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Understanding North Korea

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North Korea and the United States have been mired in enmity for over half a century. Such a relationship of mutual antagonism has affected the process by which each produces knowledge about the other: the knowledge so produced has reinforced the enmity.

This workshop attempts to problematize the reality of enmity and to raise questions about the almost hegemonic status of the mutually reinforcing hostility. To achieve the goal, it follows a dual track. First, it asks authors to investigate the social and discursive practices that reproduce and hegemonize North Korea's identity. Second, it asks each author to examine concrete and specific social realities of North Korea as a way to challenge the conventional narrative that overlooks or erases variegated historical realities and that privileges a particular conceptualization of a national identity over multiple alternatives.

This program is open to the public and participation in sections of the program is allowed.

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Jae Jung Suh Cornell University

Gi-Wook Shin

Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall E301
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(650) 724-8480 (650) 723-6530
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor of Sociology
William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea
Professor, by Courtesy, of East Asian Languages & Cultures
Gi-Wook Shin_0.jpg PhD

Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in the Department of Sociology, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the founding director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) since 2001, all at Stanford University. In May 2024, Shin also launched the Taiwan Program at APARC. He served as director of APARC for two decades (2005-2025). As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, democracy, migration, and international relations.

In Summer 2023, Shin launched the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), which is a new research initiative committed to addressing emergent social, cultural, economic, and political challenges in Asia. Across four research themes– “Talent Flows and Development,” “Nationalism and Racism,” “U.S.-Asia Relations,” and “Democratic Crisis and Reform”–the lab brings scholars and students to produce interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, policy-relevant, and comparative studies and publications. Shin’s latest book, The Four Talent Giants, a comparative study of talent strategies of Japan, Australia, China, and India to be published by Stanford University Press in the summer of 2025, is an outcome of SNAPL.

Shin is also the author/editor of twenty-six books and numerous articles. His books include Korean Democracy in Crisis: The Threat of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization (2022); The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security (2021); Superficial Korea (2017); Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War (2016); Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015); Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010); Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (2007);  and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (2006). Due to the wide popularity of his publications, many have been translated and distributed to Korean audiences. His articles have appeared in academic and policy journals, including American Journal of Sociology, World Development, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Political Science Quarterly, Journal of Asian Studies, Comparative Education, International Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, Journal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs.

Shin is not only the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, but also continues to actively raise funds for Korean/Asian studies at Stanford. He gives frequent lectures and seminars on topics ranging from Korean nationalism and politics to Korea's foreign relations, historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia, and talent strategies. He serves on councils and advisory boards in the United States and South Korea and promotes policy dialogue between the two allies. He regularly writes op-eds and gives interviews to the media in both Korean and English.

Before joining Stanford in 2001, Shin taught at the University of Iowa (1991-94) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1994-2001). After receiving his BA from Yonsei University in Korea, he was awarded his MA and PhD from the University of Washington in 1991.

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Director of the Korea Program and the Taiwan Program, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
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Hong Kal

APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 736-0685 (650) 723-6530
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PhD

Hong Kal is a postdoctoral Korean research fellow at the Asia-Pacific Research Center. She received her B.A. and M.F.A. from Seoul National University in Korea and M.A. and Ph.D. in History and Theory of Art and Architecture from State University of New York, Binghamton in 2003. Her dissertation, "The Presence of the Past: Exhibitions, Memories, and National Identities in Colonial and Postcolonial Japan and Korea," examined the politics of culture in the two countries and their intertwined historical relations across twentieth century. Her research has concentrated on the formation of colonial modernity and national identity in colonial expositions in Korea and the visual representation of historical memories of the past--colonialism and war--in independence, peace and war museums in contemporary Korea and Japan. She was the recipient of the Japan Foundation Dissertation Research Fellowship (2001-02).

Korean Studies Program Fellow
Hong Kal
Kwan-Un Kim National Institute of Korean History
Dae Sook Suh University of Hawaii
Young-Chul Chung Seoul National University

Soyoung Kwon

APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-5667 (650) 723-6530
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Shorenstein Fellow
PhD
Soyoung Kwon
Hong Young Lee Berkeley University
Yong-Wook Chung Seoul National University
J.J. Suh Cornell University

Kyu S. Hahn

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-0938 (650) 723-6530
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Postdoctoral Fellow, Korean Studies Program
PhD
Kyusup Hahn
Workshops
Korea Program

SPRIE hosts workshop on university-industry linkages

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Wena Rosario
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This two-day research workshop at Stanford University aims to bring together experts to explore the nature of the connections between universities/research institutes and industry in the United States , Taiwan , and Mainland China . Within this national and international context, the workshop will focus on several leading cases, including Stanford University , Tsinghua University in Beijing , and the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Hsinchu Science-based Park. The workshop will facilitate exchange of data and ideas among leading scholars and practitioners from several disciplines, institutions, and countries. Workshop proceedings will be published and distributed by SPRIE as part of its Greater China Networks program.

In recent years, the rise of the Knowledge Economy has underscored the essential role technological innovation has played in economic development. As key institutions in the innovation process, universities and public research institutes have become the center of many theoretical and empirical studies, most of which have focused on the various roles of academia in national innovation systems and their linkages with industry in fulfilling these roles.

To date, most studies have been based on the experience of industrialized countries such as U.S. and Japan . Few scholars have examined these issues in newly industrialized or developing economies, such as Taiwan and Mainland China . Linkages between universities and commerce vary greatly among countries, among universities within countries, among academic fields within universities, and among industries. American universities have a long history of involvement with commerce and many Chinese ones have been actively engaged with it since economic liberalizing began 25 years ago. In Taiwan , universities have played a less direct role by comparison with its research institutes.

The nature of the linkages varies greatly. How? Why? With what impact? In broad terms, American universities (including often their faculty members) make money from licensing ideas created in them but, with few exceptions, these universities do not directly own companies. The practice is very different in Mainland China . Its leading universities, including Tsinghua, own and operate many companies. (Its Academy of Sciences has also been a major source of high tech companies.) In Taiwan , the pattern has been mainly for research institutes to spin out companies.

That these institutions can make large economic contributions to society is not in doubt, nor that linkages with commerce can be financially rewarding to them. The focus of this workshop is in the policies and methods they use for generating ideas that have potential commercial and technological value, and how these policies and methods balance commercial-related activities with the teaching and research missions of universities. More detailed analysis and greater understanding of the policies, institutions, and practices on university-research institute-industry relations in the U.S. , Taiwan , and Mainland China is.

As the trend of globalization of science and technology continues, academic communities (including public research institutes and universities) in Greater China will increasingly become important partners in a global innovation system. Therefore, the academia-market interface in these economies not only can shed new light on the ongoing debate, but also because the evolution of such relationships will impact the global innovation system. In addition, university-research institute-industry linkages in Taiwan and Mainland China offer unique cases to study the evolving institutional relationships between academia and industry, such as the roles of ITRI or Chinese universities have played in the growth of high-tech industries in Taiwan and Mainland China . A careful examination of these cases and a comparison of them with leading cases in the U.S. , such as Stanford University , will offer insights into the driving factors and implications of the interactions of these institutions in the process of technological development.

Some of the questions addressed in the workshop:

  • What is the current state of linkages between universities/research institutes and industry in the selected regions? What factors are responsible for the observed patterns?
  • What have been the benefits and costs of these linkages to the universities/research institutes? How are they seen from the industry side?
  • What is the evidence that such linkages create more commercially useful ideas and/or speed them to market? What mechanisms or institutional relationships have worked, failed or yet to be judged?
  • What are the rules under which universities and research institutes operate? What are the pitfalls to avoid in fostering such linkages? Is there agreement on best practices in each region?
  • Where are these relationships heading? Will the boundaries between academic and research institutions and companies become further blurred in the 21 st century or will actions be taken to strengthen the boundaries between them?
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Korean Studies Postdoctoral Research Fellowships

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Heather Ahn
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The Asia Pacific Research Center of the Stanford Institute for International Studies at Stanford University is seeking one or two research fellow candidates in Korean Studies for the 2005-2006 academic year.

All fellows are expected to be in residence during the duration of the fellowship and participate in various activities of the rapidly expanding Korean Studies Program at Stanford. We are particularly interested in candidates who can collaborate on various projects of the Program, including social activism and political elite formation, historical injustice and reconciliation, Asian regionalism, US-Korean relations, North Korea, etc.

The award carries a twelve month stipend of $40,000-45,000, commensurate with experience, with benefits and research fund. Applicants should receive a doctoral degree by August 31, 2005.

To apply, please send C.V., two writing samples, and two letters of reference to

Professor Gi-Wook Shin

Asia Pacific Research Center

Encina Hall, Stanford University

Stanford, CA 94305-6055

The application deadline is by March 10, 2005.

The search committee will review the applications and conduct interviews at the upcoming meeting of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) in Chicago. For more information, contact Jasmin Ha.

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APARC Center Overview 2004

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Shorenstein APARC's center overviews provide detailed information about Shorenstein APARC's mission, history, faculty, financial support, organizational structure, projects, and programs.

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Politics and Identity on Taiwan and Cross-Strait Relations

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Richard Bush is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Director of its Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies. The Center serves as a locus for research, analysis, and debate to enhance policy development on the pressing political, eco-nomic, and security issues facing Northeast Asia and U.S. interests in the region.

Bush came to Brookings in July 2002, after serving almost five years as the Chairman and Managing Director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the mechanism through which the United States Government conducts substantive relations with Taiwan in the absence of diplomatic relations.

Dr. Bush began his professional career in 1977 with the China Council of The Asia Society. In July 1983 he became a staff consultant on the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs. In January 1993 he moved up to the full committee, where he worked on Asia issues and served as liaison with Democratic Members. In July 1995, he became National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and a member of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which coordinates the analytic work of the intelligence committee. He left the NIC in September 1997 to become head of AIT.

Richard Bush received his undergraduate education at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. He did his graduate work in political science at Columbia University, getting an M.A. in 1973 and his Ph.D. in 1978. He is the author of a num-ber of articles on U.S. relations with China and Taiwan, and of At Cross Purposes, a book of essays on the history of America's relations with Taiwan.

Co-hosted with the Hoover Institution.

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Richard C. Bush Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies The Brookings Institution
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Divine Encounters, Wolf Killing and Mythological Patricide: Ainu Identities and Japanese Colonialism

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Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Japanese "nationalism" (if such a term is even applicable) depended less on imagined similarities among Japanese than it did on their contrived customary differences from foreign peoples such as the Ainu. The boundaries of the early modern Japanese realm were ethno-geographical, and Ainu identity and difference was critical in constructing the borders of Japan.

After 1799, the Tokugawa shogunate and, later, the Meiji state, undertook policies of deculturation and assimilation toward the Ainu, because the Meiji strategy toward state building relied less on difference than on myths of internal homogeneity. The Meiji state conscripted Ainu into the myth of Japanese homogeneity through assimilation; but earlier forms of Ainu autonomy and difference first had to be destroyed.

Interestingly, wolf eradication offers one vantage point from which to view the process of Ainu deculturation and assimilation in the context of the colonization of Hokkaido and the creation of the modern myths that provided the foundation for Japan's ethnic nationalism. Ainu origin mythology held that the Ainu people were born from a union of a wolf and a goddess, and so when Ainu tracked and killed wolves and wild dogs under state bounty programs legitimized as "imperial grants," they committed mythological patricide, replacing their origin myths with Japanese ones that, over the course of the late Meiji period, served as the foundation of Japan's modern nation.

Japan Brown Bag Series

Co-hosted with the Center for East Asian Studies

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Brett Walker Professor of History Montana State University
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Director's Welcoming Remarks

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Gi-Wook Shin
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Director, Gi-Wook Shin welcomes the new members to the Korean Studies Program at the beginning of 2004-2005 academic year.

Dear members of the Korean Studies community,

I trust that all of you have had a great summer and are now ready for the beginning of a new academic year. I welcome all of you back to campus and to another exciting year for the Korean Studies Program (KSP) at Stanford University.

First of all, I welcome the new members to our program this year. Philip Yun and John Feffer are our inaugural Pantech Fellows and will conduct research related to Korea, both North and South. Both Philip and John have distinguished careers and will be great assets to all of us at KSP. Philip has held high-level positions at the State Department and worked closely with former Secretary of Defense, Dr. William Perry, in addition to practicing law in both Korea and the U.S. John is an accomplished writer and editor, and his most recent publication is North Korea/South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis. I would also like to welcome Jasmin Ha, who will serve as our new Program Coordinator and assistant to me. She worked previously at The Korea Society in New York City and brings to us both her experience and vision for Korean studies at Stanford. Soyoung Kwon, a North Korean expert, will also be staying at APARC as a Shorenstein Fellow for the coming year.

Hong Kal and Chiho Sawada, post-doctoral research fellows, will remain with us for another year. Hong has accepted a tenure-track assistant professorship at York University, but will not start her appointment until the 2005-06 year. Rakhi Patel, our student assistant, will continue to work part-time to assist Jasmin and myself.

We will resume our popular luncheon seminars on October 15 with a presentation by Eric Larson of the Rand Corporation on his project on South Korean attitudes towards the United States. There will also be numerous other exciting events and programs on Korea-related issues throughout the coming year. Please visit our website for more detailed and continuously updated information.

KSP is also now home to the Journal of Korean Studies for which Chiho and I serve as associate editor and co-editor, respectively, of the journal. In addition, we have been engaged in a number of exciting projects. I have just finished my overdue book on Korean ethnic nationalism and am currently working with Kyu Sup Hahn, a doctoral student in Communications, on a project on U.S. media coverage of Korea and South Korean media coverage of the U.S. from 1992-2004. We will also continue on-going projects such as "Globalization in Korea" and "Historical Injustice, Reconciliation, and Cooperation." I appreciate the assistance of the many students and researchers who have been working with me on these projects over the years.

This year we will do an international search to fill the William Perry Chair in contemporary Korea. This is an extremely important appointment for the Korean Studies Program at Stanford, and you will have the opportunity to meet candidates throughout the year.

Thanks again for your continued support of the Korean Studies Program at Stanford. I look forward to seeing you at the various KSP events and programs throughout the year.

Cordially,

Gi-Wook Shin,

Director

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Journal of Korean Studies, volume 9

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Between 1979 and 1992, the JKS 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:

Articles

  1. Literary Production, Circulating Libraries and Private Publishing: The Popular Reception of Vernacular Fiction Texts in the Late Chosun Dynasty - Michael Kim
  2. The Uses and Abuses of Wonhyo and the "Tong Pulkyo" Narrative - Eunsu Cho
  3. National History and Domestic Spaces: Secret Lives of Girls and Women in 1950s South Korea in O Chong-hui's "The Garden of Childhood"and "The Chinese Street" - Jin-Kyung Lee
  4. Disturbing Images: Rebellion, Usurpation, and Rulership in Early Sixteenth Century East Asia-Korean Writings on Emperor Wuzong - David M. Robinson
  5. Sugi's Collation Notes to the Koryo Buddhist Canon and Their Significance for Buddhist Textual Criticism - Robert E. Buswell, Jr.

Book Reviews

  1. The Melodrama of Mobility: Women, Talk, and Class in Contemporary South Korea by Nancy Abelmann. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003. xviii, 325 pp. $27.00 (paper). Reviewed by Michael E. Robinson
  2. The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 by Charles K. Armstrong. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. xv, 265 pp. $39.95 (Cloth). Reviewed by Frank Hoffmann
  3. Kwangju Diary: Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age by Jae-eui Lee. Trans. by Kap Su Seol and Nick Mamatas. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series, 1999. 172 pp.
  4. Laying Claim to the Memory of May: A Look Back at the 1980 Kwangju Uprising by Linda S. Lewis. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002. xxi, 189 pp.
  5. Contentious Kwangju: The May 18 Uprising in Korea's Past and Present edited by Gi-Wook Shin and Kyung Moon Hwang. Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. xxxi, 159 pp. Reviewed by Hong Kal
  6. Hanguk hyondae minjok undong yongu-haebang hu minjok kukka konssol undong kwa tongil chonson by So Chung-sok, Seoul: Yoksa pipyongsa, 1991. 678 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Won 14,000. Reviewed by Kyung Moon Hwang
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Gi-Wook Shin

Political Significance of Royal Portraits in the Early Choson Period

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During the Choson period, ojin or portraits of kings were regarded as the most important of all figural images. From the beginning of the Choson dynasty, many ojin were produced and housed in chinjon or portrait halls. King T'aejo (r. 1392-1398), the founder of the Choson dynasty, enshrined one of his ojin at the Chunwon Hall in Yonghung, where he was born, and another in a chinjon in Kyongju, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Silla. The third king T'aejong (r. 1400-1398), who was the fifth son of King T'aejo, established two more chinjon: Munso Hall in the capital city Hanyang and Kyemyong Hall in Kaesong, the capital of the previous Koryo dynasty. He also enshrined two additional portraits of King T'aejo in Pyongyang, the old capital of Kokuryo, and in Chonju, the royal family's ancestral home. As a result, there were altogether six chinjon in the early Choson period.

In contrast to the Koryo dynasty when chinjon were often established at Buddhist temples, most Choson royal chinjon had no relation to Buddhism. Instead, they were built in a Confucian architectural style and were used for the observance of ancestor worship ceremonies based on Confucian rites.

Choson ojin and chinjon often manifested the king's authority and power. Due to his usurpation of the throne by killing his brother, King T'aejong struggled to maintain his legitimacy throughout his reign. He used ojin and chinjon to consolidate his kingship and to suppress challenges posed by high officials. Therefore, ojin in the early Choson dynasty was a very political art form, and most recorded discussions on ojin were based on political context with little or no regard for artistic agendas.

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Insoo Cho Assistant Professor, Art History University of Southern California
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Does Perception Matter in International Relations?: Trends in US and Korean Media Coverage of the Alliance, 1992-2004

For much of the U.S.-ROK alliance's fifty-year history, it was considered one of the most successful political-military relationships forged out of the Cold War era. More recently, however, experts have expressed concerns about the durability of the alliance, given changing views in both Seoul and Washington on the nature of the threat posed by North Korea. The two allies' disparate approaches to DPRK policy became evident in the wake of the 2001 summit between the newly inaugurated President Bush and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung.

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