Last month on April 10th, the Korea Society and the Japan Society hosted a virtual talk titled “Geopolitics of Coronavirus: Japan and Korea,” moderated by Dr. Joshua Walker from the Japan Society. The two main speakers, Dr. Sheila Smith, Senior Fellow for Japan Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations; and Dr. Stephen Noerper, Senior Director at The Korea Society, outlined how these two democratic nations in Northeast Asia have tackled the coronavirus pandemic to date, and the regional implications it may pose in the foreseeable future.

The outbreak of the 2019 novel coronavirus is so potentially impactful that we are devoting this entire edition to the epidemic, to an attempt to gauge its seriousness. Some stories are so big that it is hard to get your arms around them and this one definitely fits that category. Social media wasn't a factor during the 2003 SARS epidemic. The Chinese economy was a much smaller percentage of global GDP, and travel to and from China was far less common. So a simple comparison to SARS is not enough.

This is a response to Marsha's piece here.

Written By Eleanor Shiori Hughes -  November 14, 2019

Our subject is health - both the health of the global economy, and the health of its global citizens. Each is dependent on the other, especially in a world where healthcare expenditures continue to rise. According to the World Bank, they average ten percent of GDP and are nearly double that in the US. 

EconVue interviews Kathryn Ibata-Arens, Vincent de Paul Professor of Political Science & Director of the Global Asian Studies Program at DePaul University.  Her new book has just been published by Stanford Press: Beyond Technonationalism, Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Asia.