Writing for Democratization, Kyong Jun Choi at the University of Washington reviewed New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (Stanford University Press, 2014), a co-edited book by Stanford professors Larry Diamond and Gi-Wook Shin.

“Among the most notable strengths of this volume is its analysis of new phenomena that have rarely been addressed in existing literature,” Choi writes.

The book seeks to illustrate different characteristics of the evolution of democracy in Taiwan and South Korea. The two countries share similar economic and political directions since industrialization took place in the 1960s and transition toward democracy began in the 1980s.

Choi says that the book “certainly stands as a stepping stone for research on new democracies struggling to consolidate democracy.”

“New Challenges” is one outcome of a multiyear research project at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and a conference co-hosted with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law in 2011.

The review is featured in Democratization’s vol. 21, issue 7. Information about accessing the review can found by clicking here.

In conversation with Shorenstein APARC, Yong Lee, the SK Center Fellow, discusses his initial draw to architecture and urbanism, and the nexus of public policy and economics. Lee highlights some of his recent research activities focused on international sanctions on North Korea and educational policy as it relates to migration and housing patterns in South Korea. 

Your background is quite multifaceted, including years working in architecture and a master’s of public policy in addition to a doctorate in economics. How do all of these areas fit together to inform your research?

It took a while for me to figure out what I wanted to pursue as a career. As a high school student in Korea I had to choose a track that focused on either the physical sciences or the humanities/social sciences. At that age, it’s hard to know what you want to be. Simply because my father was an engineer, I chose the physical sciences track. When it was time to apply for college (one actually had to determine a major when applying for college back then), I became interested in international relations and wanted to become a diplomat. But given my training in the hard sciences and the fact that one had to choose a major when applying, I had to decide on a science or engineering major. After browsing through the library a few architecture books caught my eye, and I opted for architectural engineering as my major. 

I truly enjoyed my six years of architectural training but after working for an architectural firm for several years in Seoul, I realized I was more interested in the abstract ideas of architecture and urbanism and less of the actual design process that goes on in an architectural firm. I searched for my next career, became interested in urban and development policy, and pursued a master’s of public policy at Duke University. However, then I realized that economics would allow me to rigorously analyze the policy questions I was interested in. Fortunately, Brown University accepted me as a Ph.D. student and I eventually became an economist. It was through this search process, that I developed an interdisciplinary interest in policy relevant questions. My personal choices constrained by education policy, comparatively experiencing Korea’s transition while living between Korea and the United States each decade since the 1980s, and my interest in architecture and cities have shaped my research interest in economic development and growth with a focus on education, firms and cities.  And now being at FSI, I can immerse myself in international studies, something I had wanted to pursue all along. By joining Stanford, I think I finally discovered what I had wanted to do.

One of your research streams looks at the effects of sanctions on domestic populations, looking at the case study of North Korea. How did you derive data about the closed-off regime? What are your key findings?

Research on North Korea is challenging because of the dearth of data. I had been interested in how sanctions impact the domestic population, but to examine this question one would need regional level data within in North Korea. I decided to use the satellite night-lights data, which in recent years has been used as an alternative means to measure economic activity. I found that sanctions actually increase urban-rural inequality. An additional sanctions index increases the urban-rural luminosity gap by about 1 percent. However, if I focus on the more central urban areas the gap increases to about 2.6 percent. Since urban areas are more than ten times brighter than rural areas, the results imply that the gap further increases by 1 to 2.6 percent with additional sanctions.  Furthermore, I find that the urban areas actually get brighter while the rural areas get darker.

Another of your research focuses on the impact of 1970s education policy in South Korea on intergenerational mobility and migration. Can you explain this phenomenon? Does the case of South Korea relate to reform experiences in other countries?

Students in South Korea traditionally had to take an entrance exam to enter high schools. After the exam, high schools would choose students based on the exam scores. Given the variation in school quality, a hierarchy of high schools had existed and students who performed well would enter the top tier high schools. This system was heavily criticized since wealthier families could tutor children to prepare for the entrance exam. Eventually in the mid-1970s, the South Korean government abolished the exam-based system and moved to a school district based system where students would attend high schools based on residential location. By moving away from an exam system to a district system, policymakers hoped that educational opportunities would alleviate the persistence of inequality. However, what I find is that, to the contrary, the district system generated substantial sorting of households by income. Now wealthier households could simply move to districts and cities with the prestigious high schools. Given that the purchase of housing is purely determined by income, school quality became even more segregated by income and actually exacerbated the persistence of inequality across generations. This transition is now happening in several Chinese cities and in the United States – the sorting across school districts by educational outcome has created highly segregated towns. The Korea experiment allowed me to examine not just an equilibrium outcome, but also the transition when the policy changed.

In the coming year, you’ll be teaching courses related to the economies of East Asia. Can you provide an outlook on this?

I’ll be teaching an International Policy Studies course titled, “Economic Growth, Development, and Challenges of East Asia,” in the spring. The course will focus on China, Japan, and Korea, but also draw on Southeast Asian countries, when relevant. I will cover the rapid economic growth in recent decades and development policies pursued. However, I will also cover the current major economic challenges these countries face, some of which are rising income inequality, entrepreneurship, and an aging workforce. I hope to add to our rich set of courses by providing an economics and empirical viewpoint.

Tell us something we don’t know about you.

I sometimes split my sleep. That is, I go to bed to sleep for a few hours and then wake up in the middle of the dark, do some reading or work, and then sleep for one or two hours before I start my morning routine. It started during my high school years and it has stuck with me for quite a while now. Don’t worry, though. I sleep fine most of the time. I just sometimes enjoy the dead of the night.

The city of Cupertino, California, is only about 15km from Stanford University, where I teach and live. It is home to the headquarters of Apple, a global leader in the computer and smartphone industries. It is also home to many Indian and Chinese engineers who are essential to Silicon Valley's technological innovation. One can easily find a variety of Asian restaurants and shops along the palm tree-lined streets -- an interesting Californian scene with a distinctly Asian flavor.

Many Asians -- businesspeople, officials and experts -- visit Silicon Valley hoping to unlock its secrets, to learn why it is such a hotbed of innovation. One known "secret" here, often overlooked by Asian visitors, is the importance of cultural diversity. More than half of the area's startups, including Intel, Yahoo, eBay and Google, were established by immigrants, and these companies owe much of their success to the contributions of Chinese and Indian engineers. Cultural diversity can be found throughout the schools, stores and streets, as well as the enterprises, there.

In Israel, too

The circumstances are quite similar in Israel, another economy known for technological innovation. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Israel admitted about 850,000 immigrants. More than 40 percent of the new arrivals were college professors, scientists and engineers, many of whom had abundant experience in research and development. These people played a critical role in promoting economic development and scientific and technological innovation in Israel. Many languages besides Hebrew can be heard on the streets of Tel Aviv, one of the country's largest cities.

It is no accident that Silicon Valley and Israel have become global high-tech centers. They opened their doors to a wide range of talented immigrants. Above all, an atypical sociocultural ecosystem -- a culture that respects and promotes the value of diversity -- is alive in both places.

In the United States, diversity is a key criterion in college admissions and faculty recruitment. Although "affirmative action" has disappeared in many parts of the country, diversity has come to play a key role in American university policies. Most American colleges, including Stanford, have a "diversity office" to promote diversity among students, faculty and staff. At Stanford, white students constitute less than 40 percent of the student body, and almost a quarter of the faculty come from minority groups. Similarly, only five of the 16 staff members at our Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center are Caucasian, with the rest from ethnic and national minorities.

 The same can be said of leading American corporations, many of which have institutionalized "diversity management" to capitalize on the range of individual differences and talents to increase organizational effectiveness. Of course, basic knowledge and skills are prerequisites. But Americans seem to firmly believe that having a variety of backgrounds and experiences can help hatch new ideas and innovative technologies. Perhaps this is why they say that culture accounts for 90 percent of the innovation in products from Silicon Valley, with technology claiming only 10 percent.

The power of diversity

Scott E. Page, professor of complex systems, political science and economics at the University of Michigan, shows in his book "The Difference" how "the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools, and societies." In his view, collections of people with diverse perspectives and heuristics outperform collections of people who rely on homogeneous ones, and the key to optimizing efficiency in a group is diversity. In this work, Page pays particular attention to the importance of "identity diversity," that is, differences in race, ethnicity, gender, social status and the like.

To be sure, Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea are different from settler societies such as the U.S. With the influx of foreigners, however, even such ethnically homogeneous Asian societies are becoming multiethnic. In addition to unskilled labor and foreign brides, the number of overseas students and professors is rising at Japanese and South Korean universities, while Japanese and South Korean companies are actively hiring foreign professionals. Both countries are opening their doors to foreigners, though in limited numbers, and have made multiculturalism a key policy objective.

Still, they fall far short of recognizing the value of diversity. While Japanese and South Korean institutes of higher learning have been trying to attract more foreign students, they have been doing so mainly to make up for the declining student population at home and because university ranking agencies use the ratio of foreign students and professors as a key yardstick for measuring internationalization. The approaches of these two countries to multiculturalism are also largely focused on assimilating foreigners into their own cultures and systems. People from abroad are seldom accepted as "permanent" members of their societies or regarded as valuable assets. Japan and South Korea may have become multiethnic, but they are not multicultural.

One of the biggest challenges facing foreign residents in Japan and South Korea is the lack of understanding of their religious and cultural beliefs. Indian engineers working in South Korea complain of the poor acceptance of Indians by the local population, and of an especially poor understanding of their religion and culture. Foreign professors teaching at Japanese universities tell me they live as "foreigners," never accepted into the "inner" circles. It is unlikely that these talented people would like to work long term for universities and enterprises that are unable to embrace differences in skin color and culture. Under these circumstances, even if some foreign professionals happen to be hired, they may not be able to realize the full potential of their abilities, let alone bring about innovation.

All these people with different ethnic and national backgrounds should no longer be regarded simply as "temporary" residents to fill particular needs. Rather, by promoting the cultural diversity of Japanese and South Korean society, they should be viewed as important assets and potential sources of innovation. It is an urgent but difficult task to institutionalize the value of diversity in societies long accustomed to the notion of a single-race nation.

Born on campuses

A country's global competitiveness can hardly be improved if its society is reluctant to respect differences and understand other groups. Universities, in particular, should help their students experience diversity through the regular curriculum and extracurricular activities. Foreign students can serve as excellent resources for promoting diversity. Universities are ideal settings for various groups of students to meet, generate new ideas and interact with one another. It is no accident that many of the innovative ideas associated with Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Facebook were all born on American university campuses, where diversity is embraced.

Empirical research should be carried out to examine how cultural diversity can bring about technological innovation in Japanese and South Korean society. Based on such studies, governments and private enterprises should take into account diversity in personnel hiring, training, management and evaluation. These same institutions should also systematically work to create and support an organizational culture that values diversity.

Could those Indian and Chinese engineers working in Silicon Valley have brought about the same kind of technological innovation if they had remained in their own countries? Could they accomplish the same feat in Japan and South Korea? How can Asian countries create the kind of ecosystem necessary for promoting a flexible culture of accommodating a broad spectrum of talents? We first need to reflect deeply on these questions before trying to emulate the success of Silicon Valley.

Shin recently coauthored the paper, "Embracing Diversity in Higher Education: Comparing Discourses in the U.S., Europe, and Asia" with Yonsei University Professor Rennie J. Moon. It is one outcome of their research project, Diversity and Tolerance in Korea and Asia. This Nikkei Asian Review article was originally carried on Nov. 20 and reposted with permission.

The Michigan War Studies Review (MiWSR), an online scholarly journal affiliated with the Michigan War Studies Group, reviewed Confronting Memories of World War II: European and Asian Legacies, a seminal book co-edited by Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) scholars Gi-Wook Shin and Daniel Sneider, and University of Washington’s Daniel Chirot.

“Confronting Memories of World War II is a forceful and timely warning about the dangers of leaving problematic memory legacies unresolved,” says Albert J. Schmidt from The George Washington University, writing for MiWSR.

Organized in four major parts, the book examines the consequences of historical memory of World War II and contemporary nationalistic rhetoric, looking at cases across Northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) and Western and Eastern Europe, including Germany, Austria and France, among others.

Confronting Memories of World War II is part of an ongoing research project at Shorentein APARC that comparatively analyzes how wartime historical memory lives on through present-day national myths, and is furthered through educational material, media and popular culture.

The full review is attached below and may be also viewed on the MiWSR website.

Seoul faces challenges that are not very different from other global cities, said Mayor Park Won Soon, the public figure who leads the South Korean city of over 10 million people, concluding that the key to solving them ­is by better engaging and empowering citizens.

“We tore down the silos,” said Park, speaking to a Stanford audience about his efforts to improve Seoul’s bureaucracy and access for citizens.

At McCaw Hall, Park discussed his background as a scholar, civic activist and philanthropist, emphasizing how it provides him perspective as a leader, and the acumen to think differently to address a wide range of issues affecting Seoul, including poverty, climate change and an aging population.

Park’s visit to Stanford University was sponsored by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center (APARC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. The event was part of the Asia-Pacific Leaders Forum, a seminar series that brings Asian leaders to Stanford to share their experiences. In 2013, the series hosted Ban-Ki Moon, U.N. Secretary General, and in 2009, then-South Korean assembly member, now president, Park Geun-hye.

[[{"fid":"216091","view_mode":"crop_870xauto","fields":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"Stanford professor Gi-Wook Shin welcomes Mayor Park.","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"Stanford professor Gi-Wook Shin welcomes Mayor Park.","field_credit[und][0][value]":"Rod Searcey","field_caption[und][0][value]":"Stanford professor Gi-Wook Shin welcomes Mayor Park.","field_related_image_aspect[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto","pp_lightbox":false,"pp_description":true},"type":"media","attributes":{"title":"Stanford professor Gi-Wook Shin welcomes Mayor Park.","height":948,"width":870,"style":"margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 15px; padding: 0px; float: left; width: 225px; height: 240px;","class":"media-element file-crop-870xauto"}}]]Mr. Park has long-had a connection to the university, though. He was a visiting professor at Shorenstein APARC in 2005, and continued to collaborate with researchers after leaving.

Gi-Wook Shin, director of Shorenstein APARC, introduced Mr. Park, referencing their connection and past projects to a crowd of nearly 275 people, including Korean community members and media.

“We’ve known each other as colleagues and friends for a number of years," Shin said, "so it is a pleasure to host Mayor Park, and hold a public forum to hear [his] vision."

Shin and Park established a fellowship for Korean NGO leaders, and awarded it to 30 leaders over three years.

Fighting for equality

As a university student in 1975, Park protested against South Korea’s government led by President Park Chung-hee, a military leader who ruled under highly authoritarian law. Mr. Park was imprisoned for his activism and eventually expelled from school, but his enthusiasm for justice and democracy never waned, he said.

He said the political and social chaos during those years in South Korea motivated him to pursue justice through other channels, going on to become a human rights lawyer and into public office as mayor in 2011.

South Korea gradually transitioned into a democracy in the 1980s, influenced in large part by many sweeping civil movements. The country has since stabilized, and now enjoys cultural and economic success in the world today. 

Park speaks to the audience about governance, emphasizing the importance of communication.

But, there is a “shadow behind the miracle,” said Park, referring to the myriad of societal problems that Seoul still faces, like many cities dealing with the effects of urbanization.

He said the only way to identify and address problems is through a highly participatory system of governance, and one that isn’t afraid to think of new solutions to old problems.

“A city that constantly collaborates and innovates to improve the quality of life for citizens,” he said, those are the efforts that create an environment “where people live in harmony and where people are happy.”

Park said listening to the voices of Seoul citizens is a cornerstone of his administration’s approach. And he has a motto that matches.

“Citizens are the mayor,” is the saying that Park administration attempts to fulfill through a variety of initiatives, including those led by the Seoul Innovation Bureau, a new administrative branch established to bring fresh ideas into the city’s paradigm.

Park’s administration holds town hall meetings and uses some of the latest technology to initiate dialogue with citizens, including SNS text messaging, social media and Wikiseoul, an online blog-style platform, to communicate policies and receive feedback.

[[{"fid":"216092","view_mode":"crop_870xauto","fields":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"Park meets community members and media following his talk.","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"Park meets community members and media following his talk.","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"Park meets community members and media following his talk.","field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"Park meets community members and media following his talk.","field_related_image_aspect[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto","pp_lightbox":false,"pp_description":true},"type":"media","attributes":{"alt":"Park meets community members and media following his talk.","title":"Park meets community members and media following his talk.","height":783,"width":870,"style":"margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 15px; padding: 0px; float: left; width: 230px; height: 200px;","class":"media-element file-crop-870xauto"}}]]He said he checks the city’s social media accounts personally because it allows him to keep a close eye on what issues are important to citizens, and often follows-up with constituents who write him “tweets,” messages received via Twitter.

Park says Seoul’s success is because of 10 million citizens and many institutions that have supported the city’s growth. He holds popular support in the city, and was recently reelected for a second mayoral term in June 2014, winning by a wide margin.

He said other countries are beginning to replicate his administration’s model, from e-governance activities to energy policy, calling it the “Seoul effect.”

Closing out the speech, Park said inclusiveness is the essence of good governance.

“If you want to travel fast go alone, but if you want to travel far, go together,” he said, citing a well-known proverb.

Below is the full video and transcript of his presentation.

Gi-Wook Shin, director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center,  and David Straub, associate director of the Korea Program, presented their new study "Tailored Engagement: Toward an Effective and Sustainable Inter-Korea Relations Policy" to a Washington, D.C. audience at the Brookings Institution on Sept. 29. The Voice of America wrote an article in Korean about the presentation, citing Shin saying, "Engagement is important and essential but it must be carefully tailored or fitted to changing political and security realities on and around the Peninsula."