South Korea’s Presidential Inaugural and Next-Steps in Korea-U.S. Relations

event_image Event offered by:
The Korea Society

Event Details

Date:
Thursday, February 28, 2013
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM 
Location:
The Korea Society
950 Third Avenue, 8th Floor
New York, NY
Event type
Lecture / Panel  

Event Description

South Korea’s Presidential Inaugural and Next-Steps in Korea-U.S. Relations

Experts reflect on President Park Geun-hye inauguration, promises of greater “economic democracy” at home and a new trustpolitik with the North, and relations with the U.S. Stanford University’s David Straub, The Council on Foreign Relations Scott Snyder, Columbia University’s Charles Armstrong, and Yonsei University’s John Delury address these issues, with an eye toward evolving regional dynamics.
 

with


Scott Snyder, Senior Fellow for Korea Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
David Straub, Associate Director of Korean Studies Program, Stanford University
Charles Armstrong, Professor of History, Columbia University
John Delury, Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies, Yonsei University  


Moderated by Dr. Stephen Noerper, Senior Vice President, The Korea Society


About the Speakers


Scott Snyder is senior fellow for Korea studies and director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where he had served as an adjunct fellow from 2008 to 2011. Snyder's program examines South Korea's efforts to contribute on the international stage; its potential influence and contributions as a middle power in East Asia; and the peninsular, regional, and global implications of North Korean instability. Snyder is also the editor of Global Korea: South Korea's Contributions to International Security(Council on Foreign Relations, October 2012) and The U.S.-South Korea Alliance: Meeting New Security Challenges (Lynne Rienner Publishers, March 2012). He served as the project director for CFR's Independent Task Force on policy toward the Korean Peninsula. He currently writes for the blog, "Asia Unbound."

Prior to joining CFR, Snyder was a senior associate in the international relations program of The Asia Foundation, where he founded and directed the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy and served as The Asia Foundation's representative in Korea (2000-2004). He was also a senior associate at Pacific Forum CSIS. Mr. Snyder has worked as an Asia specialist in the research and studies program of the U.S. Institute of Peace and as acting director of Asia Society's contemporary affairs program. He was a Pantech visiting fellow at Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center during 2005-06, and received an Abe fellowship, administered by the Social Sciences Research Council, in 1998-99.



Snyder has authored numerous book chapters on aspects of Korean politics and foreign policy and Asian regionalism and is the author of China's Rise and the Two Koreas: Politics, Economics, Security (2009), Paved With Good Intentions: The NGO Experience in North Korea (co-editor, 2003), and Negotiating on the Edge: North Korean Negotiating Behavior(1999). He has provided advice to NGOs and humanitarian organizations active in North Korea and serves on the advisory council of the National Committee on North Korea and Global Resource Services.


Snyder received a BA from Rice University and an MA from the regional studies East Asia program at Harvard University and was a Thomas G. Watson fellow at Yonsei University in South Korea.


David Straub was named associate director of the Korean Studies Program (KSP) 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 currently writing a book on recent U.S.-South Korean relations. He is also a member of the New Beginnings policy research group on U.S.-South Korean relations, which is co-sponsored by Shorenstein APARC and the New York-based Korea Society.


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.


 

Charles K. Armstrong is The Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies in the Social Sciences in the Department of History and the Director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University. A specialist in the modern history of Korea and East Asia, Professor Armstrong has published several books on contemporary Korea, including The Koreas (Routledge, 2007), The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 (Cornell, 2003), Korea at the Center: Dynamics of Regionalism in Northeast Asia (M.E. Sharpe, 2006), and Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy, and the State (Routledge, second edition 2006), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. His current book projects include a study of North Korean foreign relations in the Cold War era and a history of modern East Asia. Professor Armstrong is a frequent commentator in the US and international media on Korean, East Asian, and Asian-American affairs. Professor Armstrong teaches courses on modern Korean history, the international history of East Asia, the Vietnam War, and US-East Asian relations, among others.

He received his BA from Yale, MA from the London School of Economics, and PhD from the University of Chicago. He joined the Columbia faculty in 1996.

 

John Delury is Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies at Yonsei University Graduate School of International Studies and Underwood International College, teaching modern Chinese history and East Asian relations. John is a senior fellow of Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations, term member on the Council on Foreign Relations, and Leadership Council member for the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. He is co-authoring a history of modern China (with Orville Schell), has published numerous articles, and appears regularly in the media. Dr. Delury received his BA, MA, and PhD in Chinese history from Yale University, studying under Jonathan Spence. He was a visiting professor at Columbia, Brown and Peking University.


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