The United States and Japan celebrated the 50th anniversary of the current US-Japan security treaty in January 2010, despite several dark clouds on the horizon. Both countries have seen transitions to Democrats in power in 2009 that led to new political debates over security practices. Is the future actually as rosy as portrayed by diplomats on both sides in this "anniversary year"? Relations will probably continue their rocky course in the coming months, but in the medium term the underlying logic for close US-Japan security cooperation, and for continuing development of defense capabilities in Asia for both countries, is quite strong.

Andrew Oros is a specialist on the international and comparative politics of East Asia and the advanced industrial democracies, with an emphasis on contending approaches to managing security and on the linkage between domestic and international politics. He is the author of Normalizing Japan: Politics, Identity, and the Evolution of Security Practice (Stanford University Press, 2008) and the co-editor of and contributor to Japan's New Defense Establishment: Institutions, Capabilities, and Implications (Stimson Center, 2007), Can Japan Come Back? (Pacific Council, 2003), and Culture in World Politics (Macmillan Press, 1998). His latest work is as co-author of the forthcoming Global Security Watch: Japan (Praeger Press, 2010). He also has shared his research in over a dozen scholarly articles, numerous mass-media quotations, and lectures to policymakers in Washington, DC, Berlin, Tokyo, Beijing, and elsewhere.

Donald K. Emmerson is a professor at Stanford University, where he heads the Southeast Asia Forum in the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and is affiliated with the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. 

Prior to joining Stanford’s faculty, Emmerson taught political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and spent time as a visiting scholar at the Australian National University (Canberra), the Institute of Advanced Studies (Princeton), and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Washington, DC), among other institutions.  He received his Yale University PhD in political science following a Princeton University BA in international affairs.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is Asia’s most resilient regional organization.  Its ambitious new charter aims to foster, in a dynamic but disparate region, a triply integrated region comprising a Political and Security Community, an Economic Community, and a Socio-Cultural Community.  The charter’s debut under Thailand’s 2008-09 chairmanship of the Association was badly marred, however, by political strife among Thai factions, clashes on the Thai-Cambodian border, and border-crossing risks of a non-military kind.  How have these developments affected ASEAN’s regional performance and aspirations?  Are its recent troubles transitional or endemic?  Do they imply a need for the Association to reconsider its modus operandi, lest it lose its role as the chief architect of East Asian regionalism?

Dr Thitinan Pongsudhirak is director of the Institute of Security and International Studies and an associate professor of international political economy at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.  He is a prolific author, having written many op eds, articles, chapters, and books on Thailand’s politics, political economy, foreign policy, and media, and on ASEAN and East Asian security and economic cooperation.  He has worked for The Nation newspaper (Bangkok), The Economist Intelligence Unit, and Independent Economic Analysis (London).  His degrees are from the London School of Economics (PhD), Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (MA), and the University of California (BA).  His doctoral study of the 1997 Thai economic crisis won the United Kingdom’s Lord Bryce Prize for Best Dissertation in Comparative and International Politics—currently the only work by an Asian scholar to have been so honored. 

Southeast Asian identity is thought to be far more elite-political than mass-cultural in nature. Is this conventional wisdom true?  Audiovisual flows of popular culture across national borders have proliferated.  Malaysia, for example, is flooded with Indonesian music and films, while there are a number of Malaysian actors in the Indonesian TV industry.  Specifically Muslim culture has a growing presence in both countries’ soap operas, novels, songs, and cinema.  In their films, Malaysian directors Yasmin Ahmad and Hatta Azad Khan reflect on notions of Islamic primacy and Malay supremacy in their country, while Arabo-Muslim-centered cinema draws audiences in Indonesia.  These themes are associated in both countries with the spread of Islamic ethics, the implementation of Islamic laws, and the associated jockeying of Islamist groups for greater political leverage.  Dr. Clark will use this evidence to highlight and explore the intersection of culture and politics in Southeast Asian regionalism—a dynamic, participatory, on-the-ground process that does not depend on what ASEAN diplomats say or do.

Marshall Clark is a lecturer in Indonesian studies in the School of International and Political Studies at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia.  Future and recent publications include Maskulinitas: Culture, Gender and Politics in Indonesia (forthcoming in 2010); a monograph on Indonesian literature, Wayang Mbeling (in Indonesian, 2008); and a chapter on Indonesian cinema in Popular Culture in Indonesia (2008).  Before moving to Deakin, he taught at the University of Tasmania.  His doctorate in Southeast Asian studies is from the Australian National University.  At Stanford in Spring 2010 he will work on a joint research project with Dr. Juliet Pietsch on “Indonesia-Malaysia Relations: Culture, Politics and Regionalism in Southeast Asia.”

As one of the core features of modern states, universal schooling provided a tool with which to disseminate the skills and knowledge demanded by the new era of industrialization and interstate competition, as well as to impart what it meant to be a citizen. Citizenship education, in fact, or "civics," lay at the heart of the education enterprise in the modern world, reflecting the new circumstances of competing nation-states and hence prioritizing the cultivation of the population’s identification with and allegiance to a particular nation and/or the state.  An education system, then, came to be regarded as a strategic necessity if not entirely an idealistic or humanitarian one. 

This presentation explores modern Korean state making through an examination of citizen education at the turn of the 20th century.  How did the larger purpose of universal schooling and citizenship education evolve as the Korean state underwent so many dramatic shifts in form, function, and even sovereignty?  What role did the educational institutions, from the state bureaucracy to the schools themselves, play in spreading the lessons of loyalty, allegiance, and identity?  And finally, How did Confucian ethics and statecraft affect the demands of the modern schooling system?  Indeed the legacies of pre-20th century Korea extended well into the colonial era (1910-45), including the period of wartime mobilization in the 1930s and 40s, when schooling became central to the intensified, radical assimilation policy of turning Koreans into "imperial subjects."

Professor Hwang conducts research on the modern transformation of Korea, broadly conceived.  He is the author of Beyond Birth: Social Status in the Emergence of Modern Korea (2004), and co-edited, with Professor Gi-Wook Shin of Stanford, Contentious Kwangju:  The May 1980 Uprising in Korea's Past and Present (2003).  His latest book, History of Korea: An Episodic Narrative (Palgrave Macmillan) is expected to be published in 2010.  He teaches courses on Korean history and society, East Asian and world history at the University of Southern California.  He is a graduate of Oberlin College (AB) and Harvard University (Ph.D).

This seminar is supported by a generous grant from Koret Foundation.

Can anyone say that South Korean society and politics have become "transformed" since the 1987 democratic opening and transition? This statement is "admittedly ambitious" as a claim "because an endpoint of transformation can never be attained with certainty," the speaker argues.  After a successful democratic transition, South Korea’s next challenge lies in consolidating its democratic gains and building durable political institutions, requiring full compliance with democratic norms by all major political forces and interest groups in civil society. This on-going quest for liberal democracy, not easy for South Korea’s Sixth Republic, will be explored in Professor Kihl's presentation.

Young Whan Kihl is currently a visiting scholar in the Korean Studies Program at APARC. He is Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, at Iowa State University. Professor Kihl taught courses on International Relations, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Behavior, and Comparative Foreign Policy at Iowa State University, 1974-2006, and served as Chair of the Department of Political Science, Juniata College, 1963-1974.  He was editor-in-chief of The International Journal of Korean Studies from 2004 to 2008 and was on the editorial advisory board of International Studies Quarterly from 1998 to 2004.  He has written numerous books on Korean politics, both North and South. Included in the list of his recent books are: North Korea: the Politics of Regime Survival, 2006 (coeditor) and Transforming Korean Politics: Democracy, Reform, and Culture, 2005.

Professor Kihl received a BA in Political Science and Economics from Grinnell College and a Ph.D. in International Politics and Organizations, Comparative Politics (Asia), and Political Behavior from New York University.