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Stanford researchers propose a new approach to dealing with North Korea

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Stanford researchers have introduced a major new study on North Korea policy at a hearing at the South Korean National Assembly. Entitled “Tailored Engagement,” the report concludes that South Korea is the only country today that may be both willing and able to try a new approach toward the worsening North Korea problem.

“There is considerable urgency for Seoul to act,” according to the report released by the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, which comes in response to increasing tensions and heightened nationalism in Northeast Asia.

“Only the Republic of Korea has both the need and the potential influence to change this dangerous trajectory on the Korean Peninsula.”

Published by Gi-Wook Shin, the director of Shorenstein APARC; David Straub, the associate director of the Korea Program; and Joyce Lee, the research associate for the Korea Program, the report is the culmination of more than a year of intensive research activities at Stanford University, including three international conferences focused on Northeast Asia’s security and political situation.

During the past year, North Korea continued to develop nuclear weapons and North-South Korean relations worsened, while increasing U.S.-China strategic mistrust has made it less likely that those two countries can cooperate to change North Korea's behavior.

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On Sept. 15, the authors presented the report at a public hearing of the Special Committee on Inter-Korean Relations, Exchange and Cooperation of the South Korean National Assembly in Seoul. They are also scheduled to discuss the study at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. on September 29.

“I was very impressed by the concern that the Korean Congressmen showed about the current situation on the Korean Peninsula and by their interest in our reasoning and recommendations,” Shin said. “Almost all of the Committee’s 18 members attended, and engaged in a lively exchange of views during the three-hour-long hearing.”

In their report, Shin, Straub and Lee propose a process that involves a series of increased exchanges with North Korea. This would be applied in a principled, systematic way, based largely on expanding a domestic consensus in South Korea that treats South Korean engagement of the North as necessary for improving the situation on the peninsula, not as incompatible with maintaining pressure on Pyongyang to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The report lays out four main steps that South Korea can implement to reduce the risk of regional conflict, while also creating a foundation for peaceful unification with North Korea.

  • Focus on the pursuit of mutual interests and benefits rather than on symbolism and appeals to national sentiment.
  • Apply market principles and international standards in economic activities.
  • Collaborate with other countries and third-party companies in both economic and people-to-people projects.
  • Be pragmatic and flexible in pursuing engagement at both the state-to-state and grassroots levels in complementary ways. 
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South Korea is well suited to engage the North because of their shared history, and its status as a major middle-power status has also increased its sway with both China and the United States.

No longer a “shrimp among whales,” South Korea has transformed since democratization, leaving that modest proverb behind and gaining an influential role in the region.

Now the country has an opportunity to begin to bridge the gap with North Korea, but first, it must create an internal structure that supports engagement.

In implementation

The North Korea problem is complex and wrapped in a varied history of engagement efforts by South Korea and other countries. Lessons of success and failure from past administrations provide important insight, the report says.

“The main impediment to South Korea’s assuming a greater international leadership role on the Korean question is not a lack of national power,” the report states, “but a lack of domestic political consensus about how to deal with North Korea and the consequent inconsistency in ROK policy across administrations.”

The South Korean government changes executive leadership every five years, and with it, there has been great inconsistency between conservative and progressive policies. The current administration that assumed office in 2013, led by President Park Geun-hye, pursues a North Korea policy of trustpolitik, wherein the government aims to build trust through a step-by-step process.

According to the report, the tailored engagement approach can inform and build on President Park’s policy. Three main actions can be taken by South Korea’s administration to implement productive engagement, the report states:

  • Reorganize the Korean government itself to facilitate a more coordinated formulation and implementation of North Korea policy.
  • Achieve much more consensus within South Korea on how to deal with North Korea.
  • Seek to win support of the major powers, especially the United States and China for its approach to North Korea.

Developing trust is essential to de-escalate tension between the Koreas. Without progress in confidence-building, the two countries can hardly collaborate on even straightforward projects, such as expanding the existing Kaesong Industrial Complex, a bi-lateral industrial park located just north of the North-South border.

Solving more basic issues and participating in joint initiatives can help pave the way toward inter-Korean reconciliation during President Park’s administration, and the next.

“Reconciliation and convergence would improve many aspects of the situation on the Korean Peninsula, including eventually facilitating North Korea’s abandonment of its nuclear weapons program and the achievement of unification,” the reports says.

Asia Economy Daily wrote an article (in the Korean language) about the research team's presentation. A version of this article was also carried as a news release by the Stanford News Service. NK News, a news oufit focused on North Korea-related news, also wrote an article (in the English language) and can be found on NKNews.org. The Voice of America covered the presentation by Shin and Straub at the Brookings Institution. The article, written in Korean, can be accessed on the Voice of America online.

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Participants tie ribbons for peace at the Imjingpak pavilion near the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in 2011.
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Tailored Engagement: Toward an Effective and Sustainable Inter-Korean Relations Policy

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"Tailored Engagement" is a result of research and an earlier report by faculty members and researchers at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford University. The authors, Gi-Wook Shin, the director the Shorenstein APARC; David Straub, the associate director of the Korea Program; and Joyce Lee, the research associate for the Korea Program, write that they "hope this study will serve as a useful reference for leaders and citizens of the Republic of Korea as well as contribute to the global discussion about how to ensure peace, security and prosperity in Northeast Asia."

 

Contents:

  • Introduction

  • Policy Parameters of Major Players

  • President Park's North Korea Policy

  • The Policy Context

  • Toward Tailored Engagement

  • Engaging North Korea

 

A summary of the report is also available in Korean.

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Gi-Wook Shin
David Straub
Joyce Lee

Global Talent and Innovation

A central focus of the research efforts at Shorenstein APARC is to analyze the bridges linking Asia and the United States. As the Asian diaspora continues to grow in America and across the world, new possibilities have emerged for migrants who become integrated into their host societies while remaining engaged with their home societies. Such trans-migration creates new innovation and trade opportunities for both Asia and the United States, as a positive-sum game where both sides benefit.

Socialist Living in North Korea, 1953–65

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In the immediate postwar period, when very real limits on the power of the party-state remained and the population was still recovering from the dislocations of the war, the socialist promise of what in North Korea came to be known as the ‘new living’ became the subject of much ideological and material investment on the part of a wide spectrum of actors. Yet the construction of such ‘new living’ was certainly not straightforward. This paper analyzes political anxieties that emerged over worker dormitory life, tensions surrounding consumption in a growing economy, and worries about the comforts of family life offered by new fangled apartments.

RSVP required at http://ceas.stanford.edu/events/event_detail.php?id=3713

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Andre Schmid Associate Professor, East Asian Studies, University of Toronto Speaker
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The Korea Colloquium on History and Culture

The ABCD Framework of K-Strategy: The Secret to Korea's Success

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Economists and business scholars have long tried to construct theoretical models that can explain economic growth and development in emerging economies, but Western models have not always been fully applicable to developing economies, particularly in Asia, due to differences in political, economic and social systems. Created to address this gap, the ABCD framework of K-Strategy is a more nearly universal approach showing how inherent disadvantages can be overcome and competitive advantages achieved. Using the ABCD framework, the lecturer will analyze Korea’s success at both national and corporate levels since the 1960s and discuss the framework’s implications for Korea’s future government policies and corporate strategies. He will also demonstrate the ABCD framework’s applicability to other countries. Hwy-Chang Moon, dean of Seoul National University’s graduate school of international studies, has done extensive research and theoretical work on the ABCD framework.

Hwy-Chang Moon received his PhD from the University of Washington and is currently a professor of international business and strategy in the graduate school of international studies at Seoul National University. Professor Moon has taught at the University of Washington, University of the Pacific, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Helsinki School of Economics, Kyushu University, Keio University, Hitotsubashi University, and other executive and special programs in various organizations. On topics such as international business strategy, foreign direct investment, corporate social responsibility, and cross-cultural management, Professor Moon has published numerous journal articles and books. He is currently the editor-in-chief of the Journal of International Business and Economy, an international academic journal. Professor Moon has conducted consulting and research projects for several multinational companies, international organizations (APEC, World Bank, and UNCTAD), and governments (Malaysia, Dubai, Azerbaijan, and Guangdong Province of China). For interviews and debates on international economy and business, he has been invited by international newspapers and media, including New York Times and NHK World TV.

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

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Hwy-Chang Moon Dean, Graduate School of International Studies; Professor of International Business and Strategy Speaker Seoul National University
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Asia's Middle Powers?

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South Korea and Vietnam established diplomatic relations only twenty years ago. Today these former adversaries enjoy unexpectedly cordial and rapidly expanding bilateral ties. Leaders of the two nations—perceiving broadly shared interests and no fundamental conflicts—seek to leverage their subregional influence on behalf of common or complementary policy goals. Today they often profess a “middle power” identity as they explain their foreign policy in terms of such classical middle power goals as regional peace, integration, and common goods.

Broadly similar in many respects, South Korea and Vietnam are nonetheless sufficiently different that a comparison can yield interesting insights—yet there is a dearth of systematic comparative work on the two. While holding a range of views on the contentious concepts of middle power and national identity, the contributors to Asia’s Middle Powers? help readers, both academic and policy practitioners, to gain an enhanced appreciation of South Korea and Vietnam’s regional behavior and international strategies

The publication of Asia's Middle Powers was made possible by the generosity of the Koret Foundation of San Francisco, CA.

Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

 

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The Identity and Regional Policy of South Korea and Vietnam

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Joon-woo Park
Gi-Wook Shin
Don Keyser
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Encounter 2013: An Evening with Korean Authors Kim In-suk and Kang Yŏng-suk

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The Korea Colloquium on History and Culture

 

Authors Kim In-suk and Kang Yŏng-suk and translator Bruce Fulton will appear at several American universities in November 2013 for a series of bilingual readings and discussions.  The tour begins at Stanford University and also includes literary events at Claremont McKenna College, the University of Wisconsin, and Brigham Young University, and in New York City.  During these visits the American reading public will have the opportunity to meet two of contemporary Korea’s most prominent fiction writers, hear samples of their works read in Korean and in English translation, engage in a dialog with the writers, and purchase copies of the authors’ works in translation.
 
Kim In-suk (김인숙) was born in 1963 in Seoul and studied journalism at Yonsei University.  A published writer at the age of 19, she issued her first story collection, Bloodline, in 1983, and her first novel, Flowers of Fire, in 1985.  She is the recipient of the 2003 Yi Sang Literature Prize for “Sea and Butterfly,” and the 2005 Hanguk ilbo Literature Prize for The Long Road, one of the very few Korean fictional works involving the Korean diasporic experience in Australia. Today, building on a three-decade career in letters, she is one of Korea’s senior writers, but an author whose literary sensibility and wide-ranging world view belie her age. Her most recent works are the story collection So Long, Elena, for which she received the 2009 Tongin Literature Prize; the historical novel Sohyŏn (2010); and the novel Could You Lose Your Mind? (2011), which conflates natural and human disaster.  She is represented in English in Koreana; the novella The Long Road (2010), the anthology Reading Korea: 12 Contemporary Stories (2008), and in an ASIA Bilingual Edition of her story “Stab.”.
 
Kang Yŏng-suk (강영숙) was born in 1966 in Ch’unch’ŏn, Kangwŏn Province, and studied creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts.  Since her debut in 1998 she has issued half a dozen story collections and novels and garnered several literary awards, including the 2006 Hanguk ilbo Literature Prize for her first novel, Rina, and the 2011 Kim Yu-jŏng Literature Prize.  In 2009 she took part in the University of Iowa International Writing Program.  Her 2011 story collection The Night He Lifts Weights, honored with a Book-of-the-Year award from the Korean Library Association, is strongly colored by urban noir, the stories set in locales within and without Korea.  She is represented in English translation in Azalea 4.
 
Bruce Fulton is the co-translator, with Ju-Chan Fulton, of numerous volumes of modern Korean fiction, including the award-winning women’s anthologies Words of Farewell: Stories by Korean Women Writers (Seal Press, 1989) and Wayfarer: New Writing by Korean Women (Women in Translation, 1997), and with Marshall R. Pihl, Land of Exile: Contemporary Korean Fiction, rev. and exp. ed. (M.E. Sharpe, 2007).  The Fultons’ most recent translations are River of Fire: Stories by O Chŏnghŭi (Columbia University Press, 2012) and How in Heaven’s Name: A Novel of World War II by Cho Chŏngnae (MerwinAsia 2012).  The Fultons have received several awards and fellowships for their translations, including a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, the first ever given for a translation from the Korean; and a residency at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre, the first ever awarded to translators from any Asian language.  Bruce Fulton is the inaugural holder of the Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Translation, Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia.
 
The International Communication Foundation (ICF), primary sponsor of Encounter 2013, was inaugurated in April 1982 as a non-profit foundation under the Ministry of Culture and Public Information. The ICF contributes to globalization through promotion of international exchange while supporting research and publication activities that introduce Korean culture to the world.  Since 1997 it has offered Korean Literature Translation Fellowships to graduate students translating from Korean into English, Russian, and Chinese.  ICF endowments created the Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Translation at the University of British Columbia and the Sunshik Min Fund at Harvard University for the translation and publication of Korean literature.  Since 1999 the ICF has provided major funding for annual author tours of North America, introducing many of contemporary Korea’s most important fiction writers to North American readers.
 

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Kim In-suk author Speaker
Kang Yŏng-suk author Speaker
Bruce Fulton translator Speaker
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The Korea Colloquium on History and Culture

Sunny Seong-Hyon Lee

Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall E310
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2013-14 Pantech Fellow in Korean Studies
Sunny_pic_big_crop_head.JPG MA, PhD

Sunny Seong-hyon Lee, a journalist based in Beijing, China, is the 2013-14 Pantech Fellow in Korean Studies at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Reseach Center.

Dr. Lee has lived in China for 11 years, including as chief correspondent and later as director of China Research Center of the Korea Times. He served as an internal reviewer of the North Korean reports by the International Crisis Group (ICG) on multiple occasions. A fluent Chinese speaker and writer, he is a frequent commentator on China-Korea relations as well as on North Korea in Chinese newspapers and on TV. He has also appeared on CNN, Al Jazeera, and the Chinese state CCTV.

Dr. Lee taught at Salzburg Global Seminar, gave lectures to members of Harvard Kennedy School, the Confucius Institute, Seoul National University, Yonsei University, Korea University, Tsinghua University, Guo JI Guan Xi Xue Yuan, Korea Economic Institute, The Korea-China Future Forum, the Korea Journalists’ Association, and the Korea-China Leadership Program of the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies.

Dr. Lee will use his Pantech Fellowship at Stanford to write a book manuscript on the latest China-Korea relations, especially since the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. He will also engage Stanford audiences and members of the public through lectures and research meetings.

Dr. Lee received a bachelor’s degree from Grinnell College, a master’s degree from Harvard University and Beijing Foreign Studies University, and a PhD from Tsinghua University, where he completed his doctoral dissertation on North Korea, examining the media framing of North Korea by analyzing the journalist-source relationship. He is also a non-resident James A. Kelly Fellow at Pacific Forum CSIS, and a 2013 Korea Foundation-Salzburg Fellow.

Dr. Lee’s recent writings include:

“Firm Warning, Light Consequences: China’s DPRK Policy Upholds Status Quo” (The Jamestown Foundation)

http://www.jamestown.org/programs/chinabrief/single/?

“Will China's soft-power strategy on South Korea succeed?” (CSIS)

http://csis.org/publication/23-will-chinas-soft-power-strategy-south-korea-succeed

“Chinese Perspective on North Korea and Korean Unification” (The Korea Economic Institute in Washington DC)

http://www.keia.org/sites/default/files/publications/kei_onkorea_2013_sunny_seong-hyon_lee.pdf

“China’s North Korean Foreign Policy Decoded”  (Yale Global Online)

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/chinas-north-korean-foreign-policy-decoded

“Why North Korea may muddle along” (Asia Times)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/NB28Dg02.html

 

Established in 2004, the Pantech Fellowship for Mid-Career Professionals, generously funded by Pantech Co., Ltd., and Curitel Communications, Inc. (known as the Pantech Group), is intended to cultivate a diverse international community of scholars and professionals committed to and capable of grappling with challenges posed by developments in Korea.

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