Won Gon Park, Chair of EAI's North Korea Studies Center and Professor at Ewha Womans University, outlines how the Trump administration is creating a strategic linkage between economics and security—through tariffs, defense cost-sharing, and alliance restructuring—to contain China. In particular, Professor Park analyzes potential shifts in the ROK-U.S. alliance, including Koreanization of defense, early OPCON transfer, and expanded roles of U.S. Forces Korea. The author underscores the strategic choices Seoul must confront in navigating a more transactional alliance framework as the U.S. in...

Commentary

• Won Gon PARK
• July 18, 2025

Leif-Eric Easley, Professor at Ewha Womans University, examines the new Lee Jae Myung administration’s initial foreign policies and explains the calculation behind their continuity with the Yoon Suk-yeol administration. Despite expectations that the progressive government would overturn the previous diplomatic initiatives, Professor Easley observes that the Lee administration is pragmatically limiting its scope of foreign policy change. According to him, this consistency is due to the new administration’s acknowledgement of the U.S.-ROK alliance’s strategic importance, the value of relat...

Commentary

• Leif-Eric EASLEY
• July 15, 2025

Minghao Zhao, Professor and Deputy Director at the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, underscores the urgent need for strategic vigilance on the Korean Peninsula amid a confluence of destabilizing factors. Professor Zhao examines the deteriorating security environment shaped by North Korea’s military expansion, U.S.-China strategic rivalry, the repercussions of the Russia-Ukraine war, and shifting domestic politics in South Korea and the United States. The author presents a sober reassessment of the denuclearization impasse, critiquing past U.S.-North Korea diplomacy while warn...

Commentary

• Minghao ZHAO
• July 11, 2025