Koret Distinguished Lecture Series: Lecture I

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Korean Armistice Agreement but the situation on the Korean peninsula remains tense and uncertain. Eight months after stepping down as the Republic of Korea’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Kim Sung-Hwan will address the difficult challenges to achieving sustainable peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Minister Kim will examine North Korea’s policies toward South Korea and the United States in light of major developments on the Korean Peninsula since the end of the Korean War in 1953. He will also address international efforts to stop North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons. He will share his insights into the current situation in North Korea, including the differences in North Korea’s policies and behavior since Kim Jong Un succeeded his late father Kim Jong Il two years ago as the supreme leader. Minister Kim will conclude by offering his policy recommendations for dealing with the North Korea of today.

Minister Kim completed thirty-six years as a career diplomat in the Republic of Korea’s foreign service in March of this year. His final two positions in government were as Senior Secretary to the President for Foreign Affairs and National Security (2008 to 2010) and as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2010-2013). Earlier assignments in the ministry headquarters included vice minister (2010) and deputy minister for planning and Management (2005). From 2001 to 2002, he served as director-general of the North American Affairs Bureau, in charge of the Republic of Korea’s relations with the United States. Overseas, Minister Kim’s postings included service in the United States, Russia and India. He was Ambassador to the Republic of Austria and Permanent Representative to the International Organizations in Vienna (2006-2008) and Ambassador to the Republic of Uzbekistan (2002-2004). In July 2012, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon appointed Minister Kim as a member of the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Minister Kim graduated from Seoul National University and studied at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London. Currently, Minister Kim is Chair of the Institute for Global Social Responsibility and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University.

1953 saw both the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement and a Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Republic of Korea. The uneasy and incomplete peace, coupled with a formalized U.S.-ROK security alliance relationship, ushered in a new era on the Korean Peninsula. 2013 marks the 60th anniversary of these pivotal events.

Ambassador Stephens will draw from her experience in Korean affairs over the past four decades, including her tenure as U.S. ambassador to the ROK 2008-2011, to discuss the evolution of the bilateral alliance, its challenges and achievements, and major issues now and going forward. This lunchtime seminar is scheduled to occur immediately upon Ambassador Stephens' return from a visit to Seoul where she will have participated in a first-ever gathering of former American ambassadors to Korea and former Korean ambassadors to the U.S. aimed specifically at reflecting on the U.S.-ROK alliance at 60.  Her comments will also be informed by these discussions.

Ambassador Stephens recently completed thirty-five years as a career diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service. She was Acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in 2012, and U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, 2008 to 2011.

Ambassador Stephens has served in numerous posts in Washington, Asia, and Europe. From 2005 to 2007 she was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (EAP). While Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs (EUR) from 2003 to 2005, she focused on post-conflict and stabilization issues in the Balkans. She was Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton Administration.

Ambassador Stephens’ overseas postings included service in China, Korea, Yogoslavia, Northern Ireland, Portugal, and Trinidad & Tobago.

Ambassador Stephens received the 2009 Presidential Meritorious Service Award. Other awards and recognition include the Korean government’s Sejong Cultural Prize (2013), and in 2011 the Pacific Century Institute’s Building Bridges Award, the Outstanding Achievement Award from the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea, and the Kwanghwa Medal of Diplomatic Merit from the Korean government. Her book, Reflections of an American Ambassador to Korea, based on her Korean-language blog, was published in 2010.

Ambassador Stephens graduated from Prescott College, and holds a master's degree from Harvard University, along with honorary doctoral degrees from Chungnam National University and the University of Maryland. Ambassador Stephens studied at the University of Hong Kong. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Korea in the 1970s.

From his journalistic point of view, Jaekwon Son will discuss competitiveness and weaknesses of Samsung and Psy that have recently made top news stories.

Son is a 2012-2013 visiting scholar with the Korean Studies Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Son, a reporter at the Maeil Business Newspaper in Korea, conducts research on the impact of new media journalism, such as social networking through smart devices. He has co-authored several books including The Appstore Economics (2010), Mobile Changes the World (2010), and The Naver Republic (2007). He has been awarded Jounalist of the Month from the Korea Jounalist Association (2012) and Jounalist of the Year from the Hanvit Culture Foundation (2008).

Son holds a BA in classical Chinese from Korea University.

South Korea's Manchurian action films have recently received critical interest for the genre’s unique configuration of such themes as colonial history, nationalism, masculinity, geography and generic hybridity.  This presentation revisits the genre with a different thematic focus and question: the political economy of anti-colonial nationalism.  More specifically, it brings attention to the logic of money inherent in the genre and explores the broad implications of this thematic convention.  Contrary to the genre’s lofty political agenda, Manchurian action films collectively render the unsettling and scandalous trappings of anti-colonial nationalism of South Korea. 

In this tenth session of the Strategic Forum, former senior American and South Korean government officials and other leading experts will discuss current developments in the Korean Peninsula and North Korea policy, the future of the U.S.-South Korean alliance, and a strategic vision for Northeast Asia. The session is hosted by the Korean Studies Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, in association with the Sejong Institute, a top South Korean think tank.

PARTICIPANTS

Republic of Korea:

Taeho Bark, Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University; Ambassador-at-Large for International Economy and Trade; former Trade Minister

Cholho Chong, Research Fellow, the Sejong Institute; Brig. Gen (retired); Professor, Sookmyung University; former commander, Air University, ROK Air Force

Young Sun Ha, Chairman, Board of Trustees, East Asia Institute; Professor (retired), International Relations, Seoul National University

Sang Woo Rhee, President, the New Asia Research Center; former chancellor, Hallym University

Yoon-joe Shim, Member of the National Assembly, Saenuri Party

Daesung Song, President, the Sejong Institute

Myung Hwan Yu, Chairman, Board of Trustees, Sejong University; former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade

United States:

Bruce W. Bennett, Senior Defense Analyst, RAND

Karl Eikenberry, William J. Perry Fellow in International Security, and Shorenstein APARC Distinguished Fellow, Stanford University; former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan

Thomas Fingar, Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow, Stanford University; former chairman of the National Intelligence Council

T.J. Pempel, Professor, Political Science, University of California, Berkeley

Gi-Wook Shin, Professor, Sociology; Director, APARC, Stanford University

Daniel C. Sneider, Associate Director of Research, APARC, Stanford University

David Straub, Associate Director, Korean Studies Program, APARC, Stanford University

Katharina Zellweger, 2012-2013 Pantech Fellow, Korean Studies Program, APARC, Stanford University; former North Korea country director for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)

How do we know that a person is what she claims to be? Or how do we make others believe that we are the person that we claim to be? Sociologists have explored these questions by focusing on face-to-face interaction in various everyday settings. This talk concerns the micropolitics of identification in a more formalized and institutionalized setting, specifically in immigration proceedings. Drawing on the literature on bureaucracy, presentation of self, migrant sending communities, and deviance, the speaker examines how immigration bureaucrats seek to establish migrants’ identities in contemporary immigration proceedings; how migrants challenge these dominant identification practices, notably through their involvement in various “illegal” schemes; and what consequences these micropolitical struggles have for both receiving and sending states. The talk is based on a study of the contestations over family-based immigration in South Korea, which have focused on efforts to establish the kinship and marital status of co-ethnic migrants from China (Korean Chinese migrants). The speaker will show how bureaucrats and migrants mobilize various types of “identity tags,” how migrants combine strategic and moral reasoning as they engage in these micropolitical struggles, and how these struggles influence not only immigration policies in the receiving state but also migration brokerage networks and gender and family relations in the sending states. The talk is based on Kim’s award-winning article in Law and Social Inquiry.

Jaeeun Kim is a postdoctoral fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University (2012-2013). Before joining Stanford, she received her PhD degree in sociology from UCLA (2011) and was a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University (2011-2012). Her dissertation entitled Colonial Migration and Transborder Membership Politics in Twentieth-Century Korea examines diaspora politics in twentieth-century Korea, focusing on colonial-era ethnic Korean migrants and their descendants in Japan and northeast China. Her dissertation has recently been awarded the Theda Skocpol Best Dissertation Award from the Comparative-Historical Sociology Section of the ASA. Kim’s work has appeared in Theory and Society, Law and Social Inquiry, and European Journal of Sociology. Her article in Law and Social Inquiry, entitled “Establishing Identity: Documents, Performance, and Biometric Information in Immigration Proceedings,” has won the graduate and law students best paper award in 2011. After completing her fellowship term at Stanford, Kim will be Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University beginning in the fall 2013.