Dong-Young Chung, a former South Korean unification minister and ruling party leader, believes that the Korean Peninsula’s geopolitical location among China, Japan, Russia, and the United States offers major opportunities to the international community. If the legacy of Korean national division caused by the Cold War is overcome, the Korean Peninsula can lend impetus to a "fourth wave" of regional and global cooperation. Minister Chung will review his own extensive talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and discuss the essential role played by the embattled Gaeseong Industrial Complex in reconciling the two Koreas. He will also offer recommendations as to how the incoming U.S. administration can best deal with North Korea.

Dong-Young Chung, currently a visiting scholar at Duke University, is a leading South Korean politician. He was unification minister from 2004 to 2005. A former two-term member of the National Assembly, he served as chairman of the ruling party and ran unsuccessfully for the country’s presidency in 2007. Mr. Chung has a bachelor's degree in Korean History from Seoul National University and a master’s degree from the University of Wales. He began his career as a TV journalist.

Despite early talk of being able to “decouple” itself from the U.S. financial crisis and accompanying credit crunch, the damage has spread to Asia. Collapsing export markets, currency instability and stock market collapses are plaguing all of Asia, not least China, Japan and South Korea. At the same time, China and Japan are major financiers of the United States federal government and newly nationalized financial firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Two leading economic experts on Japan and China will discuss the impact of the U.S. financial crisis on Asia. Does Japan’s experience with banking collapse bear any lessons for the United States today? Will China continue to finance the United States government? How will a U.S. recession affect the prospects for economic growth in Asia?

Richard Katz has taught about Japan’s economy as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the New York University Stern School of Business. Previously, and as a Visiting Lecturer in Economics at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook.  Mr. Katz is the author of two books on Japan's economic trvails; The System That Soured--The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Economic Miracle (M.E. Sharpe 1998) and Japanese Phoenix: The Long Road to Economic Revival (M.E. Sharpe 2002).  He has twice testified about Japan and Asia before Congress, in 1998 and 2005. Both times the hearings were held by the Asia-Pacific Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee. In the year 2000, he served on the Council of Foreign Relations' Task Force on the Japanese economy.  Having received his B.A. degree in History from Columbia University in 1973, Mr. Katz went on to obtain his M.A. in Economics at New York University (NYU) in 1996.
 
Mark Spiegel served as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at New York University.  He has served as a visiting professor in the Economics Department of U.C. Berkeley, as well as a lecturer at the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley.  He has also served as a consultant at the World Bank, as a visiting scholar at the Bank of Japan, and as Chairman of the Federal Reserve System Committee on International Economic Analysis.  Dr. Spiegel received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles and his B.A. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley.  Dr. Spiegel has published numerous articles in both academic and policy-oriented journals on international financial issues and on economic issues associated

This event - the final in a series of 4 film screening which will be followed by a discussion with director Clint Eastwood - is part of the second phase of a three year research effort to compare the formation of the divided memories in Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States. We will conduct a comparative study of popular cinema dealing with historical subjects focusing roughly on the period from 1931-1951.

Letters From Iwo Jima Synopsis

Sixty-one years ago, US and Japanese armies met on Iwo Jima. Decades later, several hundred letters are unearthed from that stark island's soil. The letters give faces and voices to the men who fought there, as well as the extraordinary general who led them.

The Japanese soldiers are sent to Iwo Jima knowing that in all probability they will not come back. Among them are Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a baker who wants only to live to see the face of his newborn daughter; Baron Nishi (Tsuyoshi Ihara), an Olympic equestrian champion known around the world for his skill and his honor; Shimizu (Ryo Kase), a young former military policeman whose idealism has not yet been tested by war; and Lieutenant Ito (Shidou Nakamura), a strict military man who would rather accept suicide than surrender.

Leading the defense is Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe), whose travels in America have revealed to him the hopeless nature of the war but also given him strategic insight into how to take on the vast American armada streaming in from across the Pacific.

With little defense other than sheer will and the volcanic rock of the island itself, Gen. Kuribayashi's unprecedented tactics transform what was predicted to be a quick and bloody defeat into nearly 40 days of heroic and resourceful combat.

Almost 7,000 American soldiers were killed on Iwo Jima; more than 20,000 Japanese troops perished. The black sands of Iwo Jima are stained with their blood, but their sacrifices, their struggles, their courage and their compassion live on in the letters they sent home.

This is the second phase of a three year research effort to compare the formation of the divided memories in Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States.  We will conduct a comparative study of popular cinema dealing with historical subjects focusing roughly on the period from 1931-1951.

This is the third in a series of 4 film screening which will be followed by a discussion of the audience.

Yamato Synopsis

During late World War II, the Japanese army starts loosing the battle.  Special junior officers including Kamio (Kenichi Matsuyama) board Yamato and meet officer Moriwaki (Takashi Sorimachi) and Uchia (Shidou Nakamura).  However, this battle marks the virtual end of the combined fleet of the ikmperial Japanese Navy.  Then in April 1945. Yamato is ordered to carry out a suicide mission and sets out tot he waters of Okinawa...