The United Nations is the largest single organization providing humanitarian and development assistance to North Korea (DPRK). This assistance has varied over time in nature, quantity and in its always challenging challenging operating conditions. The international community has often questioned whether the United Nations could guarantee that the aid was not being diverted or would not shore up the regime. Assistance has also occasionally been conditioned on progress in denuclearization talks. The speaker, Jérome Sauvage, recently completed an assignment of over three years as the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations in North Korea. He traveled extensively throughout the country and spoke internationally about the humanitarian situation in the country. He will discuss the UN’s engagement with the government and assistance to the people of North Korea.

As the UN Resident Coordinator & UN Development Programme (UNDP) Representative in the DPRK from November 2009 to January 2013, Mr. Sauvage's responsibilities included developing and managing UNDP’s program and operations, and ensuring that all projects met UNDP's mandate as well as all monitoring and evaluation requirements. He led the UN in responding to natural emergencies, negotiated with the government on operating conditions and led fundraising efforts. Under his leadership, the UN Team rolled-out the Overview Funding Document 2012 detailing the humanitarian situation in North Korea.

Previously, Sauvage was Country Director in Pakistan and Deputy Country Director for Operations in India. His other assignments with UNDP took him and his family to Asia and Africa.

Sauvage received an Administrative Law degree from Paris-Sorbonne University and an MA in International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. 

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." – Yogi Berra

Ambassador Bosworth will discuss some of the possible options for dealing with North Korea. This is a keynote speech open to the public during the Fifth Annual Koret Conference on "North Korea Policy."

Ambassador Bosworth is the Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. A former career diplomat, he served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, and Tunisia. Most recently, he served as U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy for the Obama administration. 

This event is made possible by the generous support of the Koret Foundation.

Why do government policymakers and peace activists often come to radically different conclusions on issues pertaining to peace and security? Drawing on insights from the literature on contentious politics and international relations theory, I argue that the politics of peace extend from different views regarding the nature of existing power relations and the legitimacy and moral purpose of the state. To test my argument, I examine the conflict between state and civil societal actors over the construction of a South Korean naval base and use discourse and content analysis to assess different interpretations regarding peace and security in relation to the naval base. Although the hope is to see David defeat Goliath, my findings are less sanguine: activists are not only physically overpowered by the state, but at the ideological level, their frames and discourse are frequently drowned out by a powerful discursive structure embedded in the logic of realism. This research has implications not only for national security policy in South Korea, but for international relations in Northeast Asia more broadly as middle powers position themselves between Beijing’s rise and Washington’s strategic rebalance to Asia.

Professor Andrew Yeo’s broad research interests lie at the intersection of international relations and comparative politics. His first book, Activists, Alliances, and Anti-U.S. Base Protests (Cambridge University Press, 2011) explores the politics of overseas military bases, focusing on the impact of security alliances on social movements and state response to domestic anti-base pressure. His other works have appeared in Comparative Politics, International Studies Quarterly, and Journal of East Asian Studies. His research and teaching interests include international relations theory, international security, overseas U.S. military presence, social movements and transnational politics, East Asia, and North Korea. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2008.