Summit between the two Koreas is important, but the timing is wrong, says Shorenstein APARC's director, Gi-Wook Shin
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Leaders of North and South Korea are due to meet in Pyongyang on Tuesday, marking only the second time in history that the governments have come together. The meeting had previously been delayed in part due to North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and its tensions with the United States. Gi-Wook Shin is interviewed by NPR's Mike Shuster about the upcoming summit. You can listen to the whole news segment through the Morning Edition link below.
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Journal of Korean Studies, volume 12
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Between 1979 and 1992, the Journal of Korean Studies became a leading academic forum for the publication of innovative in-depth research on Korea. Now under the editorial guidance of Gi-Wook Shin and John Duncan, this journal continues to be dedicated to quality articles, in all disciplines, on a broad range of topics concerning Korea, both historical and contemporary.
This edition's contents are as follows:
Special section: North Korea:
Guest Editor: Jae-Jung Suh
- Making Sense of North Korea: Institutionalizing Juche at the Nexus of Self and Other - Jae-Jung Suh
- The Making of the North Korean State - Gwang-Oon Kim
- The Suryong System as the Institution of Collectivist Development - Young Chul Chung
- The Rise and Demise of Industrial Agriculture in North Korea - Chong-Ae Yu
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Famine Relief, Social Order, and State Performance in Late Chosn Korea - Anders Karlsson
Book Reviews
- A History of the Early Korean Kingdom of Paekche, Together with an Annotated Translation of The Paekche Annals of the Samguk Sagi, by Jonathan Best. Reviewed by Gari Ledyard
- Perspectives on the Imjin War. Reviews by Kenneth M. Swope:
- The Book of Corrections: Reflections on the National Crisis During the Japanese Invasion of Korea, 1592–1598, translated by Byonghyon Choi
- The Imjin War: Japan’s Sixteenth-Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China, by Samuel Hawley
- Samurai Invasion: Japan’s Korean War, 1592–1598, by Stephen Turnbull.
- Painters as Envoys: Korean Inspiration in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Nanga, by Burglind Jungmann. Reviewed by Insoo Cho.
- Living Dangerously in Korea: The Western Experience 1900–1950, by Donald N. Clark. Reviewed by Kyung Moon Hwang
- Christianity in Korea, edited by Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and Timothy S. Lee. Reviewed by Chai-sik Chung
- Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea, by Seungsook Moon. Reviewed by William A. Hayes
- Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy, by Gi-Wook Shin. Reviewed by William A. Hayes
- North Korea: Between Survival and Glory. Reviews by Sung-han Kim:
- North Korea: The Politics of Regime Survival, edited by Young Whan Kihl and Hong Nack Kim
- North Korea: 2005 and Beyond, edited by Philip W. Yun and Gi-Wook Shin
- Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies, edited by Victor D. Cha and David Kang
- A Troubled Peace: U.S. Policy and the Two Koreas, by Chae-Jin Lee
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Rowman & Littlefield
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9780731161126
Cross Currents
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Northeast Asia stands at a turning point in its history. The key economies of China, Japan, and South Korea are growing increasingly interdependent, and the movement toward regionalism is gaining momentum. Yet interdependency, often set in a global context, also spurs nationalism in all three countries, and beyond in East Asia. The essays in this volume assess current interactions -- or cross currents -- between national and regional forces in Northeast Asia, and suggest their future direction.
Cross Currents features provocative, plain-spoken contributions from a range of eminent international scholars and practitioners. They address key questions facing the region today: What competing visions of regional integration are being considered in Northeast Asia? Will they be realized? How do national pressures, especially the renewed China-Japan rivalry, stunt the movement toward regionalism? What role can Korea play to mitigate tensions between the two archrivals? How does the United States figure in Northeast Asian regionalism? Do America's Cold War alliances still have currency?
By addressing these questions from both Asian and U.S. perspectives, Cross Currents sheds new light on the interplay of national and regional forces in this strategic part of the world. Reformulating these interactions constructively is one of Northeast Asia's most pressing contemporary challenges.
Downloads: List of contributors | Introduction by Gi-Wook Shin | The United States and Northeast Asia, by Daniel Sneider
Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.
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Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia
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Shorenstein APARC
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Ji-hoon Lee
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
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windjeju@stanford.edu
POSCO NGO Fellow
Ji-hoon Lee has worked for various NGOs in Korea for the past 15 years and has recently served as Chief of Policy Monitoring at Jeju Solidarity for Participatory Self-government and Environmental Preservation in Korea. He received his B.A. in History from Jeju National University.
Schools for Zealots? Islamic Education and Democracy in Indonesia - and Implications for the Muslim World
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In recent years the largest Muslim-majority country, Indonesia, has seen the growth of contrary trends: a peaceful movement for democracy led and supported mostly by Muslims but also incidents of terrorism and signs of paramilitarism linked mainly to radical Islamists. Prof. Hefner will examine the role of Indonesia's Islamic madrasas in both cases, assess the likely future of Indonesian Muslim politics, and explore the implications of Indonesia's experience for the wider Muslim world.
Robert W. Hefner has directed the program on Islam and civil society at Boston University since 1991. He has conducted research on religion and politics in Southeast Asia for over three decades, and has authored or edited a dozen books and several major policy reports. His most recent books include, Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education (edited with Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Princeton University Press, 2007); ed., Remaking Muslim Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, Democratization (Princeton, 2005); and Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton, 2000). He is the invited editor of the sixth volume of the forthcoming New Cambridge History of Islam, Muslims and Modernity: Society and Culture since 1800, and is now writing a book for the Carnegie Corporation on Islamic education and democratization in Indonesia.
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Robert W. Hefner
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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rhefner@bu.edu
Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia
Robert William Hefner, professor of anthropology and associate director of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University, is the inaugural Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia.
Professor Hefner has been associate director of the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University, where he has directed the program on Islam and civil society since 1991. Hefner has carried out research on religion and politics in Southeast Asia for the past thirty years, and has authored or edited a fourteen books, as well as several major policy reports for private and public foundations. His most recent books include, Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education (edited with Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Princeton 2007); ed., Remaking Muslim Politics: Pluralism, Contestation, Democratization (Princeton 2005), ed., and Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton 2000). Hefner is also the invited editor for the sixth volume of the forthcoming New Cambridge History of Islam, Muslims and Modernity: Society and Culture since 1800.
Hefner is currently writing a book on Islamic education, democratization, and political violence in Indonesia. The research and writing locate the Indonesian example in the culture and politics of the broader Muslim world. His book also revisits the the question of the role of religious and secular knowledge in modernity.
Hefner will divide his time between Boston University, the National University of Singapore, and Stanford, where he will teach a seminar during the spring quarter.
Conferences
Unifying or Drifting Apart: National Identities in the Two Koreas
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The talk will explore conceptions of nation and national identity in both North Korea (DPRK) and South Korea (ROK) and the ways in which the two Koreas demonstrate areas of convergence and divergence in this all-important arena. While many Koreans still claim to be unified by primordial bonds of blood, language, and culture, differing ideals and priorities in the ROK and the DPRK have the potential of pushing the two Korea's further apart.
Larsen teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the history of North and South Korea, East Asia, and the world, at the George Washington University. His book, Tradition, Trade and Empire: The Qing Empire and Choson Korea, is forthcoming. He has published, presented, and commented on a variety of contemporary issues including North Korea, nationalism and elections in South Korea, and Sino-Korean relations. He has appeared on ABC, MSNBC, VOA, the Canadian Broadcast System, and Al Jazeera. Dr. Larsen is the director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at the George Washington University. He received his PhD in history from Harvard University.
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Kirk Larsen
Associate Professor of History and International Affairs
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The George Washington University
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After 60 years, Pakistanis struggle to find right course
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Two countries with a common and ancient civilization, India and Pakistan, celebrated 60 years of independence from colonial rule this week. At the time of independence, both countries were in danger of collapsing from internal and external threats. This greatly influenced both countries' subsequent turn toward centralism - in India's case, statism, and in Pakistan's case, army rule.
For four decades, both statism and army rule seemed irreversible. This was despite failures across the board: In both countries, territory was lost and the economy stagnated. Resources were spent on developing nuclear weaponry and on dealing with the Kashmir insurgency, which was fostered by Pakistan and repressed by India. What was left was often wasted through corruption. By 1990, it was common for Pakistan to be labeled a failed state and India, perhaps more damningly, a failed democracy.
Pakistan's army and feudal landlords, who shared political power via an informal coalition throughout the first 40 years, deserve most of the blame for Pakistan's failures. They carved up the economy among themselves, and let the poor survive by growing food and providing simple services to the rich. India's greater failures hid these strategies from national or global attention. Pakistan even overtook India for a while until Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's nationalizations of the 1970s brought them on par again.
Pakistan, a day older than India, but with an even younger population, seems to have aged more poorly over the past two decades. As the Indian economy picks up speed on the back of the 1991 reforms, India is on its way to becoming a global player in services and acquiring as formidable a reputation as China for job creation. The IT sector alone creates three new jobs every minute of each working day. In the four statistics that really matter - literacy, life expectancy, infant mortality rates and the female-to-male ratio - only in the last does Pakistan perform better than India and that, too, marginally. In the others, it is substantially worse.
There is no single reason for Pakistan's poorer performance. It turned as reformist as India in the 1990s. This has benefited some parts of its economy. For instance, the country adds over 2.5 million new cell phone users each month, or 1 for every second of the day. Though below India's rate of 2.7 new cell phone users per second, it is a much better ratio to the population.
Religious fervor is often accused, but has not - in either the subcontinent's history or in Pakistan's shorter one - been a barrier to development. Despite incidents such as led to the recent siege of the Red Mosque in Islamabad, theocratic parties have never received more than 15 percent of the popular vote - and that was three decades ago. Evidence within all the countries of South Asia provides proof of the proposition that the poor, regardless of faith or ethnicity, seek the means of development, particularly the acquisition of education. Muslims are no exception to this proposition. For instance, the first administrative district to reach 100 percent literacy in the subcontinent was the Muslim-majority district of Malappuram in the Indian state of Kerala.
Finally, one cannot simply blame performance on Pakistan not being a full democracy. The world abounds with more failed than successful democracies, while China provides the most stunning counterexample of a successful dictatorship. Pakistan's current state of governance - in which the military, the courts and parliament share power and the press is relatively free - has been achieved through decades of negotiation and may well be the best framework given its current stage of political maturity.
Yet, there is one difference that may be the real reason for Pakistan's backwardness, and it is now becoming evident - again, by comparison with India. It is linked to bad governance but does not always follow from the democratic tradition. The difference is, in a word, freedom. India provides a good example: The government used to decide how resources were spent, leaving citizens with few choices on careers, education and lifestyles - on participation in their nation's growth. Since the 1990s, the Indian state has worked hard to give its citizens more freedom. The result is an invigorated India.
Pakistan, meanwhile, has moved slowly on freedom. The state has withdrawn from the economy, but now grants favors selectively to the private sector, with the inevitable corollary of massive corruption and loss of freedom of action.
This suggests that Pakistan is only a crucial freedom step away from success. In reality, the immediate future does not look promising because the country's citizens do not have the political will to achieve real change. It is a sad commentary that Pakistan's choices for the next cycle of political rule look like bad ones: the continuation of the present system of quasi-military rule or its replacement with the destructive feudal forces that Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif represent. Surely, Pakistan's citizens deserve much better - something worth pondering as their nation celebrates turning 60.
Reprinted with permission by The San Jose Mercury News.
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The Spiral of State-Building and Confucian Revolution in Choson Korea
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On March 18, 1871, Taewongun (Grand Prince) who held real power when King Kojong (r. 1863-1907) assumed power at the age of 12, issued a historical order that was enforced nationwide: All Confucian private academies ever built, except for the forty-seven royal-chartered ones, were to be destroyed. To justify this unprecedented repression, Taewongun argued that the academies were "the fundamental causes for the decaying nation." During the period from 1865 to 1871, over 800 academies were abolished and these intermediate organizations largely disappeared from the central scene of the Korean history and politics. Taewongun's startling regulation of private academies was rather surprising. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Choson monarchs enthusiastically encouraged and sponsored the establishment of the academies on the ground that the academy growth would contribute to country's moral reform and state-building. Why did the dramatic change of governmental policy on the academies occur? How can we resolve this historical enigma? To answer these questions, Koo situates this historical drama in a broader -structural- sociological context involving political competition between the state and nascent civil society, in association with his aim of overcoming the current historical explanations emphasizing more imminent causes of the abolition, such as military and fiscal abuses of the academies.
Jeong-Woo Koo is a visiting scholar at the department of sociology, Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University in 2007. His interests include comparative-historical sociology, organizations, sociology of education, political sociology, quantitative method, and East-Asian studies. His dissertation explores a long term political competition between state and civil society in Choson Korea. He is currently working on two projects, one on the worldwide expansion of international human rights and its impact on nation-states (with John Meyer and Francisco Ramirez), and the other on the formation of regionalism in East Asia (with Gi-Wook Shin). His publications include "The Origins of the Public Sphere and Civil Society: Private Academies and Petitions in Korea, 1506-1800," Social Science History 31: 3 (Fall 2007), and "World Society and Human Rights: Worldwide Foundings of National Human Rights Institutions, 1978-2004," Korean Journal of Sociology 41: 3 (Spring 2007).
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Jeong-Woo Koo
Visiting Scholar, Department of Sociology, Stanford University
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Shorenstein APARC delegation visits Chinese scholars, policymakers, and business leaders
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In April 2007, a delegation of scholars from Shorenstein APARC visited Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Beijing, fulfilling the center's mission to carry its work "into Asia." The delegation met senior officials from government and business and held wide-ranging exchanges with Chinese scholars and policymakers at leading universities and research institutions. The conversation ranged from China's development strategy to the current state of relations between China and its longtime rival and neighbor, Japan. Daniel Sneider, Shorenstein APARC's associate director for research, recalled the busy trip for FSI's regular newsletter, Encina Columns, (page 8).
Walking down a side street in Shanghai's French Concession, a partially preserved corner of that city's gloried and turbulent past, visitors come upon an ivy-covered house that served as the headquarters for the Shanghai branch of the Communist Party in the 1940s. Here the spartan quarters of Mao's second in command, Zhou Enlai, are carefully preserved, the narrow beds and wooden desks evoking a simpler, revolutionary China.
A short ride away, across the murky waters of the Huangpu River, monuments to the new China are being erected in what was farmland less than two decades ago. The Pudong New Area, with its clusters of highrise office towers and multi-story shopping malls, is emblematic of the rush to wealth and economic power that now drives China.
These were among the images from a visit to China by a delegation of scholars from the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center from April 8-14, 2007. Though time was short, the group managed to visit Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Beijing.
Fulfilling Shorenstein APARC's mission to carry its work "into Asia," the delegation met senior officials from government and business and held wide-ranging exchanges with Chinese scholars and policymakers at leading universities and research institutions. The conversation ranged from China's development strategy to the current state of relations between China and its longtime rival and neighbor, Japan.
The delegation was led by Shorenstein APARC director and professor of sociology Gi-Wook Shin and by professor of political science Jean C. Oi, who has launched the center's new China studies program. The group included Shorenstein distinguished fellow Ambassador Michael H. Armacost, associate director for research Daniel C. Sneider, and senior program and outreach coordinator Neeley Main. In Beijing, Freeman Spogli Institute director Coit Blacker joined the delegation, as did Shorenstein APARC's Scott Rozelle.
The trip started in Shanghai, a dynamic center of finance and industry that has drawn in many Stanford graduates. State-owned enterprises such as Baosteel, one of the world's largest steel producers, are in the midst of becoming players in the global marketplace. From Baosteel's sprawling complex of docks, blast furnaces, and rolling mills along an estuary of the Yangtze River, products are now being dispatched around the world. In a meeting, the leadership of the Baosteel Group expressed an eagerness to tap into the educational and training opportunities offered at Stanford University.
Shanghai is not only the business capital but also a political center, rivaling Beijing. The Shanghai Institute for International Studies is an unofficial foreign relations arm of the Shanghai government. Shanghai Institute scholars are also players in national policy debate on many key issues facing China, such as relations with Taiwan, with Japan, and even with the Korean peninsula.
The scholars presented their views on a wide range of issues, from the preparations for the 17th Congress of the Communist Party this coming fall to emerging structures of regional integration in East Asia. Professor Xu Mingqi, who is also a senior leader of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, explained that China's development strategy is shifting toward a more balanced approach. Whereas local government officials previously were pressed to meet targets for GDP growth, foreign investment, and export volume, now they must also raise employment levels, close the growing income gap, and provide social security.
Hangzhou, considered one of the most beautiful cities in China, is a two-hour drive south of Shanghai. The modern roadway passed a tableau of the suburbanization of this part of China's countryside, with multi-story brick homes mushrooming amidst the fields. The delegation arrived at Zhejiang University, considered among the best of China's provincial higher educational institutions and growing rapidly in size and scope.
The Shorenstein APARC delegation met with faculty members from Zhejiang's social science departments, who briefed the delegation on their research work in areas such as distance education, international relations, Chinese history, even a school of Korean studies. Zhejiang is also the site of a new research institution, the Zhejiang Institute for Innovation (ZII), founded by Stanford engineering graduate Min Zhu, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who is determined to bring the lessons of Stanford and the valley to his home province and his undergraduate alma mater. ZII aims to foster applied research that can tie the university to the vibrant entrepreneurial culture of Zhejiang province. Shorenstein APARC researchers may soon be carrying out fieldwork in this laboratory of change, based at ZII.
Beijing, however, is still the place that matters most in China, not only in the realm of government but also when it comes to academic scholarship. The delegation met with two of Shorenstein APARC's longtime corporate affiliates in China: PetroChina, the state-owned oil and gas giant, and the People's Bank of China. Shorenstein APARC dined with a lively group of Chinese journalists, organized by former Stanford Knight fellow Hu Shuli, the editor of Caijing Magazine, considered China's leading independent business publication.
The substantive task was to forge new ties with key research institutions. The current state of China's development strategy was again on the agenda when the delegation met with senior officials from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), formerly China's State Planning Commission. Alongside the NDRC, the delegation met as well with the leadership of an offshoot of China's State Council, the China Development Research Foundation, which is doing important work in promoting good governance in areas such as poverty alleviation, nutrition, and budgeting. Those conversations were echoed later in our meetings with scholars from Peking University's School of Government.
Shorenstein APARC's own China program, as Oi explained, is focused on understanding the tensions that arise as China grapples with the consequences of its rapid economic development. Out of the meetings in Beijing, an ongoing dialogue has begun, to be advanced this summer with a visit from a NDRC delegation and in the fall with an international conference at Stanford on China's Growing Pains.
The delegation also engaged in frank and useful exchanges on a variety of international relations issues. We had an extended meeting with scholars and leaders of the China Reform Forum (CRF), a think-tank associated with the Communist Party's Central Party School, the premier institution for training party leaders and officials. The CRF is credited with authoring important concepts such as the foreign policy doctrine of China's "Peaceful Rise." These discussions were followed by a visit and exchange with scholars from Peking University's widely respected School of International Studies.
The scholars shared analysis of the current state of the North Korean nuclear negotiations, as well as evaluating the outcome of Chinese Premier Wen Jibao's visit that week to Japan. Over dinner with CRF Vice Chairman Ding Kuisong, the conversation turned to the American presidential politics and the future direction of U.S. foreign policy.
Professors Blacker, Shin, and Oi also met with senior officials of Peking University, as part of an ongoing dialogue about cooperation between these two premier institutions of higher education.
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