One of the few countries that managed to successfully transform itself from an aid-receiving country to a donor country, South Korea is an economic success story which is often seen as a role model for emerging countries in the region and beyond. Its foreign policy seeks to capitalize on these assets but, as a middle-power, Seoul is also active in shaping a regional architecture for East Asia.
However, the erratic behavior of its northern neighbor persistently undermines the stability of the peninsula, making its objective difficult to achieve. Ifri's Center for Asian Studies examines the developments on the Korean peninsula from these two complementary perspectives.
Senior Research Fellow and Director of Ifri's Center for Asian Studies
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As Democratic Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) continuous development of non-conventional weapons and challenges of the international community reaches a new level, Republic of Korea (ROK) appears more than ever as the frontline state on which most of North-East Asia security depends.
A more capable, nuclear-armed, North Korea will pose very substantial challenges to the U.S. deterrence posture.
Monitoring China-South Korea relations is key for the EU, as both countries have been designated strategic partners. Moreover, the Union has important economic ties to both, and signed a free trade agreement (FTA) with the Republic of Korea (ROK) in 2011.
Korea is the world’s 14th largest economy but the 8th largest emitter of CO2 as of 2013, due largely to an energy-intensive industry structure. Although it has continuously reduced its dependency on petroleum since it introduced the Energy Master Plan in 2008, the relative portion of non...
The alliance born of the Korean War trades the assurance of security for Seoul with a certain alignment with Washington.
Asia is now a nerve center for global economic activity and a theatre of some of the most pressing security concerns of our time. So important has Asia become to global affairs today, and ostensibly for the decades to come, that many have already dubbed the 21st Century as the “Asian Century”....
As more and more countries seek to liberalise their foreign investment regimes to attract global flows of foreign direct investment (FDI), an essential question for policy-makers is no longer just what to reform but also how to reform. How is a reformist government to sell...
Since the 2000s, China and India's needs for hydrocarbons, coming on top of those of older industrialized Asian countries (Japan and South Korea), have considerably strengthened customer-supplier links between Asia in general and the Persian Gulf, in the energy field.
The most imperative duty of the third-generation Kim Jong Un is the “survival” of North Korea. This will require not only a smooth transfer of power from his father but also shoring up the national economy. This is because I feel the current regime will sooner or later come to the end of its...
The Green Growth Policy in South Korea has symbolized a paradigm shift to cope with climate change, fossil fuel depletion, and global economic recession. The emerging paradigm stands to create new engines for economic growth through green technology and clean energy. The government recently...
Séminaire autour du professeur YOO Jung-hwan, qui analysera les implications pour les relations intercoréennes de l'élection de Mme Park Geun-hye à la présidence de Corée du Sud le 19 décembre dernier.
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Seminar with Ryo Sahashi, Associate Professor, Kanagawa University and Fellow with JCIE (Japan Center for International Exchanges), Marie-Orange Rivé-Lasan, Professor, University Paris Diderot and Alice Ekman, Associate Research Fellow,...
Meeting with Hyung-Gon Jeong, Economist, Specialist of the DPRK economy with the Korea Institute of International Economic Policy (KIEP, Séoul). The seminar is chaired by Françoise Nicolas, Economist, Ifri.<...>
