Booseung Chang joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow for the 2015-16 year.  His research interests span comparative foreign policy and policymaking process.

Currently, he is working on two projects. One deals with application of game-theoretic approaches to the inter-Korean relations. Specifically, he is interested in how the tools of the game theory can contribute to the improvement of the cooperation as well as the security in the Korean peninsula. The topic of the other article will be the change of Japanese foreign policy. The goal of this article is to shed light on the implications of the recent change in Japanese security-related laws and to measure its domestic, regional, and global impact.

His dissertation, which he seeks to build upon, is titled “The Sources of Japanese Conduct: Asymmetric Security Dependence, Role Conceptions, and the Reactive Behavior in response to U.S. Demands.” It is a qualitative comparative case study of how key U.S. allies in Asia – namely Japan and South Korea – and major powers in Europe - the United Kingdom and France - responded to the U.S.-led Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War.

Chang completed his doctorate in political science from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University in 2014.

Before joining the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, he worked for the South Korean Foreign Service for 15 years between 2000 and 2015. During the service, he mostly worked on Northeast Asian affairs including the North Korean nuclear issue. He spent three years in the embassy in Beijing and two and a half years in the consulate general in Vladivostok.