Troy Stangarone is the senior director of congressional affairs and trade at the Korea Economic Institute of America. He was also a Council on Foreign Relations international affairs fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

New administrations have an opportunity for fresh starts. Under presidents Lee Myung-bak and Barack Obama, U.S.-South Korea (ROK) relations developed a level of cooperation that was arguably the closest the alliance has ever shared. This was in contrast to the weakening of South Korea’s ties with its neighbors. Relations with China frayed while those with North Korea deteriorated to an historic low. The incoming Park Geun-hye administration hopes to reverse these trends, but North Korea’s successful nuclear and missile tests present near term obstacles to starting anew with Pyongyang and has left regional actors adopting familiar positions. Read more »

John Hemmings is a doctoral candidate in the international relations department at the London School of Economics and a non-resident Sasakawa Peace Foundation fellow at the Pacific Forum CSIS.

South Korea’s stabilization efforts in Afghanistan have not gained a lot of prominence in the Western media, but they are arguably one of the great successes of recent ROK overseas policy and deserve international recognition. The decision, made this September, to extend South Korean involvement in the Afghan theatre for one more year, demonstrates Seoul’s determination to continue its contribution to the stabilization efforts of International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) and NATO troops and to solidify its Global Korea posture. Read more »

Scott Bruce is a project manager for the Partnership for Nuclear Security at CRDF Global.

Counterproliferation efforts are an important test of South Korea’s “Global Korea” policy. When it comes to combating proliferation, one way of assessing how “global” the Global Korea policy is to look at the efforts that are centered on North Korea versus those that go beyond the Korean peninsula.  As explained in CFR’s new ebook Global Korea, South Korea’s counter and nonproliferation efforts were traditionally driven by the U.S.-ROK security alliance and threat of North Korea. Read more »

Terence Roehrig is professor of National Security Affairs and director of the Asia-Pacific Studies Group at the U.S. Naval War College.  

The Republic of Korea (ROK) Navy welcomes visitors to its website with the headline, “To the Sea, To the World.” Over the past two decades, South Korea has been building an ocean-going, blue water navy that is capable of extended operations in waters beyond the peninsula. After the sinking of the Cheonan, the Navy scaled back plans to build a blue water navy to focus attention on more immediate defense needs around the peninsula. Last week, the ROK Navy announced a plan to resume the expansion of its blue water fleet with a new line of submarines, more Aegis-class destroyers, and twenty frigates.

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Park Gil-sung is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute of Social Research at Korea University. Moon Chun-sang is former Program Officer at The Asia Foundation Korea office.

The image of “Korea” as perceived by South Koreans has traditionally been that of one nation, one history, and one culture. The South Korean educational curriculum contains teachings that stress the common bond among all Koreans, homogeneity of bloodline, the whirlwind of often tragic history, and, more recently, the dramatic improvements in living standards and individual liberty in the South during the latter part of the twentieth century. Read more »

Park Cheol-hee is an associate professor at Seoul National University.

NHK live broadcasts on the tsunami that swept coastal villages in Eastern Japan on March 11, 2011, were a shocking scene to the South Korean people. Japan now confronts the aftermath of triple natural disasters—an earthquake of a record 9.0 magnitude, a devastating tsunami, and the threat of radioactive contamination—that have left 11,417 dead, 16,273 missing, and more than 350,000 people struggling to survive at crowded shelters. Read more »

Jill Kosch O’Donnell is a former Junior Associate of The Asia Foundation and is a writer in Washington, DC.

In an interview with the Korea Herald earlier this year, Hur Dong-Soo, CEO of Korea’s GS Caltex, called his company’s investments in heavy-oil upgrading facilities a “green growth business.” As the phrase “green growth” becomes ever more common—now used in reference to everything from solar panel exports to a stimulus-backed cure-all for ailing national economies—such claims beg the question, what does green growth really mean? Is it a strategy for cashing in on the growing global demand for clean energy products, like wind turbines and smart grid components? Is it the goal to derive more power from renewable sources? Or, is it investing in technology to meet the demand for cleaner-burning petroleum products, as GS Caltex is doing? Read more »

Jack Pritchard was the President of the Korea Economic Institute and was formerly ambassador and special envoy for negotiations with North Korea.

Last year I was privileged to co-chair the Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force Report U.S. Policy Toward the Korean Peninsula. One of the Task Force’s observations was that there was “significant risk that [the administration’s] ‘strategic patience’ will result in acquiescence to North Korea’s nuclear status as a fait accompli.” Several months have transpired since the report was published in June 2010 and “strategic patience” continues. Read more »

This excerpt is based on a report by See-Won Byun from the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy, “North Korea’s Provocations and Their Impact on Northeast Asian Regional Security.” 

North Korean provocations against South Korea through the sinking of the Cheonan in March 2010 and the artillery shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November 2010 have not only heightened inter-Korean tensions, but have also exposed differences in the reactions of North Korea’s neighbors, underscoring the possibility that peninsular instability may heighten tensions and presage potential conflict among regional powers.  These tensions have exposed differing preferences among North Korea’s neighbors regarding what might constitute a preferred ‘end state’ on the Korean Peninsula that might result from North Korea’s continued decline (i.e., the potential regional impact of South Korean-led unification of the Korean Peninsula). Read more »

Troy Stangarone is the Director of Congressional Affairs and Trade for the Korea Economic Institute. His views are his own.

With the Seoul G20 Summit rapidly approaching on November 11-12, 2010, expectations are high that the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement (KORUS FTA) is finally nearing the home stretch. The recent elections in the United States seem to have created a more favorable climate in the House of Representatives for agreement and all that remains is for the two sides to iron out their differences this week in Seoul to finally send the agreement to Capitol Hill for passage early next year. However, the overall picture may not be that simple. Read more »