiations with North Korea and high-stakes face-off over trade with China, the question on many people’s minds is how the impeachment inquiry may affect the U.S. government’s execution of foreign policy. 

Two most recent cases of impeachment proceedings against an incumbent president provide insights into what domestic and international observers could expect going forward. Our interns, Soojin Hwang and Rachel Kirsch review precedents set by Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

This is the first of two episodes dealing with the impeachment scandal. 

Please also find Soojin and Rachel's accompanying blog post here: http://blog.keia.org/2019/10/impeachment-precedent-lessons-nixon-clinton-administrations/

While it is frustrating to see North Korean projectiles flying out to sea and Pyongyang’s erratic, unpredictable reactions in negotiations, we cannot forget where things stood in 2017 - the days of Fire and Fury. The exchange of rhetoric between the United States and North Korea appeared to be pushing both sides towards a confrontation. Then a shift happened just as quickly as the escalation - especially after North Korea’s showed interest in jointly participating in the Olympics with South Korea at Pyeongchang in early 2018. 

At the heart of this joint participation in the Olympics was the ice hockey team that was formed with athletes representing both North and South Korea - these are events that you might be already familiar with, but a lot was happening at Pyeongchang, both at a geopolitical level and at a human level. 

The unified Korea team was more than just a story of North-South reconciliation. The team was pan-Korean with players of Korean descent from Canada and the United States skating side-by-side.  

Seth Berkman is the author of the first book on this unique event. His new book "A Team of Their Own: How an International Sisterhood Made Olympic History" is now available wherever good books are sold.

What does it mean to be Korean?

Is a person's Korean identity contingent on their birth on the Korean Peninsula, their parents’ ethnicity, or their ability to speak Korean? 

100 years ago - this was an easier question to answer - a person self-identifying as Korean was likely born on the Korean Peninsula, to two ethnic Korean parents, and spoke Korean.

But the complexity of Korean identity in the 21st century parallels the turbulence of Korea’s history in the 20th century: displacement of caused by Japanese colonialism, Stalin’s deportation of ethnic Koreans to Central Asia, Zainichi Koreans left in limbo after the second world war in Japan, and the migration of Koreans to the Americas in search of new opportunities.  

Now there is a vast Korean diaspora around the world - and also a new multi-cultural Korean community in the Korean Peninsula.

Our guest Joseph Juhn spent the last 3 years developing a documentary about one particular group: the Korean Cubans. His project focuses on the life of one Korean-Cuban in particular - Jeronimo Lim who fought alongside Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in the 1958 Revolution. "Jeronimo: An Untold Tale of Koreans in Cuba" premiers in South Korea on November 21, 2019.

30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, people’s aspiration to establish a pluralistic liberal democracy appears to be under scrutiny around the world - anti-immigration policies dominate political discourse in many countries, and strongmen like Viktor Orban in Hungary and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines have come to power in nominally democratic countries.  

What about South Korea? In 2016 and 2017, the world was witness to millions of Koreans rallying to oust then-president Park Geun-hye who faced allegations of corruption and influence peddling. The so-called Candlelight movement succeeded and a progressive administration under Moon Jae-in assumed the mandate after the impeachment. For a little bit, South Korea appeared to be a global outlier. 

However, all is not well - there are simmering tensions when it comes to issues like gender equality and the resettlement of refugees from the Middle East.  

Is South Korea perhaps not an outlier after all? More broadly, is South Korea living up to the ideals of liberal democracy?  

Our guest today, Johns Hopkins University Ph.D. candidate Darcie Draudt, assesses the health of South Korea’s democracy by examining the evolution of the country’s conception of citizenship and what groups are excluded in the current social contract.

You can find the paper here: http://www.keia.org/sites/default/files/publications/kei_aps_draught_191017.pdf

Strategically located at the crossroads of Central Asia, China, and Russia, Mongolia has long attracted the attention of regional powers - including the Koreas. How is this traditionally-nomadic, but resource-rich, country establishing its own place in the modern world? What challenges does it now face? What role does the Korean Peninsula play in its foreign policy?

Dr. Alicia Campi joins us on Korean Kontext to provide an in-depth look at Ulaanbataar's worldview and discuss her new book "Mongolia's Foreign Policy: Navigating a Changing World."

Though hesitant to officially join the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy, South Korea is seeking to promote many of the same values through the Moon administration’s “New Southern Policy.” Central to this agenda is strengthening South Korea’s relations with India. With a strategic partnership and a free trade agreement between the two countries, the foundations of the relationship are already strong. However, both capitals must rise to meet evolving regional security challenges and capitalize on new economic opportunities. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Act East” policy is complementary to Moon’s “New Southern Policy,” but both must work to synchronize the two agendas to upgrade bilateral economic ties and expand security cooperation.

Drs. Ahn Choong-yong and Jagannath Panda join Korean Kontext to discuss what they see on the horizon for South Korea-India economic cooperation.

The U.S. Peace Corps was active in South Korea between 1961 and 1981. One of the many volunteers who served in South Korea was KEI president and CEO Kathleen Stephens. Her time in Korea was the beginning of a long journey that would eventually lead her to become U.S. ambassador to the country in 2008. In this episode, we look back on her first visit to South Korea.

This interview was conducted by Tyler Lloyd who runs the wonderful podcast series “My Peace Corp Story,” which you can find on iTunes and here: https://mypeacecorpsstory.com/.

The episode is a little longer than the usual Korean Kontext episode, but it is highly informative and worth every minute.

This month, the world was reminded once again that the relationship between the Republic of Korea and Japan is deeply fractious. Japan has imposed restrictions on the export of chemical components for semiconductor chips – accusing South Korea of failing to provide sufficient guarantees that these materials are not being smuggled into North Korea. However, the accusation comes amid a rift between the two countries over the South Korean court’s ruling that select Japanese companies that had forced Koreans into slave labor during the Second World War had to compensate surviving victims.

This crisis builds on top of existing tensions around other historical legacy issues stemming from Japan’s 35-year colonial occupation of Korea – including a disputed islet, ongoing controversy around compensation for sexual slavery by the Japanese military, and how Japan writes about these historical events in its textbooks.

The U.S. government has encouraged the two countries to make amends for decades with limited success. In this environment, who can be the advocate of reconciliation?

Dr. Kristin Vekasi (@ProfVekasi) and Jiwon Nam believe that the private sector has a critical role to play. The discussion builds on their recent research for the Korea Economic Institute, which you can find here: http://www.keia.org/sites/default/files/publications/kei_aps_namvekasi_190624.pdf

Also, keep your eye open for the upcoming publication of Vekasi and Nam's "Boycotting Japan Boycotting Japan: Explaining Divergence in Chinese and South Korean Economic Backlash" in the December 2019 issue of the Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs.

When Kim Jong-il died in 2011, the world held its breath as North Korea entered uncharted waters. No other communist dictatorship in the last century – for that matter no other autocratic state that is not a monarchy – has been able to successfully transfer power to a third generation. Some analysts in Washington and elsewhere raised the possibility of the country collapsing in mere months.

But when that didn’t happen, a new theory arose – would he be the great reformer to lead North Korea to the community of nations? 8 years on, that has not yet happened either.

We still know so little about the North Korean leader – and so much of how we think of Kim Jong-un comes from media portrayals, the parodies, and assumptions amalgamated from our knowledge of other autocrats.

But a new book provides the first comprehensive and readable study of the incumbent North Korean leader. Written by the veteran Washington Post correspondent Anna Fifield, the exhaustively researched new book, titled “The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un” provides a more rounded picture of the first North Korean leader to meet the U.S. president.

Anna Fifield (@annafifield) came to KEI and sat down with KEI President Ambassador Kathleen Stephens – in fact, just before the Trump-Kim meeting on June 30, 2019 - for a brief chat.