The Korea Society

On June 23, 2008, a distinguished panel of experts featuring Scott Snyder (The Asia Foundation/Pacific Forum CSIS), Charles K. Armstrong (Columbia University), David Straub (Stanford University) and Youngshik Daniel Bong (American University) convened at The Korea Society to assess the first months of Lee Myung-bak's presidency. The panel took a close look at what has been a tumultuous period in Korea's domestic politics and addressed the implications of the current crisis for political stability in the Republic of Korea, the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, and U.S.-Korea relations.

On April 10, 2008, The Korea Society hosted a panel discussion on the blogging cultures of the United States, Korea and Japan and their relationships with participatory democracy. The program was a joint initiative of The Korea Society, Japan Society and The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and featured David Weinberger, author and fellow of the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet Wendy H.K. Chun, associate professor of modern culture and media at Brown University; Tobias Harris, journalist and blogger at ObservingJapan.com; Stuart Thorson, professor of political science at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs; and Samuel Jamier, blogger and senior program officer at The Korea Society.

On January 30, 2008, Ha-Joon Chang, professor of economics at the University of Cambridge, spoke at The Korea Society about his latest book, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. Professor Chang argues that policies imposed by developed countries and international organizations have led to slowing growth, rising inequality and greater economic instability in the developing world.

On April 15, 2008, His Excellency Lee Myung-Bak, the 17th President of the Republic of Korea, addressed the members, friends and guests of The Korea Society at the organization's 2008 annual dinner. Stanley C. Gale, chairman of Gale International, and a co-chair of the dinner, introduces president Lee.

On Tuesday, April 15, 2008, members of New Beginnings, a nonpartisan policy study group made up of former senior U.S. officials, academics and other experts on Korea, released their recommendations for updating and strengthening the U.S.-South Korea alliance at a press conference at The Korea Society in New York City.

On April 1, 2008, Evans J.R. Revere, president of The Korea Society, moderated a panel with Zarin Mehta, president and executive director of the New York Philharmonic, Daniel J. Wakin, culture reporter for The New York Times, and Chuck R. Lustig, director of foreign news for ABC News, in which they discussed the New York Philharmonic's February performance in North Korea, as well as the events that led to the historic event.

On February 7, 2008, Aaron Han Joon Magnan-Park, an assistant professor in the Department of Film, Television and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame, delivered at lecture at The Korea Society entitled "Our Toys, Our Selves: Robot Taekwon V and South Korean Identity." The lecture was in support of "Toy Stories: Souvenirs from Korean Childhood," an exhibition of toys from 1970s and 1980s Korea, showing at The Korea Society gallery, and available for travel around the United States in 2008.

On Thursday, November 29, 2007, author Cullen Thomas spoke to The Korea Society's Samuel Jamier about his prison memoir, "Brother One Cell," a literary account of a journey at the edges of Korean society.

On Tuesday, February 12th, 2008, Hazel Smith, professor of international relations at the University of Warwick, delivered a presentation at The Korea Society titled "North Korea: Market Opportunity, Poverty and the Provinces." She provided data and insights into how various groups in the DPRK adapted to survive the famine of the mid-1990s.

On Monday, January 28th, 2008, General B.B. Bell, commander of United States Forces Korea, spoke to The Korea Society about the U.S.-R.O.K. alliance and its evolution from Cold-War paradigms to a long-term bilateral partnership based on shared interests in East Asia.

On January 16th, 2008 The Korea Society hosted a panel discussion titled "How and Why We Remember The Korean War." Far from being forgotten, the Korean War has been brought into renewed focus by the recent publication of The Coldest Winter, a reappraisal of the conflict by Pulitzer-winning author David Halberstam. Panelist Bruce Cumings, a professor of history at the University of Chicago, spoke about Halberstam's book, while Evans J.R. Revere, president and CEO of The Korea Society, spoke about the continuing impact of the war on inter-Korean politics. Panelists Thomas McGrath, Yung Duk Kim and George Drake --all veterans or witnesses in the conflict-- shared their first-hand experiences of this turbulent era.

December 20th, 2007, 24 hours after Lee Myung-bak won the presidential election in South Korea, Donald P. Gregg and Evans J.R. Revere, the chairman and president of The Korea Society; Don Zagoria, project director of the Northeast Asia Projects at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy; and Leon Sigal, director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council, analyzed the election and its consequences at an informal panel discussion.

On November 6, 2007 The Korea Society hosted a lecture titled "The Case of Arirang: How the Anthem of Korean Resistance Became a Japanese Pop Hit" by E. Taylor Atkins, an associate professor of history at Northern Illinois University.

On Friday, August 23rd, Samuel Jamier, The Korea Society's senior program officer for contemporary issues and corporate affairs, sat down with Robert R. Cagle, assistant professor of cinema studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to talk about the future of the Korean Wave and his research on melodrama.

On August 8th, 2007, Donald P. Gregg, chairman of The Korea Society, gave a lecture entitled "Two Koreas, Past and Present" to a group of educators assembled for one of the Society's regular teachers' courses on Korea. Gregg, who served as U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 1989 to 1993, recounted the complex history of America's relationship with Korea, including its role in Korea's division in 1945. Gregg also spoke about the current movement towards rapprochement between North and South Korea, and what it might mean for their respective futures.

On July 26, 2007, The Korea Society hosted a lecture by Dr. Laurel Kendall, an anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History. Held in conjunction with the opening of a new exhibition of Korean funerary figures at The Korea Society Gallery, Kendall's lecture detailed the structure and importance of the ancient Shamanic rituals that Koreans traditionally perform for the dead.

On August 9, 2007, The Korea Society hosted a contemporary issues presentation by Jack Pritchard, president of the Korea Economic Institute and former State Department special envoy to the DPRK. Pritchard spoke on the subject of his new book, Failed Diplomacy: The Tragic Story of How North Korea Got the Bomb. Pritchard shared his perspective that North Korea's recent acquisition of nuclear weapons directly resulted from a series of failures in U.S. foreign policy. Following his presentation, Pritchard sat down for a Q&A session with journalist and author Don Oberdorfer.

Yuni Cho and Samuel Jamier preview the 7th Annual New York Korean Film Festival, opening this week in New York City.

On April 3rd, 2007, Yoo Jang-hee, a professor of international studies at Ewha Women's University, delivered a lecture titled "The Korean Economy in the New Industrial Revolution" to a group of American educators touring Korea as part of The Korea Society's 2007 Spring Fellowship in Korean Studies program. Professor Yoo spoke about Korea's role in the increasingly knowledge-based global economy. Surveying Korea's advantages-such as its highly trained workforce and advanced information infrastructure-and what he sees as its disadvantages-low levels of R&D funding and an unproductive education system-Yoo concluded that the Korean government needs to resume pro-growth policies and encourage private-sector initiatives in order to compete in this world's new industrial revolution.

On May 8th, 2007, The Korea Society hosted a contemporary issues program on the recently published novel "A Corpse in the Koryo." This is the first English-language murder mystery set entirely in North Korea, which is known officially as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or the DPRK. Written under a pen name by a senior U.S. intelligence official with decades of experience working with the DPRK, "A Corpse in the Koryo" follows Inspector Oh, a North Korean detective, as he navigates the country's murky byways in the course of investigating a highly unusual death. A panel of experts made up of the Republic of Korea's ambassador to the United Nations Choi Young-jin, Fletcher School dean Stephen Bosworth and international lawyer Lucy Reed - all veteran visitors to the DPRK in their early work with the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization known as KEDO - discusses the novel and the policy issues that it deftly raises between its lines.

On April 2nd, 2007, The Korea Society sponsored a lecture titled "The Problem of North Korea in the Era of Terrorism" by Professor Ahn Byong-Man, chairman of the Korea Fulbright Foundation. The lecture, which took place in Seoul as part of The Korea Society's Korea Fellowship for Educators program, addressed the unique security challenges that North Korea poses to the world community and recounted previous American and South Korean attempts to ease tensions with the North.

On April 5th, 2007, The Korea Society hosted an Arts program titled "How Did Korea Become a Land of Apartments?" with Valerie Gelezeau, associate professor of Geography at Marne la Vallee University in France and author of The Republic of Apartments. Gelezeau explained how South Korea has transformed from a country of single-unit housing to one where apartment living is the dominant paradigm. Gelezeau believes that in addition to economic and demographic factors-such as a growing population and a shortage of buildable land-this change has been driven by cultural factors.

On March 28th, 2007, The Korea Society co-sponsored a Young Professionals Forum titled "Investing in Korea" with the Columbia Business School Asian Alumni Club of New York. Moderated by Professor Ronald Schramm of the Columbia Business school, a panel of experts discussed South Korea's current macro- and microeconomics, perceptions that the country is becoming more hostile to foreign investment and the regulatory and tax frameworks any investors should know before getting into the South Korean market. Panelists included Donald Hanna, global head of emerging markets at Citigroup; John Lee, a director at Lazard Asset Management; Eric Yoon, partner at the law firm of White & Chase and Kaz Parsch, a senior manager of international tax services at Ernst & Young.

On February 9th, 2006, The Korea Society hosted a presentation titled "Hungry For Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance and Social Change in North Korea" by Hazel Smith, a professor of international relations at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom and a consultant to major NGOs providing relief to North Korea. Taking issue with the popular notion that North Korea's state secrecy makes accurate information on North Korean society impossible to come by, Smith argued that much information was available-and it indicates that important but largely unnoticed social changes are underway.

On February 27th, 2007, The Korea Society hosted a special screening of Korean director Bong Joon-ho's new monster movie The Host, followed by a Q&A session with Bong, at the IFC Film Center in New York. At the Q&A, Bong Joon-ho discussed The Host's implicit social commentary and political satire. Bong also discussed how, as a director, he wanted The Host to be a hybrid of several genres: the monster movie, the action film and the black comedy. In response to audience questions, Bong Joon-ho discussed his inspiration for The Host (which included the big-budget blockbusters of director Steven Spielberg) and the differences in Korean and American movie production. The Host opens nationwide in the U.S. on March 9, 2007.

On March 6th, 2007, The Korea Society and The Japan Society co-organized a forum at which Ambassador Chris Hill, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, discussed the recent breakthrough at the Six-Party Talks and the next steps in America's diplomatic engagement with North Korea. Ambassador Hill was introduced by Evans Revere, president of The Korea Society.

On February 22nd, 2007, The Korea Society hosted a contemporary issues presentation titled Inside Kumgang and Kaesong: Models for Economic Cooperation with North Korea by Walter Keats, founder and president of Asia Pacific Travel, Ltd. An expert in tourism, Keats discussed his experiences traveling to North Korea's two special economic zones, the Mount Kumgang resort and the Kaesong Industrial Complex. Jointly run with South Korean firms, Keats believes these zones represent the future of economic reforms in North Korea.

On April 11th, 2005, The Korea Society hosted a lecture titled "Contemporary Russian Policy Towards the Korean Peninsula" by Alex Vorontsov, head of the section for Korean Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Vorontsov recounted the history of Russian relations with North Korea, from close alliance at the DPRK's founding, to distanced after the collapse of Soviet Communism, to the present, as president Putin is striving to re-establish and strengthen Russia-DPRK ties.

Part 1 of 2. On July 25th, 2005, The Korea Society hosted a lecture titled "The Origins of Koreans and Their Culture" with Mark Byington, a post-doctoral fellow in Korean Studies at Harvard University. The lecture-which was given as part of The Korea Society's continuing education program for teachers-addressed the important early sources of Korean language, art, religion and custom.

Part 2 of 2. On July 25th, 2005, The Korea Society hosted a lecture titled "The Origins of Koreans and Their Culture" with Mark Byington, a post-doctoral fellow in Korean Studies at Harvard University. The lecture-which was given as part of The Korea Society's continuing education program for teachers-addressed the important early sources of Korean language, art, religion and custom.