ISEAS is pleased to invite you to the panel discussion and book launch for Donald Emmerson's new book, Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia.

Program

• 3:00 pm - Welcome by Ambassador K Kesavapany - Director, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
• 3.05 pm - Introduction of Panelists by Professor Donald K Emmerson
• 3.10 pm - Presentation by Professor Donald K Emmerson
• 3.20 pm - Presentation by Professor Jörn Dosch
• 3.30 pm - Presentation by Dr Alan Chong Chia Siong
• 3.40 pm - General Discussion
• 4.30pm - Comments, Q & A
• 4.30 pm - Concluding Remarks
• 4.35 pm - Book Signing

Alan Chong Chia Siong is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore.  His recent publications include "Asian Contributions on Democratic Dignity and Responsibility:  Rizal, Sukarno and Lee on Guided Democracy" in East Asia: An International Quarterly (2008) and Foreign Policy Global Information Space: Actualizing Soft Power (2007).  His PhD is from the London School of Economics and Political Science.  

Jörn Dosch is a professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds.  Among his recent publications are The Changing Dynamics of Southeast Asian Politics (2006), Economic and Non-traditional Security Cooperation in the Greater Mekong Subregion) (GMS) (co-authored, 2005).  His PhD is from Mainz University.

Donald K Emmerson heads the Southeast Asia Forum at Stanford University.  His recent publications include "ASEAN's Black Swans," Journal of Democracy (2008) and "Southeast Asia in Political Science:  Terms of Enlistment," in Erik Martinez Kuhonta et al., eds, Southeast Asia in Political Science:  Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis (2008).  His PhD is from Yale University.

North Korea has often been considered an aberration in the post-Cold War international system, a relic of a Stalinist past. In fact, a close examination of North Korean foreign relations during the Cold War period reveals that Pyongyang's behavior never fit neatly into the paradigm of a bipolar international order, and that the Cold War itself had a distinctive dynamic in the Korean context. This dynamic helps to explain the continued existence of a divided Korea to this day, long after the bipolar international system has ended. Based largely on formerly secret materials from North Korea's Cold War allies in Eastern Europe, this paper suggests that Pyongyang's "aberrent" behavior long pre-dates the 1990s. It argues that North Korea has exhibited more continuity than change in the way it has dealt with the outside world over the last several decades, focusing on three areas of foreign policy: economic extraction, political non-alignment, and the development of an independent nuclear weapons capability.

Charles K. Armstrong is The Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Korean Studies in the Social Sciences in the Department of History and the Director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University. In the fall semester of 2008 he was a Visiting Professor in the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University.

A specialist in the modern history of Korea and East Asia, Professor Armstrong is the author or editor of several books, including The Koreas (Routledge, 2007), The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 (Cornell, 2003), Korea at the Center: Dynamics of Regionalism in Northeast Asia (M.E. Sharpe, 2006), and Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy, and the State (Routledge, second edition 2006), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters.  His current book projects include a study of North Korean foreign relations in the Cold War era and a history of modern East Asia.

Professor Armstrong holds a B.A. in Chinese Studies from Yale University, an M.A. in International Relations from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago. He has been a member of the Columbia faculty since 1996.

While representations of history are very common in Western film and television, in East Asia we find the perhaps unique genre of history ‘soap operas’ that portray influential political figures of the past rather than fictitious characters, describing their lives in intimate personal detail in the format of a lengthy ‘soap’, often broadcast daily. Some use their heroes and heroines/villains and villainesses simply as a set on which to stage romantic or other interesting stories (historic settings are extremely popular in East Asia); others claim to present ‘authentic’ history, and may lead to considerable controversy, especially in authoritarian states, such as the People’s Republic of China, where history is an extremely sensitive subject. In recent years in particular, some of these soaps have drastically revised official verdicts on a number of historical figures, stirring intense public debate and triggering government interference and censorship.

Matthias Niedenführ analyzes East Asian history soap operas, especially those from China, both in light of recent political and social changes and in comparison with “histotainment” (history entertainment) on German television, where historical dramas tend to come in the form of miniseries and to be paired with documentary broadcasts. While there is clearly less official scrutiny in the case of German television productions than in those of China, it is shown that revisiting hitherto accepted ‘truths’ or problematizing the personalities and actions of history’s ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ may be highly contested in both totalitarian states and multi-party democracies.

Matthias Niedenführ is the Director of the European Centre for Chinese Studies, a consortium of four German and Danish universities based at Peking University. Prior to his move to Beijing, he was the co-ordinator for the Confucius Institute in Nuremberg and a research fellow at the University of Erlangen, working on a major international project on national identities and historical revisionism in East Asia. He has degrees in Asian Studies and Economics, with a particular interest in the Chinese and Japanese media. His current research projects focus on the representation of history in the mass media, and on the internationalization of the Chinese economy.

Asia’s economies have been hard hit by the current global financial crisis, despite in most cases enjoying strong macroeconomic fundamentals and stable financial systems.  Early hopes were that the region might be “decoupled” from the Western world’s financial woes and even able to lend the West a hand through high growth and the investment of large foreign exchange reserves.  But that optimism has been dashed by slumping exports, plunging commodity prices, and capital outflows.  The region’s most open, advanced and globally-integrated economies—Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan—are already in severe recession, with Japan, Korea and Malaysia not far behind, and dramatic slowdowns are underway in China, India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.  What role did Asian countries play in the genesis of the global crisis, and why have they been so severely impacted?  How is their recovery likely to be shaped by market developments and institutional changes in the West, and in Asia itself in response to the crisis?  Will the region’s embrace of accelerated globalization and marketization following the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis now be retarded or reversed?

Linda Lim is a leading authority on Asian economies, Asian business, and the impacts of the current global financial crisis on Asia, and she has published widely on these topics. Her current research is on the ASEAN countries’ growing economic linkages with China.

Forthcoming in 2009 are Globalizing State, Disappearing Nation: The Impact of Foreign Participation in the Singapore Economy (with Lee Soo Ann) and Rethinking Singapore’s Economic Growth Model. She serves on the executive committees of the Center for Chinese Studies and the Center for International Business Education at the University of Michigan, where formerly she headed the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Before coming to Michigan, she taught economic development and political economy at Swarthmore. A native of Singapore, she obtained her degrees in economics from Cambridge (BA), Yale (MA), and Michigan (PhD).