The sixteenth session of the Strategic Forum brings together distinguished South Korean and U.S. West Coast-based American scholars, experts, and former officials to discuss the U.S.-South Korean alliance, North Korea, and regional dynamics in Northeast Asia. The session is hosted by the Korea Program in association with The Sejong Institute, a top South Korean think tank.
South Korea has become an economic powerhouse, but faces multiple challenges. The conference will focus on four areas that South Korea needs to turn its attention to: 1) the higher education and development; 2) entrepreneurship and innovation; 3) global competitiveness; and 4) demographic changes and immigration policy.
During the conference, a keynote speech is open to the public. Please click here for more information about the public keynote.
The Koret Workshop is made possible through the generous support of the Koret Foundation.
While power asymmetry typically defines security relationships between allies, there exist other forms of asymmetry that influence alliance politics. In order to illustrate how they can shape policy outcomes that cannot be explained solely through the lens of power capabilities, the authors examine the role of relative attention that each side pays to the alliance. It is their central argument that since the client state has a greater vested interest in the alliance and given that attention depends on interest/need, the client state can leverage attention to get its way. By analysing two specific cases, the 2002 South Korean schoolgirls tragedy and the 2008 beef protests—instances where the South Koreans succeeded in compelling U.S. concessions—the authors show that because the alliance was more central to the client state’s agendas, there existed an asymmetry of attention that offered leveraging opportunities for the weaker ally. In this study, the authors emphasise the role of media attention as a key variable, and seek to contribute to debates on weaker party leverage in asymmetrical alliances.
The Korea Program Prize for Writing in Korean Studies recognizes and rewards outstanding examples of writing in an essay, term paper, or thesis produced during the current academic year in any discipline within the area of Korean studies, broadly defined. This competition is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. The prize will be awarded at a special ceremony in the fall, and the winning essays will be published in the Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs. The first place winner will receive a certificate, a copy of the Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs, and $1,000; Honorable mention winner(s) will receive a certificate and a copy of the Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs.
Application Deadline: Thursday, June 6, 2016
Eligible Students: All currently-enrolled Stanford students
Application Instructions: Submit the following items by email to John Groschwitz, CEAS Associate Director.
In an interview with South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper, David Straub, associate director of the Korea Program, argues that South Korea's closure of its joint industrial park at Kaesong was a necessary response to North Korea's fourth nuclear test and latest rocket launch.
Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia is the first attempt to explore how the tumultuous years between 1931 and 1953 have been recreated and renegotiated in cinema. This period saw traumatic conflicts such as the Sino-Japanese War, the Pacific War, and the Korean War, and pivotal events such as the Rape of Nanjing, Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Iwo Jima, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all of which left a lasting imprint on East Asia and the world. By bringing together a variety of specialists in the cinemas of East Asia and offering divergent yet complementary perspectives, the book explores how the legacies of war have been reimagined through the lens of film.
This turbulent era opened with the Mukden Incident of 1931, which signaled a new page in Japanese militaristic aggression in East Asia, and culminated with the Korean War (1950–1953), a protracted conflict that broke out in the wake of Japan's post–World War II withdrawal from Korea. Divided Lenses explores how the intervening decades have continued to shape politics and popular culture throughout East Asia and the world. Essays in part I examine historical trends at work in various "national" cinemas, including China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and the United States. Those in part 2 focus on specific themes such as comfort women in Chinese film, the Nanjing Massacre, or nationalism, and how they have been depicted or renegotiated in contemporary films. Of particular interest are contributions drawing from other forms of screen culture, such as television and video games.
This book is an outcome of the conference, Divided Lenses: Film and War Memory in Asia, that the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center hosted in December 2008, part of the Divided Memories and Reconciliation research project.
In this fifteenth 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 a strategic vision for Northeast Asia. The session is hosted by the Korea Program in association with The Sejong Institute, a top South Korean think tank.
Seoul, Republic of Korea
Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, provides an in-depth analysis of how the agreement on the “comfort women” issue between Japan and South Korea was reached late last year. In Japanese publication Toyo Keizai Online, Sneider writes that – after at least four years of negotiations between the two governments – political leadership in Seoul and Tokyo as well as pressure from the Obama administration can be credited for the breakthrough.
Read the article in English and Japanese.
Earlier in December, David Straub, associate director for the Korea Program, said the agreement is a sign of progress. He said it vindicates the victims and is a positive development for Korea-Japan relations.
Read his comments in reporting done by Yonhap News and Voice of America.
The breakthrough agreement on the comfort women issue between Japan and South Korea on Dec. 28, 2015, was the culmination of at least four years of negotiations between the two governments. South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushed for the agreement; the Obama administration provided persistent pressure while resisting a mediation role. The danger of the agreement falling apart is apparent to officials in Washington and Seoul, and hopefully Tokyo too, writes Sneider.
Stanford nuclear experts said they were skeptical of North Korea’s claim that it had detonated a hydrogen bomb this week.
However, they said the test was an important step forward for North Korea’s nuclear program and would have a destabilizing effect on the entire region.
“I don’t believe it was a real hydrogen bomb, but my greatest concern is not so much whether or not they actually tested a hydrogen bomb, but rather that they tested at all,” said Siegfried Hecker, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and senior fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has “a track record of exaggerated statements, hyperbole and outright lies,” according to Scott Sagan, Caroline S.G. Munro professor of Political Science.
“The propaganda machine in North Korea has made all sorts of claims about Kim Jong-un’s personal prowess and his history, and it is totally unsurprising that he might make exaggerated claims about North Korea’s military prowess,” Sagan said.
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry said he also doubted that North Korea had detonated a two-stage hydrogen bomb.
“Whether it’s a hydrogen bomb or not, it’s very dangerous, destabilizing development,” said Perry.
“It’s obvious they’re working to increase the capability and size of their nuclear arsenal and that represents a huge danger to the region and creates major instability and major concerns on the part of South Korea and Japan.”
Many North Korea watchers had been anticipating another nuclear test.
“We’ve thought that the North Koreans could test at any time – that the tunnels were ready, that they could do this at any time – so it would be a political decision, not a technical decision,” said Thomas Fingar, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
Hecker said North Korea’s latest nuclear test would move the country closer to being able to miniaturize a nuclear warhead and mount it on a missile, extending the reach of their nuclear weapons.
“They will have achieved greater sophistication in their bomb design – that is the most worrisome aspect,” Hecker said.
“At this point, what makes their nuclear arsenal more dangerous is not so much explosive power of the bomb, but its size, weight and the ability to deliver it with missiles.”
On the diplomatic agenda, the U.S. and its allies will likely push for stronger sanctions in the wake of the tests, according to Kathleen Stephens, a former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea and William J. Perry fellow at Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC).
“In the UN the U.S., Japan and South Korea will likely look for another, and stronger, UN Security Council resolution, presumably with some efforts to attach to it some teeth and strengthen sanctions,” Stephens said.
The U.S. Congress is currently considering financial sanctions that would cut of all access to U.S. banks for any banks dealing with the North Koreans.
But financial sanctions would likely be less effective in dealing with North Korea than they had been with Iran, according to Fingar.
“It’s like hitting a masochist,” said Fingar.
“North Korea is relatively insulated from the external economy, where Iran wasn’t. Iran had a middle class, you could make sanctions hurt, they could have a real effect. You could make it hard for the North Koreans to buy luxury goods, but at the end of the day, is that going to bring down the regime?”
Financial sanctions against North Korea could have the unintended consequence of also hurting China, said David Straub, associate director of the Korea program at APARC.
“This could be problematic for China because many of the transactions that North Korea conducts would be going thorough Chinese banks, and the Chinese, understandably might not be happy about the US financial sanctions on them, in effect,” Straub said.
Perry recommended that the U.S. reinvigorate diplomatic talks with North Korea in collaboration with China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.
“I would not give up on negotiations with North Korea yet,” Perry said.
“What could have been done many years ago was following through on negotiations with North Korea at the turn of the Century, which were proceeding robustly in the last years of Clinton’s second term, but were abandoned by the Bush Administration...That was a geo-strategic error.”
But Hecker said those negotiations would be harder now.
“I have previously argued that we should focus on three “No’s” for three “Yes’s” – that is no more bombs, no better bombs (meaning no testing) and no export – in return for addressing the North’s security concerns, its energy shortage and its economic woes,” said Hecker.
“This could have worked when I first proposed it 2008 after one of my seven visits to North Korea. It will be more difficult now."
