When discussing Korea's "Chinese Decade," roughly defined as the dozen or so years prior to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, most of the attention is focused on the heavy-handed activities of Yuan Shikai in Seoul.  Less well known is that part of this Chinese effort to bind Korea more closely to China involved the absorption of Korea's newly-formed Maritime Customs Service.  Several scholars have looked at this period and the actions of some of the key players such as Sir Robert Hart, Li Hongzhang, Henry F. Merrill, and Paul Georg von Mollendorff.  Using the recently-discovered correspondence of the first commissioner of customs in Pusan, this talk will discuss some heretofore unknown aspects of this attempted takeover by China.

Wayne Patterson received his undergraduate degree in history from Swarthmore College, and his graduate degrees in history and international relations from the University of Pennsylvania.  He has authored or edited eleven books on modern Korea, including The Korean Frontier in America: Immigration to Hawaii, 1896-1910 (1994) and The Ilse: First-Generation Korean Immigrants in Hawaii, 1903-1973 (2000).  He has taught Korean history at a number of institutions in the United States, including Harvard University, the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of South Carolina, the University of Kansas, and the University of Pennsylvania.  He has also taught Korean history abroad, including Ewha University, Korea University, Yonsei University, as Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer, and most recently, at the University of the Philippines, as Korea Foundation Visiting Professor.  His home institution is St. Norbert College in Wisconsin, where he is professor of history.  He is currently teaching Korean history as a visiting professor at the University of California - Berkeley.

Over the years, Kim Jong Il has pursued four inter-related goals that together might be considered as an implicit national security strategy:

1. reviving the economy; 
2. buttressing domestic support at a time of leadership transition; 
3. widening North Korea's "diplomatic space" through 360-degree diplomacy; and
4. shoring up the country´s aging military.  

These goals are tightly linked but also involve significant trade-offs that may offer greater possibilities than ususally supposed for solving the issue of its nuclear weapons program.

Dr. John Merrill is the head of the Northeast Asia Division of U.S. State Department´s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and Adjunct Professor in the School of International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University.  He is the author of Korea: The Peninsular Origins of the War, 1945-50 and The Cheju-do Rebellion as well as numerous journal articles.

This talk will examine the evolution of Korean strategic thought on regionalism, with particular focus on regional security cooperation:

1. How does South Korean regional thinking differ from that of its neighbors, and how has it evolved over time?,
   
2. Was there any discernable strategic thought to realize regional aspirations during the cold war era, and afterward how has it responded to the dynamics of regionalism in Northeast Asia?,
   
3. Is South Korean strategic thought on regionalism long-term, goal-oriented, and consistent? Does it set priorities, recognize trade-offs, and change in response to actual results or new developments in the region? How do competing visions of domestic forces define its scope and direction?,
   
4. Under what circumstances has Seoul given regional multilateral cooperation a prominent place in its strategic thinking and national security doctrine? Is it based on careful deliberations and a realistic understanding of costs and benefits?,
   
5. Wither to the 6 Party Talks (given North Korea said the Talks are dead) and a five-party proposal by Profesident Lee Myung Bak, about which China seems reluctant?
   

The speaker will review Seoul’s strategic thought on regional multilateral cooperation in Northeast Asia during and after the cold war, followed by consideration of the challenges and opportunities for growing regionalism with Korean “centrality.”

Shin-wha Lee is currently a visiting professor at School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Columbia University and also serving as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Korean Permanent Mission to the United Nations.  She worked at the World Bank and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Sudan. She served as Special Advisor to the United Nations, 'Rwandan Independent Inquiry,' Chair's Advisor of East Asian Vision Group (EAVG), and Coordinator of UNESCO Chair on Peace, Democracy and Human Rights.  She has published numerous articles and books on global security, international  organizations, East Asian security cooperation, UN peacekeeping operations, and nontraditional security such as environmental and human security. Lee holds a Ph.D. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland at College Park.