Stanford University

Joon Nak Choi

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

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Joon Nak Choi is the 2015-2016 Koret Fellow in the Korea Program at Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC). A sociologist by training, Choi is an assistant professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research and teaching areas include economic development, social networks, organizational theory, and global and transnational sociology, within the Korean context.

Choi, a Stanford graduate, has worked jointly with professor Gi-Wook Shin to analyze the transnational bridges linking Asia and the United States. The research project explores how economic development links to foreign skilled workers and diaspora communities.

Most recently, Choi coauthored Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea with Shin, who is also the director of the Korea Program. From 2010-11, Choi developed the manuscript while he was a William Perry postdoctoral fellow at Shorenstein APARC.

During his fellowship, Choi will study the challenges of diversity in South Korea and teach a class for Stanford students. Choi’s research will buttress efforts to understand the shifting social and economic patterns in Korea, a now democratic nation seeking to join the ranks of the world’s most advanced countries.
 
Supported by the Koret Foundation, the Koret Fellowship brings leading professionals to Stanford to conduct research on contemporary Korean affairs with the broad aim of strengthening ties between the United States and Korea. The fellowship has expanded its focus to include social, cultural and educational issues in Korea, and aims to identify young promising scholars working on these areas.

 

2015-2016 Koret Fellow
Visiting Scholar

SEAF connects with Stanford alumni in Indonesia

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In official and scholarly circles in the United States it has become almost a cliché to say that no country is both more important and less well known to Americans than Indonesia. Southeast Asia Forum director Donald K. Emmerson would like to change this by making Indonesia better known, among Americans generally and at Stanford especially. On September 19 he met in Jakarta with 18 locally resident Stanford alumni to discuss ideas for improving international awareness of, and expertise on, their country. Melinda Wiria (MS '98) coordinated the visit.

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North Korea under Kim Jong-un: time for a paradigm shift

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Gi-Wook Shin
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In an op-ed in The Korea Times, Gi-Wook Shin discusses North Korea’s new leadership under Kim Jong-un. He suggests that this period of transition in North Korea might offer an opportunity for the U.S. and South Korea to attempt to stabilize their relationships with North Korea and make significant headway in the North Korean denuclearization process. He contends, also, that the stability of the new North Korean regime may act as a positive element in the promotion of peace and security on the Korean peninsula and in Northeast Asia as a whole.
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U.S. role crucial in Northeast Asian reconciliation

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Gi-Wook Shin
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John Roos, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, conducted a historic visit in August 2010 to Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima. What is the possibility of and the implications for a similar U.S. Presidential visit? Gi-Wook Shin, director of Shorenstein APARC and the Korean Studies Program, explores this question and suggests that the U.S. must play a role in the reconciliation of World War II memories in Northeast Asia.

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SPRIE Researcher Robert Eberhart addresses PhilDev USA Business Forum

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SPRIE Researcher Robert Eberhart spoke on economic growth strategies at the Philippine Development Foundation USA's "PhilDev USA Business Forum" on September 25 in San Jose. The forum, held to discuss solutions to the Philippines' most pressing development problems, was attended by Filipino and Filipino-American professionals and thought leaders, including Philippine President Benigno ("Noynoy") Aquino III and members of the Philippine senate. Eberhart's presentation, "The Philippines in the New Asian Economic Dynamic," was given as part of a session on "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" and is available for download on the SPRIE website.
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Considering China's policy towards Southeast Asia

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Donald K. Emmerson
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For some time now, U.S. policymakers have said they hoped that China would become a "responsible stakeholder" in regional and global peace and prosperity. In an Asia Times op-ed, Donald K. Emmerson discusses China's claim to sovereignty over most of the South China Sea in the light of two recent meetings: a gathering of foreign ministers in the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi in July 2010 and a U.S.-ASEAN Summit in New York in September 2010.
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Secretary Clinton at a press conference, National Convention Center, Hanoi, Vietnam. | Minh Ngo/U.S. Embassy
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SEAF advises film on Indonesian democracy

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Following the resignation of Indonesia's authoritarian president Soeharto in 1998, the country underwent an extraordinary political transformation. Since 2006 Indonesia has been ranked by Freedom House as the only "free" country in Southeast Asia. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) has proudly promoted his homeland's status as the third largest democracy, after India and the United States, and the largest Muslim-majority democracy as well.

In recognition of this achievement, the World Movement for Democracy chose to hold its Sixth Assembly in Indonesia. In April 2010, SEAF director Donald K. Emmerson traveled to Jakarta to attend the event and to arrange interviews with local political figures for a documentary film on democracy in developing countries. Also involved in the filming were Larry Diamond and Hicham Ben Abdallah, respectively the director of and a visiting scholar at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

One of the Indonesian interviewees was SBY himself, pictured above at the presidential palace with his wife Kristiani Herawati and Prof. Emmerson on the day of the filming. The president took the occasion very seriously, carefully preparing his answers and conveying them clearly in fluent English. The film will also feature Malaysia's experience with democracy, including the travails of opposition politician Anwar Ibrahim. 

The documentary's producer, Appleseed Entertainment, hopes to release it in 2011-12.

 

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Donald K. Emmerson, director of the Southeast Asian Forum, with Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Kristiani Herawati, the President's wife. | Image courtesy Donald K. Emmerson
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Recession recovery discussed at U.S.-Japan Business Forum

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Hirofumi Takinami, Corporate Affiliates Visiting Fellow from the Ministry of Finance in Japan, participated as a panelist for the event "Recovering from Recession" organized by the Keizai Society's U.S.-Japan Business Forum on September 28, 2010. The other panelists for this event were Daniel I. Okimoto, director-emeritus, Shorenstein APARC, and Keitaro Matsuda, senior vice president, Director of Economic Research for Union Bank. The event covered key issues that lie ahead for the business community trying to recover from this recession. Takinami gave a comparison of government response to the financial crisis in Japan in 1997 and in the United States in 2008, and what implications can be drawn from these experiences. Providing his perspective as a practitioner, he discussed the bailout of the financial institutions to address the financial crises.
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Hirofumi Takinami, Corporate Affiliate visiting fellow from the Ministry of Finance in Japan | Minoru Aosaki
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Edwin O. Reischauer and the American Discovery of Japan

Edwin O. Reischauer, Harvard Professor and U.S. Ambassador to Japan, was a seminal figure in both American education about and policy toward East Asia. In his detailed new biography, Dr. George Packard brings together his scholarship and his personal experience working for Reischauer in the early 1960s.

Re-centering the U.S.-Japan Alliance after the turmoil of the 1960 Security Treaty Riots, Ambassador Reischauer relied on his deep understanding of and sympathy for Japan, stabilizing the bilateral relationship for decades. Packard's insights on this history have bearing today as the United States and Japan seek to build a new partnership to cope with emerging challenges.

George R. Packard, president of the United States-Japan Foundation, is the former dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he founded Johns Hopkins's Foreign Policy Institute, The SAIS Review, the Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, and the Hopkins-Nanjing Center in China. He has been a military intelligence officer, Foreign Service Officer, journalist, scholar, educator, and author.

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Dr. George Packard President Speaker The United States-Japan Foundation
Seminars

Values and History in U.S.-South Korean Relations

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". . . History, values, memory, and identity are significant elements that can influence the 'soft power' of an alliance built on 'hard power,' and policy makers of both nations should not overlook their importance," says Gi-Wook Shin, director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Stanford Korean Studies Program, in the chapter that he contributed to the recently published book U.S. Leadership, History, and Bilateral Relations in Northeast Asia.

In his chapter "Values and History in U.S.-South Korean Relations," Shin discusses developments in the types of issues that the United States and South Korea have collaborated on in recent years--including free trade agreements, Iraq and Afghanistan military operations, and policy coordination toward North Korea--and the significance of issues of history, values, memory, and identity--such as inter-Korean reconciliation and memories of U.S. military maneuvers in Korea--that have given the U.S.-South Korea relationship a "more complex and multidimensional" nature.

Published by Cambridge University Press in October 2010, the book was edited by Gilbert Rozman of Princeton University's Department of Sociology.

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Cambridge University Press in "Issues of History, Values, Memory, and Identity in the U.S.-South Korea Relationship"
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Gi-Wook Shin
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