Why Democracy Is Still Winning in Korea | Eye on Korea Ep. 39

South Korea’s democracy has weathered stress tests few others have—moving from a night of martial law to a presidential impeachment and a snap election—causing the V-Dem’s 2025 report to downgrade the country from “liberal democracy” to “electoral democracy” amid a broader democratic retreat.

Derek Mitchell, former U.S. Ambassador to Burma and former President of the National Democratic Institute, argues that South Korea is demonstrating precisely what a strong democracy is capable of through accountability, reforms, and transparency. Mitchell also widens the lens to the global picture, weighing the forces that could threaten a worldwide tide of democratic decline and the resilience of democracies like South Korea and Taiwan as geostrategic competition in Northeast Asia intensifies.

The conversation also examines how South Korea is managing U.S.-China competition, from the weaponization of trade to the prospect of a Taiwan contingency, U.S. expectations of South Korea in a regional conflict, and the priorities underlying the Trump administration’s call for alliance modernization.

The episode also includes discussion on the warm South Korea-Japan relationship, the more fraught state of South Korea-China ties, defense exports, North Korea, and more.

[This material is distributed by KEI on behalf of the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, DC.]

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(41)

What Replaced the Tariffs the Supreme Court Struck Down | Eye on Korea Ep. 42

The Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs on February 20, 2026, holding that the statute never authorized the President to impose them. The tariff era did not end there. It moved to other statut...

3 Syys 29min

Nuclear Submarines and the Limits of the 123 Agreement | Eye on Korea Ep. 41

President Donald Trump said South Korea’s nuclear-powered submarines would be built at the Hanwha Philly Shipyard. Joyce Connery explains why they may not be built there, and what the actual construct...

3 Syys 34min

Can a Middle Power Run Its Own Grand Strategy? | Eye on Korea Ep. 40

South Korea is running a deliberate grand strategy, pursuing autonomy and freedom of action while keeping the U.S.-South Korea alliance intact and turning the trade power and influence it has built in...

30 Heinä 34min

K-Defense Goes Global | Eye on Korea Ep. 38

South Korea’s defense industry has gone from supplying its own military to arming others, and “K-defense” is now one of Seoul’s fastest-growing exports. Rob Rapson, a career U.S. diplomat who spent de...

29 Kesä 35min

Why China-North Korea Military Cooperation Should Alarm Washington | Eye on Korea Ep. 37

Xi Jinping just spent two days in Pyongyang, his first trip to North Korea in nearly seven years, and the message was hard to miss. China is reinvesting in a relationship it had let cool, and the mili...

18 Kesä 36min

South Korea Wants a Bigger Seat at the Table | Ep. 36

Former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Philip Goldberg returns to Eye on Korea, making the case that South Korea has become a legitimate middle power with one of the fastest-growing defense-industrial ...

9 Kesä 32min

OPCON Transfer Should Have Happened a “Long Time Ago” | Ep. 35

Wartime operational control, or OPCON, should have been transferred from U.S. to South Korean forces. That is the case Ambassador Joseph Yun makes on Eye on Korea—South Korea must take primary respons...

13 Touko 36min