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Troy Stangarone

Troy Stangarone (ts@keia.org) is the senior director of congressional affairs and trade at the Korea Economic Institute.

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Troy Stangarone

South Korea should play larger role in ending pandemic

By Troy StangaroneAs we approach the end of the second year of the pandemic, the world faces renewed uncertainty from the Omicron variant of COVID-19. However, now that South Korea has fully vaccinated 80.6 percent of its population against the coronavirus there is an opportunity for it to play a larger role in ending the pandemic. Part of the global uncertainty is from a failure of global leadership to end the pandemic. Better coordination might not have prevented the rise of the Omicron variant, but traditional global leaders such as the United States and the other G-7 nations, along with aspiring global or regional leaders such as China or those of the Quad, have failed to facilitate the type of cooperation necessary to bring the pandemic to an end. To end the pandemic the world needs to slow the ability of COVID-19 to replicate, but vaccine distribution has been uneven. High-income countries such as the United States, the members of the European Union and South Korea have purchased a majority of the world's vaccines, limiting the ability to vaccinate other populations. According

Dec 7, 2021By Troy Stangarone
Troy Stangarone

Will Korea meet its COP26 pledges?

By Troy Stangarone For the last two weeks, much of the world's attention has been focused on Glasgow and COP26, the U.N. summit to address climate change. World leaders and government officials have been working to bridge the divide between the short-term need for economic growth and the steps required to deal with the long-term challenges our planet faces from rising temperatures. This tension was brought to the forefront of the talks after an agreement on deforestation was reached early during negotiations in Glasgow. More than 100 countries agreed “to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030 while delivering sustainable development and promoting an inclusive rural transformation.” Trees absorb and hold in significant amounts of carbon dioxide, which is released into the atmosphere when they are cut down and left to rot or are burned. Despite signing up to the deforestation agreement, Indonesia's minister for the environment argued that the agreement was unfair as it undermined Indonesia's efforts for economic growth. Indonesia's dilemma is one that eve

Nov 11, 2021By Troy Stangarone
Troy Stangarone

Americans view US-Korea alliance differently

By Troy StangaroneAfter the turbulence of the Trump administration it should be no surprise that the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan in August reawakened questions about the United States' willingness to support and defend its partners and allies. While the immediacy of those concerns has passed, there are good reasons to believe that the United States views its commitment to South Korea very differently than Afghanistan.After more than seven decades, the security, economic, and people-to-people ties between the United States and South Korea are deeper than they were in the case of Afghanistan.The security ties between the United States and South Korea are based on the mutual defense treaty and seven decades of security cooperation on and off the Korean Peninsula. While the United States supported the government in Afghanistan, its commitment was not of the same as its commitment to South Korea. The United States and South Korea also share a robust and growing economic relationship. Despite the pandemic, the two countries did an estimated $154.9 million in trade an

Oct 14, 2021By Troy Stangarone
Troy Stangarone

IOC gets it wrong on North Korea

By Troy StangaroneSometimes there are situations where we have the ability to do something, but it isn't wise to do so. The recent decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to suspend North Korea from Olympic competition until the end of 2022 is a good example.In late April, North Korea announced that it would not attend the Tokyo Summer Olympics due to concerns over the coronavirus pandemic. It's hard to blame North Korea, when even the Japanese public did not want the Tokyo Games to go forward. In April, a Kyodo News poll found that 72 percent of the Japanese public didn't want the Games to go forward. Those numbers would improve some as the Games approached, but 55 percent of the Japanese public still opposed the Games in an Asahi Shimbun poll taken just before the opening ceremony. That same poll found that 68 percent of the Japanese public thought the Games would be unsafe.The Japanese public was not alone in its skepticism about the Games taking place during the pandemic. Ipsos polled individuals in 28 countries in late May and early June and found that 57 percent o

Sep 16, 2021By Troy Stangarone
Troy Stangarone

Price of resuming talks with North Korea

By Troy Stangarone One challenge that negotiators face is determining under what conditions are they willing to resume negotiations with North Korea on its nuclear weapons and missile programs. At times in the past, the United States and South Korea have insisted that North Korea demonstrate a commitment to dismantling its nuclear weapons. In an effort to advance talks, the Biden administration, however, has taken a more flexible approach and offered to meet with North Korea unconditionally. In contrast to the United States' flexibility, North Korea is reported to have demanded that specified sanctions be lifted in advance of talks. If reports based on a National Intelligence Service briefing to the National Assembly are correct, North Korea is conditioning talks on the lifting of sanctions in three areas ― its ability to export metals, loosening restrictions on its importation of refined petroleum products, and an easing of a ban on imports of luxury goods. Each of these sanctions impacts North Korea in a different way. A series of U.N. sanctions since 2016 have prohibited North Kor

Aug 19, 2021By Troy Stangarone
Price of resuming talks with North Korea
Troy Stangarone

Korea's tasks to reduce global emissions

By Troy StangaroneWhen governments meet at the U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in November they will face an increasingly difficult task in limiting global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Global temperatures have already increased by more than 1.0 degree Celsius and countries were not on track to meet their pledges from the Paris Accords prior to the pandemic. Now, as the world's economies begin to recover, the pandemic's brief reprieve from ever-increasing levels of carbon emissions is ending. To an extent, this issue should not be surprising. While Korea and other countries have pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050, those plans will be phased in over time and the current focus is understandably on vaccinations and economic recovery.The task before the world, in meeting the challenge of climate change, however, is enormous. The decline in carbon emissions from energy consumption last year was 6 percent. To meet the climate goals put forward in the Paris Accords, the world will need similar annual drops in emissions fo

Jul 22, 2021By Troy Stangarone
Korea's tasks to reduce global emissions
Troy Stangarone

Help the world vaccinate North Korea

By Troy StangaroneAfter initially lagging behind much of the developed world, South Korea's vaccination program has begun picking up steam. Health officials announced recently that around 30 of the population has received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine and they expect this figure to increase to three quarters over the next three months. South Korea's success in turning around its vaccination program, however, is at a critical stage and has implications for reopening the economy and how best to re-engage North Korea.If the vaccination program continues at its current pace, the government should be able to lift more restrictions and ease the need for social distancing. While life would begin returning to normal, the economy will also receive a boost by closing the gap in the two-speed recovery that has persisted since the second half of last year. The current recovery has been built off of successful social distancing, five supplementary budgets and a recovery in exports. Since the beginning of the pandemic, social distancing has played a key role in preventing the spread of COV

Jun 24, 2021By Troy Stangarone
Troy Stangarone

New relationship with North Korea should focus on family reunions

By Troy StangaroneBeing separated from the ones you love takes a toll on life. Over time we may adapt to life without them, but as the Korean Peninsula only knows too well a piece of us is left behind. After the World War II, my grandmother, Mary, left Italy and her family for a new life in the United States. Growing up, I would occasionally hear her talk of the experience of war and her family, but they were a distant presence rather than one she had seen in person since the end of the war. When I decided during college to go to Italy to meet my relatives before heading to Germany for a summer of study abroad, I asked my grandmother to join me on the trip. Convincing her to go wasn't easy. But once we arrived in her hometown of Villareggia, it was hard to miss the joy and happiness in everyone's eyes as nearly five decades of separation came to an end. She couldn't wait to introduce me to family I had never met and show me how her home had changed.No one was preventing my grandmother from returning to Italy. But in seeing how much she missed her family and was missed by all those le

May 27, 2021By Troy Stangarone
Troy Stangarone

Can Korean firms still prosper in China?

By Troy StangaroneLast month, Hyundai Motor announced its plans to address its declining market share in China. A shift in Chinese consumer preferences toward SUVs, together with retaliation for the deployment of THAAD, resulted in a decline in the automaker's sales from 1.14 million vehicles in 2016, to less than 686,000 in 2019.For much of the last two decades, China has been one of the world's most promising markets. Initially firms looked to China as a source for production. Since 2000, South Korean firms have set up nearly 23,500 operations in China to produce goods for sale in the global market or domestically in China. However, the hope has always been that in time, China would become a new market of consumption ― similar to the United States ― that would drive the global economy. Over the last two decades, China has grown into the world's second largest economy and largest market for new automobile sales. Its population of 1.4 billion possesses a large and growing urban middle class that has access to the disposable incomes to spend on beauty products, flat-screen TVs, smartp

Apr 29, 2021By Troy Stangarone
Troy Stangarone

Korea should phase out internal combustion engine

By Troy StangaroneIn October last year, President Moon Jae-in pledged that Korea would become carbon neutral by 2050. The question is how to achieve that goal.Over his time in office, the Moon administration has taken a series of initiatives to change Korea's energy mix and reduce emissions. These have included efforts to support the development of hydrogen as a fuel source, a commitment to achieve 39 percent power generation from renewables by 2040, and the introduction of the Green New Deal. But more will need to be done to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. The transportation sector is one area to target.According to South Korea's 2050 Carbon Neutral Strategy, the transportation sector was responsible for 14 percent of South Korea's greenhouse gas emissions and 32 percent of petroleum consumption as of 2017. The 2050 strategy envisions moving toward greener transportation through an increase in low-carbon fuels, the development of eco-friendly vehicles and a combination of better management of transportation demand and green logistics.Under a recent update to Korea's electric vehi

Mar 11, 2021By Troy Stangarone
Korea should phase out internal combustion engine
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