In this twelfth session of the Strategic Forum, former senior American and South Korean government officials and other leading experts will discuss current developments in the Korean Peninsula and North Korea policy, the future of the U.S.-South Korean alliance and KORUS FTA, and a strategic vision for Northeast Asia. The session is hosted by the Korean Studies Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, in association with Korea National Diplomatic Academy, a top South Korean think tank.

Mr. Hoshi's talk will focus on the current status of the Abe Administration on the domestic side, as well as developments in foreign policy and national security. On the domestic side, he will discuss issues such as evaluating Abe's "Three Arrows" of economic policy, an analysis of the core political leaders within the "Abe Team," and the consumption tax hike. For foreign policy and national security, he will discuss topics such as the right of collective self-defense, constitutional amendment, Abe's visit to Yasukuni Shrine, and Japan-China and Japan-Korea relations.

Hiroshi Hoshi,columnist and senior political writer for Asahi Shimbun, was born in 1955, graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Tokyo.  He then joined the Asahi Shimbun in 1979 and was assigned to the political section in 1985. He covered Kantei (prime minister’s office), Liberal Democratic Party, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and others.  He was in Washington, D.C. as a correspondent and then worked at the political desk before he became a senior political writer in 2000, and was assigned as a columnist in 2013.

He appears as a commentator in the TV program from 2002 and has also taught in the graduate school of the University of Tokyo as a project professor for two years from April 2004.  His publications include “Jiminto to Sengo” (Liberal Democratic Party and Post-War Years) from Kodansha Gendai Shinsho, “Terebi Seiji” (TV Politics) from Asahi Sensho, and “Abe Seiken no Nihon” (Japan under Abe Administration) from Asahi Shinsho.

The period from the arrest of the “gang of four” in October 1976 to the final step in the removal of Hua Guofeng in mid-1981 saw CCP rural policy go through a number of phases. The initial emphasis on a moderate version of the Dazhai model gave way to “traditional policies” (luoshi zhengce) by mid-1978; these policies were supplemented in 1979 by “responsibility systems,” the most radical of which, household contracting (baochan daohu), became a sharply divisive issue in 1980, but still not the main aspect of agricultural policy. The tide was moving strongly toward household contracting by mid-1981, but had not yet achieved unambiguous endorsement as the Party policy.

A number of inadequate approaches have dominated the literature, notably 1) a power/policy struggle between Hua Guofeng's neo-Maoists and Deng Xiaoping's reform coalition; 2) the power of the peasants; and 3) the leading role of provincial reformers. The first has no validity, the second and third must be viewed through more complex lenses. The talk will explicate the key factors and present an alternative explanation of the success of rural reform.

Frederick C. Teiwes is Emeritus Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Sydney. He received his B.A. from Amherst College and his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. He is the author of various books on Chinese elite politics including Politics and Purges in China (1979, 1993), Leadership, Legitimacy, and Conflict in China (1984), and Politics at Mao's Court (1990). Some of his most important work has been jointly authored with Warren Sun including The Politics of Agricultural Cooperativization: Mao, Deng Zihui, and the "High Tide" of 1955 (1993), The Tragedy of Lin Biao: Riding the Tiger during the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1971 (1996), China’s Road to Disaster: Mao, Central Politicians and Provincial Leaders in the Emergence of the Great Leap Forward, 1955-1959 (1999), and The End of the Maoist Era: Chinese Politics during the Twilight of the Cultural Revolution, 1972-1976 (2007).

In the immediate postwar period, when very real limits on the power of the party-state remained and the population was still recovering from the dislocations of the war, the socialist promise of what in North Korea came to be known as the ‘new living’ became the subject of much ideological and material investment on the part of a wide spectrum of actors. Yet the construction of such ‘new living’ was certainly not straightforward. This paper analyzes political anxieties that emerged over worker dormitory life, tensions surrounding consumption in a growing economy, and worries about the comforts of family life offered by new fangled apartments.

RSVP required at http://ceas.stanford.edu/events/event_detail.php?id=3713

Debate upon the status of colonial buildings in South Korea today has swirled around the public buildings most symbolic of colonial authority. Yet the most prevalent remaining buildings are much smaller in scale; they are the houses abandoned by or appropriated from Japanese residents upon the defeat in war and a chaotic withdrawal from the colonies. This talk turns to the “enemy house” to ask how the homely figures in the domestication of colonial history.

RSVP required at http://ceas.stanford.edu/events/rsvp.php

Economists and business scholars have long tried to construct theoretical models that can explain economic growth and development in emerging economies, but Western models have not always been fully applicable to developing economies, particularly in Asia, due to differences in political, economic and social systems. Created to address this gap, the ABCD framework of K-Strategy is a more nearly universal approach showing how inherent disadvantages can be overcome and competitive advantages achieved. Using the ABCD framework, the lecturer will analyze Korea’s success at both national and corporate levels since the 1960s and discuss the framework’s implications for Korea’s future government policies and corporate strategies. He will also demonstrate the ABCD framework’s applicability to other countries. Hwy-Chang Moon, dean of Seoul National University’s graduate school of international studies, has done extensive research and theoretical work on the ABCD framework.

Hwy-Chang Moon received his PhD from the University of Washington and is currently a professor of international business and strategy in the graduate school of international studies at Seoul National University. Professor Moon has taught at the University of Washington, University of the Pacific, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Helsinki School of Economics, Kyushu University, Keio University, Hitotsubashi University, and other executive and special programs in various organizations. On topics such as international business strategy, foreign direct investment, corporate social responsibility, and cross-cultural management, Professor Moon has published numerous journal articles and books. He is currently the editor-in-chief of the Journal of International Business and Economy, an international academic journal. Professor Moon has conducted consulting and research projects for several multinational companies, international organizations (APEC, World Bank, and UNCTAD), and governments (Malaysia, Dubai, Azerbaijan, and Guangdong Province of China). For interviews and debates on international economy and business, he has been invited by international newspapers and media, including New York Times and NHK World TV.

This event is made possible through the generous support of the Koret Foundation.