Glyn Ford   It is time to come to terms with the fact that the world is in denial about the realities behind Pyongyang’s drive for nuclear deterrence. Its Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Programme (ICBM) and its compendium of nuclear tests are a demonstration of weakness, not strength; an answer to paucity rather than plenty. The image of […]

Professor Hyung-A Kim Outgoing President Moon Jae-in, in his recent “Talk with Citizens”, claimed that South Korea’s rise to the “top 10 nations” in the world while in office was his biggest achievement. Moon’s acclaim of South Korea’s achievements, especially in 2021, is warranted by the worldwide phenomena of Korean culture and art-based soft power, […]

Mikyoung Kim (Former Associate Professor, Hiroshima City University of Japan) Japan’s unusual ‘no-show’ in Washington DC The U.S., which has not directly intervened in so-called “history issues” between Korea and Japan, had to witness and deal with Korea-Japan diplomatic tensions in Washington last November. It happened during the Korea-U.S.-Japan Vice Foreign Ministers’ Meeting held on […]

Dr. Rita Udor One Saturday evening six months after I went to Willow village for my field studies, I was introduced to Ziggy by my informant. Sunday after church, in the hot summer afternoon, I met with him. He was wearing a winter jacket, and I wondered how anyone could wear such thick clothing on […]

Professor Tom Sorell The first case of Covid in South Korea (see Footnote 1) was reported on 20 January 2020. The initial half-dozen cases all had a connection with Wuhan or Hubei province in China. In about a month, the number of cases had risen to around 30, with some infections also imported from Japan, […]

Hoon Jaung (Professor, Dept. Political Science and International Relations, Chung Ang University) This essay was drawn from the author’s publication in Korean, “COVID 19 Crisis and Korean Dataveillance State,” in Korean Journal of Legislative Studies vol. 26(3), 2020. When the world fell into the COVID 19 crisis in early 2020, South Korea seemed to be […]

Dr. Michael Schluter and Dr. Jeremy Ive The underlying issues and way forward This article is a brief introduction to Relational Peacebuilding Initiatives’ proposal for a new way forward for peace on the Korean Peninsula. Our starting point is that the problems of the Peninsula can only be resolved if trust is rebuilt between North […]

Dr. Jim Hoare* The election of Joe Biden as US president has once again brought the question of engaging with the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – North Korea) to the fore. It is doubtful, of course, that the DPRK will be very high on Biden’s list of urgent tasks but sooner or later […]