Researchers in the Korea Program regularly contribute to Korean media on the Korean affairs ranging from education and economics to politics and North Korea nuclear issues. The articles are in Korean language.

Nationalist Populism in South Korea (Gi-Wook Shin, August 18, 2019)

The Ambiguous Boundary Between Korean Wave and the Anti-Korean Sentiment (Joyce Lee, May 2, 2019)

Restoring the Dignity of South Korea (Gi-Wook Shin, April 18, 2019)

Happiness and Productivity (Yong Suk Lee, March 21, 2019)

Softness Overcomes Hardness  (Joyce Lee, March 6, 2019)

What should the Hanoi Declaration lay out? (Gi-Wook Shin, February 20, 2019)

What Would an Aged Society Look Like? (Yong Suk Lee, January 23, 2019)

Confront the lure of populism or risk economic failures and the coming of a far-right extremist regime (Gi-Wook Shin, January 17, 2019)

Only a drastic measure towards denuclearization can resolve the current stalemate with North Korea (Gi-Wook Shin, interview with Korea Times, January 10, 2019)

Looking After Myself (Joyce Lee, January 9, 2019)

2018, The Moon Jae-In Government's Progress Report (Gi-Wook Shin, December 27, 2018)

Rethinking North Korean Economy? (Yong Suk Lee, November 29, 2018)

The Dark Side of the Korean Culture of Hierarchy (Joyce Lee, November 14, 2018)

Trump's Second Half (Gi-Wook Shin, November 7, 2018)

How Parents Can Help their Children with Career Planning (Yong Suk Lee, October 17, 2018)

Anticipation and Concerns Mount Ahead of the 3rd Inter-Korean Summit (Joyce Lee, September 19, 2018)

Spring on the Korean Peninsula Needs to be hard fought (Gi-Wook Shin, September 5, 2018)

Should we encourage kids to learn coding? (Yong Suk Lee, August 6, 2018)

Some Thoughts on the Korean Value of Saving Face (Joyce Lee, July 16, 2018)

Koreans abroad can play important roles in achieving peace on the Korean Peninsula (Gi-Wook Shin, July 2, 2018)

Withdrawal of US troops from South Korea now becomes an option (Gi-Wook Shin, June 20, 2018)

Trump in Face-Saving Action for Kim (Joyce Lee, June 18, 2018)

South Korea and the U.S. Differ on Priorities for North Korea Policy (Gi-Wook Shin, May 14, 2018)

Is CVID Possible? (Gi-Wook Shin, May 7, 2018)

CVID Faces Challenges (Gi-Wook Shin, May 3, 2018)

The April 27 Korea Summit and the Lingering Question of CVID+α (Gi-Wook Shin, April 30, 2018)

Choices for Your Happiness (Joyce Lee, April 23, 2018)

The Ambiguity of the Moon Government's Goal for the Inter-Korean Summit (Gi-Wook Shin, April 2, 2018)

Korea as a Pacemaker (Gi-Wook Shin, March 13, 2018)

MeToo Movement Should Create Lasting Social Change (Gi-Wook Shin, March 12, 2018)

What's Wrong with Being a Nobody? (Joyce Lee, February 26, 2018)

It's Time to Move Beyond the Political Deadlock of Comfort Women Issue (Gi-Wook Shin, January 15, 2018)

Can the Government Rouse Young Koreans from Their Dreams of Childless Comfort? (Joyce Lee, January 3, 2018)

A Grand Bargain between the US and China Seems More Likely than Ever (Yong Suk Lee, December 25, 2017)

Korea No Longer a Country of Koreans (Rennie Moon, December 11, 2017)

Moon Administration's Diplomatic and Securtiy Strategies (Gi-Wook Shin, November 27, 2017)

Making Little Mr. and Ms. Perfects, But for Whose Sake and at What Cost? (Joyce Lee, November 6, 2017)

Identifying Korea as a Developed Country (Joon Nak Choi, October 30, 2017)

Superficial Korea (Gi-Wook Shin, September 26, 2017)

What Comes After the War of Words Between Trump and Kim Jong-un (Gi-Wook Shin, September 25, 2017)

In the Midst of Rising Fears of War (Joyce Lee, September 12, 2017)

Broken English as the global language (Rennie Moon, August 28, 2017)

'Polifessors' of Moon administration (Gi-Wook Shin, July 24, 2017)

In Anticipation of the Era of Korean Studies (Joyce Lee, July 17, 2017)

Technological Change: Why Korea needs a longer-term perspective on job creation (Yong Suk Lee, June 27, 2017)

Global network of Koreans abroad (Gi-Wook Shin, June 6, 2017)

First summit meeting, not to hurry (Gi-Wook Shin, May 22, 2017)

Korean Americans' love for Korea (Rennie Moon, April 24, 2017)

Trump's anti-immigration stance to be an opportunity for Korea (Gi-Wook Shin, February 27, 2017)

A Labor market by the young, and for the young (Yong Suk Lee, January 30, 2017)

If Korean universities are to succeed with internationalization (Rennie Moon, November 21, 2016)

US presidential election and Korea (Gi-Wook Shin, October 24, 2016)

Political expediency should not block technology innovation (Joon Nak Choi, September 12, 2016)

Strategic policy on inter-Korean relations is essential (Gi-Wook Shin, August 1, 2016)

Is Korea ready to embrace risk and failure? (Yong Suk Lee, June 20, 2016)

Can Pankyo become Silicon Valley in Korea? (Gi-Wook Shin, May 9, 2016)

Rennie J. Moon has been selected as the 2016-17 Koret Fellow in the Korea Program at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC). She will join the center next January to study diversity in higher education and teach a student course.

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Moon is an associate professor at the Underwood International College at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. Her research explores the interrelationships among globalization, migration and citizenship, and internationalization of higher education.

Moon, a graduate of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, Ph.D. ‘09, has collaborated with Stanford professor Gi-Wook Shin on a multiyear research project that examines diversity in higher education in East Asia. She co-edited the book Internationalizing Higher Education in Korea: Challenges and Opportunities in Comparative Perspective published earlier this year.

Stanford professor Francisco O. Ramirez, an expert on international comparative education and sociology of education, recognized her scholarly contributions to the field.

“Moon is a creative contributor to the ‘world society perspective’ in the social sciences,” said Ramirez, noting that Moon's work has been published in leading journals of international comparative education, Comparative Education Review and Comparative Education.

Supported by the Koret Foundation, the Koret Fellowship brings professionals to Stanford to conduct research on contemporary Korean affairs. In 2015, the fellowship expanded its focus to include social, cultural and educational issues in North and South Korea, and aims to identify emerging scholars working on those areas.

During her fellowship, Moon will also give public talks and be a lead organizer of the Koret Workshop, an international conference held annually at Stanford.

“As an alum, I’m very pleased and excited to spend my sabbatical year at Stanford,” Moon said. “Over the last few years, I’ve been collaborating on various research projects with Professor Shin and other colleagues at APARC. I’m looking forward to a productive fellowship during which I hope to bring these evolving projects to fruition.”

Moon holds a doctorate and master’s degree in international comparative education from Stanford and a bachelor’s degree in French from Wellesley College.

Stanford researcher Kenji Kushida says Japanese social norms are shifting from being highly unfavorable to a tech startup culture toward one much more supportive of it.

Japanese corporations are evolving and adopting a “startup culture” to boost their business creativity and country’s economic prospects, a Stanford expert says.

“We can see that over the past 15 years or so, changes to the overall Japanese political economic context as it undergoes gradual but substantive reform over the past couple decades have created a far more vibrant startup ecosystem in Japan than most people – both inside and outside Japan – realize,” said research associate Kenji Kushida of Stanford’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Kushida wrote in a new research paper that, over the past decade, Japan has undertaken significant reforms that are now bearing fruit – reforms ranging from monetary and fiscal policy designed to encourage private investment to a range of regulations surrounding corporate law, university organization, labor mobility and financial market reforms.

As a result – and combined with changes and challenges facing Japan’s large company sector – the country’s people are embracing a “vibrant startup ecosystem,” Kushida said. He is optimistic that such a transformation can occur in a country where stability and corporate loyalty – not necessarily innovation or creativity – have long been dominant social and business values.

Now, large Japanese firms are adjusting to performance crises and uncertain futures. As a result, the Japanese people are learning that with economic opportunity – the kind that startups promise – there also comes the risk of failure.

“A generational shift is accompanying social normative changes that are becoming more supportive of entrepreneurship and high-growth startups. Entrepreneurs and high-growth startups are celebrated in the popular media and in major events more than ever before,” Kushida wrote.

Silicon Valley networking

The influence of California’s Silicon Valley is a factor. For instance, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last year spoke at Stanford about how his country is learning the lessons of Silicon Valley and trying to build networks into the region. So Japan is likely to see an increase in the quality and quantity of high-growth startups, according to Kushida.

He said, “The current relationship between Japan and Silicon Valley is one in which Japanese firms, ranging from large firms to startups, are looking for ways to actively harness Silicon Valley. Large firms are trying by becoming investors in Silicon Valley venture capital firms, setting up their own venture capital arms, setting up branches in the valley, and trying to engage in ‘open’ innovation by entering into tie-ups and attempting to acquire select valley startups.”

A small but growing number of Japanese entrepreneurs visited Silicon Valley either to start their own companies or to grow firms that were started in Japan, Kushida said.

Still, Japan’s tech sector is a long way from what one finds in Silicon Valley, where many of the world’s most “disruptive” and game-changing firms are located. He wrote, “When compared to Silicon Valley, the ecosystem is still small in scale, but so is virtually every other startup ecosystem.”

A growing flow of Japanese entrepreneurs and CEOs is coming to Silicon Valley to get more of a sense of how things work, Kushida said, adding, “That is what we are helping through research at the StanfordSilicon Valley-New Japan Project as part of the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.”

Kushida said that if current estimates hold, Japan should expect successful startups, all supported by a “stronger ecosystem of startup-related players, combined with more open large firms.”

These large firms, he said, will spin off entrepreneurs who leave to launch other new companies, which will accelerate the startup cycle in Japan.

Spreading technology globally

Key challenges facing Japan’s startup culture, Kushida said, are the need for more entrepreneurial role models and the “overall lack of experience in creating followers.” On the latter, he explained that while Japan has excelled at producing tech products for use in its own markets, it would benefit by getting other firms and parts of the world to adopt its products and services.

“Think of the negotiations that Apple undertook with telecom carriers around the world to roll out the iPhone worldwide, or how Google is continually negotiating with governments such as those in the European Union to allow its services to be adopted broadly,” he said.

Other Stanford scholars, such as Takeo Hoshi, have recently written about the reasons Japan was not able to pull out of a long recession that resulted in virtually no growth in the 1990s. One problem, as Hoshi described it, was that the Japanese government was unable to introduce much-needed “structural reforms” to overhaul its economic structures to increase business competition – such as deregulation to cut operating costs for firms, a key attraction for startup-minded entrepreneurs.

Japan’s “lost decade” originally referred to the 1990s, though the country has still not regained the economic power it enjoyed in the 1970s and 1980s. Some say Japan has actually experienced two lost decades if the 2000s are counted as well.

Kushida’s paper, “Japan’s Startup Ecosystem: From Brave New World to Part of Syncretic New Japan,” was published in the Asia Research Policy journal.

Clifton Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service.