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Parting Observations on American Foreign Policy

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In 2014 Ambassador Stephen W. Bosworth was a Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) of International Studies at Stanford University. Bosworth, who passed away in January 2016, was a three-time U.S. ambassador, served in numerous academic and government posts, and had an extensive career in the United States Foreign Service.
 
To commemorate his career in public service as well as his contributions to the center and to FSI, Shorenstein APARC has published his three lectures in this book. The content ranges from Bosworth's diplomatic career and his thoughts on the promotion of democracy, to the North Korean nuclear issue, to the overall state of the U.S. alliances in Asia.
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Conference at Stanford examines why Korea matters to American education

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All things Korean – economics, culture, politics – are the subject of an educational conference on campus this week.

The fifth annual Hana-Stanford Conference on Korea for U.S. Secondary School Teachers takes place July 25 to 27 in Paul Brest Hall. The meeting brings together American teachers and educators from Korea for discussions on how Korean history, economics, North Korea, foreign policy and culture are covered in American schools.

From lectures to curriculum workshops and classroom resources, the attendees will deep-dive into conversations, information and resources made available by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) and the Korea Program, which hosts the event.

Gi-Wook Shin, director of Stanford’s Walter Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, said that Korea is a country often overlooked or understudied in U.S. secondary schools.

“The Hana-Stanford Conference provides an excellent opportunity for U.S. secondary school teachers to learn about Korea and return to their classrooms better equipped with teaching materials and knowledge about Korea, as well as with the confidence and motivation to incorporate what they have learned from the conference into their curricula,” he said.

Shin said that exposing more American students to Korea “nurtures in students more balanced and complete perspectives on the world.” Korea, after all, he noted, is an important U.S. ally.

Discussions will cover an array of topics, including Korea’s major historical themes; World War II memories in northeast Asia; English education in Korea; Korea’s relationship with the U.S.; Korean literature; and the lives of Korean teenagers and young people. Scheduled speakers include Yong Suk Lee, the SK Center Fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Kathleen Stephens, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

Such conversations are important, as how one teaches history shapes contemporary society. Gary Mukai, director of SPICE, said that one of the curriculum units demonstrated at the conference each year is “Divided Memories: Examining History Textbooks.”

“The unit introduces the notion that school textbooks provide an opportunity for a society to record or endorse the ‘correct’ version of history and to build a shared memory of history among its populace,” Mukai said.

He noted that American and Korean teachers’ examination of textbook entries about the Korean War from U.S., Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Chinese textbooks challenged their assumptions and perspectives about the war.

Also, during the conference, the Sejong Korean Scholars Program, a distance-learning program on Korea sponsored by SPICE, will honor American high school students and give them the opportunity to present research essays.

Clifton Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service. This article has been updated to reflect a different speaker and additional program sponsor.

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Students in conversation at the Hana-Stanford Conference on Korea for U.S. Secondary School Teachers. The conference, now in its fifth year, brings together an international group of teachers and students in cross-cultural exchange.
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Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War

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No nation is free from the charge that it has a less-than-complete view of the past. History is not simply about recording past events—it is often contested, negotiated, and reshaped over time. The debate over the history of World War II in Asia remains surprisingly intense, and Divergent Memories examines the opinions of powerful individuals to pinpoint the sources of conflict: from Japanese colonialism in Korea and atrocities in China to the American decision to use atomic weapons against Japan.

Rather than labeling others' views as "distorted" or ignoring dissenting voices to create a monolithic historical account, Gi-Wook Shin and Daniel Sneider pursue a more fruitful approach: analyzing how historical memory has developed, been formulated, and even been challenged in each country. By identifying key factors responsible for these differences, Divergent Memories provides the tools for readers to both approach their own national histories with reflection and to be more understanding of others.

"A well-written investigation on the legacy of World War II in Asia, greatly contributes to the field of cultural and military history.” —Mel Vasquez, H-War

"This book is an important counterweight to prevailing tendencies that promote uncritical nationalism and is thus an invaluable resource for this generation’s Asian and American youth to gain a critical understanding of their national histories...[T]he authors’ non-judgmental approach, coupled with persistence in pursuing the multiple interpretations and experiences of these traumatic events, provoke a reconsideration of our notions of justice, equality, and humanity within our nationalist thinking."—Grace Huang, Journal of American-East Asian Relations, Vol. 26.2

This book is part of the Studies of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center series at Stanford University Press.

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Contested Embrace: Transborder Membership Politics in Twentieth-Century Korea

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Scholars have long examined the relationship between nation-states and their "internal others," such as immigrants and ethno-racial minorities. Contested Embrace shifts the analytic focus to explore how a state relates to people it views as "external members" such as emigrants and diasporas. Specifically, Jaeeun Kim analyzes disputes over the belonging of Koreans in Japan and China, focusing on their contested relationship with the colonial and postcolonial states in the Korean peninsula.

Extending the constructivist approach to nationalisms and the culturalist view of the modern state to a transnational context, Contested Embrace illuminates the political and bureaucratic construction of ethno-national populations beyond the territorial boundary of the state. Through a comparative analysis of transborder membership politics in the colonial, Cold War, and post-Cold War periods, the book shows how the configuration of geopolitics, bureaucratic techniques, and actors' agency shapes the making, unmaking, and remaking of transborder ties. Kim demonstrates that being a "homeland" state or a member of the "transborder nation" is a precarious, arduous, and revocable political achievement.

This book is part of the Studies of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center series at Stanford University Press.

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North Korean Nuclear Facilities After the Agreed Framework

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In January 2004, a delegation from Stanford University led by Prof. John W. Lewis and joined by one of the authors, Siegfried S. Hecker, at the time senior fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and former director, was invited to visit the Yongbyon Nuclear Center. This visit by Hecker and follow-on visits during each of the next six consecutive years contributed substantially to our knowledge of North Korean nuclear activities. In this report, we utilize information obtained during the Stanford delegation visits, along with other open-source information, to provide a holistic assessment of North Korean nuclear developments from the demise of the Agreed Framework through November 2015. To read the full article, click here.

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Impact of North Korea sanctions reflected in luminosity gap

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In a recent television interview with the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS), SK Center Fellow Yong Suk Lee said that tougher economic sanctions on North Korea are not achieving their intended effects and may actually be exacerbating inequality instead. Analyzing satellite night lights data, Lee found that the North Korean regime has avoided the impact of sanctions by reallocating electricity from poor, rural areas to urban areas where privileged elites reside. To view the episode (in Korean), click here.

Lee published the research in a working paper, “Countering Sanctions: The Unequal Geographic Impact of Economic Sanctions in North Korea,” which was highlighted in a Stanford News Service article in Oct. 2014. Lee also presented his preliminary findings at a public seminar at Stanford.

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Pyongyang at nighttime.
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CNBC interview: North Korea holds rare Workers' Party Congress

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In early May, North Korea held its first Workers’ Party Congress in over three decades. Kathleen Stephens, Stanford distinguished fellow and former ambassador to South Korea, told CNBC’s “Squawkbox” that the meeting was an effort by North Korea to demonstrate consolidated rule under Kim Jong-un. Stephens said she did not anticipate any major announcements at the meeting, but recognized that North Korea faced a “new challenge” in its ally China joining the bid for tougher U.N. sanctions against it in response to its latest nuclear and missile tests.

The interview can be viewed here.

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North Korea Policy: Why the Obama Administration is Right and the Critics are Wrong

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Critics of the Obama administration's North Korea policy charge flatly that it is a "failure." They argue that "time is not on our side," sanctions are counterproductive, and "strategic patience" means "doing nothing." They assert that the Obama administration is unwilling to negotiate with North Korea unless it first gives up its nuclear weapons program, that it is foolishly and fecklessly "outsourcing" its North Korea policy to Beijing while waiting for the North Korean regime to collapse, and that, out of incompetence or malevolence, it has irresponsibly refused to respond to North Korean proposals, such as for negotiations to replace the current armistice agreement with a peace treaty. David Straub, associate director of Shorenstein APARC's Korea Program, will explain why such criticisms are ill-founded and not constructive. He will outline the real-world parameters within which the Obama and previous U.S. administrations have formulated and implemented North Korea policy, assess how the strategic situation on the Korean Peninsula is evolving, and forecast how the next U.S. administration is likely to approach the North Korea problem.
 

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David Straub has been associate director of the Korea Program at The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center since 2008. In 2007-08, he was the Pantech Fellow in the Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC. He retired from the U.S. Department of State in 2006 as a Senior Foreign Service Officer after a thirty-year career focused on Northeast Asian affairs, including service as the director of the Department's office of Korean affairs and participation in "New York Channel" talks with the North Koreans as well as the first three rounds of the Six Party Talks. He also accompanied former President Bill Clinton to Pyongyang in 2009 for the return of two incarcerated American journalists. In addition to Stanford University, Straub has taught U.S. foreign policy at Seoul National University's Graduate School of International Studies and Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. 

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David Straub

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Associate Director of the Korea Program
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David Straub was named associate director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) on July 1, 2008. Prior to that he was a 2007–08 Pantech Fellow at the Center. Straub is the author of the book, Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea, published in 2015.

An educator and commentator on current Northeast Asian affairs, Straub retired in 2006 from his role as a U.S. Department of State senior foreign service officer after a 30-year career focused on Northeast Asian affairs. He worked over 12 years on Korean affairs, first arriving in Seoul in 1979.

Straub served as head of the political section at the U.S. embassy in Seoul from 1999 to 2002 during popular protests against the United States, and he played a key working-level role in the Six-Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear program as the State Department's Korea country desk director from 2002 to 2004. He also served eight years at the U.S. embassy in Japan. His final assignment was as the State Department's Japan country desk director from 2004 to 2006, when he was co-leader of the U.S. delegation to talks with Japan on the realignment of the U.S.-Japan alliance and of U.S. military bases in Japan.

After leaving the Department of State, Straub taught U.S.-Korean relations at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in the fall of 2006 and at the Graduate School of International Studies of Seoul National University in spring 2007. He has published a number of papers on U.S.-Korean relations. His foreign languages are Korean, Japanese, and German.

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Stanford historical memory project seeks WWII reconciliation in Asia

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From atomic bombs to harsh military occupations in the World War II period, the past is very much the present in the Asia Pacific region.

Stanford scholars are striving to help heal these wounds from yesteryear. Helping old enemies better understand each other today is the aim of the Divided Memories and Reconciliation project, a multi-year comparative study of the formation of historical memory regarding the wartime period in countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States.

Left unattended, misguided wartime narratives may exacerbate current disputes to the point of armed conflict, said Daniel Sneider, associate director of research at Stanford's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He leads the Divided Memories project along with Gi-Wook Shin, a Stanford sociology professor and the Shorenstein center director.

Sneider points out the critical importance of textbooks and what is taught in schools – especially given the rise of nationalism among youth in China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.

"Dialogue among youth of the different nations is needed, along with an appreciation for the diversity of views and the complexity of history," he said.

Shin said, "Each nation in northeast Asia and even the U.S. has selective or divided memories of the past, and does not really understand the views of the other side."

Education and history

Launched in 2006, the Divided Memories project has published research findings, issued recommendations and convened conferences. In the early days, the researchers examined high school history textbooks in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and America.

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The outcome was the project's first book in 2011, History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories, which suggests that an "introspective effort" to understand national narratives about WWII has the potential to bring about historical reconciliation in the region. Sneider describes it as the first comparative study of textbooks in the countries involved; it soon evolved into a classroom supplemental textbook published by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education.

"Formal education is a powerful force in shaping our historical understandings," Sneider noted. "We wanted to look at the textbooks that have the most impact and usage."

A 2014 book, Confronting Memories of World War II: European and Asian Legacies, which was co-edited by Shin, Sneider and Daniel Chirot, a sociologist with the University of Washington, compared successful European WWII reconciliations with lagging Asian efforts. Another book, Divided Lenses, published earlier this year, examined the impact of dramatic film and other forms of popular culture on wartime memory. A new book is due out this summer, Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War, which focuses on leaders in politics, the media and academia in Japan, China, South Korea and the U.S.

The Divided Memories project aims to generate discussions and collaborations among those who create "historical memories" – educators, policymakers and government leaders. One report that grew out of such dialogues included suggestions for reconciliation:

  • Create supplementary teaching materials on the issue. 
  • Launch dialogues among Asian, American and European historians. 
  • Offer educational forums for journalists, policymakers and students. 
  • Conduct museum exchanges and create new museums, such as one wholly dedicated to WWII reconciliation in Asia. 
  • Increase student exchanges among all the countries involved. 

History is reflected in today's geopolitics, as noted in the revived disputes by these nations over rival claims to islands in the South China Sea and elsewhere. Without resolution, these disagreements can flare up into military conflicts, Sneider wrote.

"The question of history taps into sensitive and deeply rooted issues of national identity," he noted.

Whether recounting Japanese atrocities in China, China's exaggerated account of its Communist fighters' role in World War II, or the U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan, no nation is immune to re-creating the past to further its own interests today, Sneider wrote.

For example, Divided Memories research on Chinese textbooks shows how the Chinese government in recent decades embarked on a "patriotic education" campaign to indoctrinate young people by exaggerating its role in Japan's WWII defeat. This narrative suits the nationalistic desires of a Chinese government no longer exclusively motivated by communist ideology, Sneider said.

One project of APARC and its Japan Program that was also an outgrowth of Divided Memories involved Stanford scholars urging Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to show "clear, heartfelt remorse" in a 2015 speech on the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII. A 15-page report featured hypothetical statements suggesting what Abe might say to make amends for Japanese actions in China and Korea.

"While we cannot claim to have directly influenced the prime minister, his statement did go further in the direction of an expression of remorse over the war and the need to continue to look clearly and honestly at the past than many expected," said Sneider.

 

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A workshop on history textbooks co-hosted by Shorenstein APARC and Academia Sinica's Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies takes places in Taipei, Sept. 3, 2008.

Generations and grievances

Consciousness-raising on other fronts, however, is getting results, thanks to Stanford's Divided Memories project. A 2015 landmark agreement between Japan and South Korea over the WWII "comfort women" dispute was reached due to extensive U.S. involvement. Comfort women were women and girls who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied territories before and during World War II.

In an article, Sneider explained how the U.S. perceived that the dysfunctional relationship between South Korea and Japan over this issue, among others, threatened to undermine American strategic interests in Asia. 

Shin highlights the importance of U.S. involvement. "The U.S. is not just an outsider to historical and territorial disputes in the region," he said. "From a geopolitical perspective, the U.S. has done a wonderful job in reviving the devastated region into a prosperous one after 1945, but from a historical reconciliation perspective, the U.S. has done a poor job."

He suggests that America should "play a constructive role in promoting historical reconciliation" among the countries involved. And so, the Divided Memories project has included the United States in its efforts.

According to Sneider, Divided Memories is unique among all reconciliation projects for its emphasis on the inclusion of the U.S.; comparative analyses across countries; and real-world policy impacts. As part of the Shorenstein research center, it is housed within Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

"This project reflects what Stanford, our center and the Freeman Spogli Institute are all about – true interdisciplinary research and engagement," Sneider said.

Clifton Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service.

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Japanese soldiers in Shanghai, March 23, 1927 | A Stanford project encourages World War II reconciliation and historical accuracy about the conflict and its consequences in Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan and the United States. Progress has been made on classroom textbooks and scholarly discussions and exchanges.
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