In conjunction with Dr. Gi-Wook Shin's study of American and South Korean media coverage of the alliance and the peninsula, this conference will convene influential American journalists who covered momentous events and significant trends in the two Koreas. The macro-level, data-driven media study reveals how U.S. coverage of Korean issues has evolved over time as well as how perception gaps have grown up in the U.S.-ROK alliance. But how did American reporters and editors decide what to cover? What drove U.S. interest in Korea? And what were the challenges in covering Korea, both South and North? This conference will showcase the views of journalists on the front line who made key decisions about what to cover and why. These coverage decisions and the stories that followed shaped how Americans conceptualize both Koreas, the U.S.-ROK alliance, and the North Korean nuclear crises.

This one-day workshop will feature four panels: (1) democracy, anti-Americanism and the rise of Korean nationalism, (2) the challenges of covering North Korea, (3) the two North Korean nuclear crises, and (4) public diplomacy and the Korean peninsula.