Korea And The World

Once only a staple of American politics and of a few Western countries, think tanks have gained popularity worldwide for their role as policy advisors. South Korea is no exception and the past years have seen the establishment of a number of institutions in Seoul, such as the Asan Institute and the East Asia Institute. Yet while think tanks provide extensive research and useful advice to policy makers, critics have started to call into question their independence, their integrity and their usefulness. One of these critics is Professor Emanuel Pastreich who argued in a recent article that think tanks suffer from a number of shortcoming. At the same time, he asserted that Korea – and specifically Seoul – has the potential to become a hub for think tanks in East Asia. We sat down with him to discuss the ideological biases of think tanks, the inaccessibility to wider public of their debate, and the need to include the youth in the policy process. Professor Pastreich is Associate Professor at Kyung Hee University

While some may believe Starcraft II to be “just a video game”, it is one of the most famous titles played competitively by professional gamers. “eSports”, as the discipline is called, is a fast growing, dynamic and profitable industry with full-time players who regularly compete for six-figure prize money. Seoul has become a global hub for eSports, due to the presence of top-ranked players, a solid industry ecosystem, and large audiences eager to watch competitions live. eSports in Korea have become a cultural phenomenon in their own right: successful gamers have their own fan base and train like professional athletes, big companies are eager to sponsor teams and competitions, there are television channels devoted to live gaming and the government is actively promoting eSports abroad. Our guest for this episode, Nick Plott, is at the very center of eSports in Korea. A former professional StarCraft gamer in the United States, Nick moved to Seoul to work for the Korean broadcasting company GOMTV and became the

Despite South Korea’s economic development, and its status as a full member of the OECD group of nations, critics continue to denounce the conservative nature of the Korean society. As we mentioned here before, South Korea ranks very low in indexes measuring inequality between men and women (e.g. the Global Gender Gap Report, published by the World Economic Forum), alongside countries one would not necessarily associate Korea with (such as Qatar or Nigeria). Such rankings reflect tangible societal expectations, norms and behaviors that South Korean women are expected to embrace, but which they sometimes also resist or transgress. Our guest for this interview, Professor Aljosa Puzar, has dedicated much of his research to the coming of age of young women in Korea and the process he describes as their “dollification”. Professor Puzar argues that in terms of esthetics, behavior, and expected social roles young women are encouraged to become “dolls” – and to develop a femininity that does not threaten already esta

South Korea’s recent affluence has sparked a renewed interest in the nation’s traditional arts and crafts, architecture, and music. Once keen to modernize at any cost, Koreans now pay serious attention to preserving their cultural heritage and promoting it both domestically and abroad. One aspect of traditional Korea experiencing a strong revival is the art of hanbok, the traditional Korean attire. The domestic industry has grown rapidly in the past decade, featuring up-and-coming professionals keen to marry Korean traditional style with modern fashion, as well as attracting Western designers and global brands always on the lookout for new fashion trends. Our guest for this episode is In Oh, a leading hanbok designer in Seoul. We talk about her work and inspiration, her customers and her dream of making the hanbok a modern, young and mainstream fashion item. Before opening her own workshop, Inohjudan, in the vicinity of one of Seoul’s traditional palaces, In Oh assisted famous hanbok masters and worked in the

South Korea remains a strongly homogeneous country, yet in recent years there has been an increasing inflow of migrants. Workers from developing countries in Asia hope to find employment in Korea’s labor-intensive industries while highly skilled workers from OECD nations are attracted to Korea’s booming financial centers and corporate headquarters. Foreigners now amount to 3.5% of the total population. One particular element of immigration in Korea however is the strong influx of migrant women. Faced with declining fertility rates and the rural exodus of young women looking for better prospects in urban areas, the Korean countryside as well as cities have been bringing foreign brides, raising concerns about their inclusion into Korean society, the discriminations they may face, and how Korea intends to manage its newfound “multiculturalism”. Our guest for this episode, Sohoon Lee, is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, focusing on the experience of migrant women in South Korea. We talk about Korea’s

While South Korea has become a major economic power, it is surrounded by far larger players in Asia. It may never be able to play a leading role in shaping both regional and international affairs, but is currently looking for ways to assert itself on the global stage. These aspirations are typical of what scholars define as a Middle Power - an international actor that is neither small nor large. Our guest for this episode is Scott Snyder, who has written extensively on Korea, its middle power diplomacy and its efforts to find a voice in international politics. We talked about Korea’s role in the G20, its summit diplomacy of the past years and its efforts to cooperate with other middle powers. 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), based in Washington D.C. He has edited and co-authored several publications, the most recent of which being The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United S

In South Korea, military service is a mandatory rite of passage for each and every able-bodied, male citizen. Conscription is strictly enforced and public opinion has very little tolerance for draft dodgers. Our guest for this episode, Young Chun, learned this the hard way. Born the son of Korean immigrants in Champaign, Illinois, and raised in Chicago and Seattle, he traveled to Korea at the end of 2002. He soon discovered that he was listed as a Korean citizen, despite his parents acquiring U.S. citizenship. The Korean Army wasted no time to draft him, and with his little command of Korean, Young had to start his service in January 2004. He served both in Korea and Afghanistan. Young wrote about his tough experience in his first book, The Accidental Citizen-Soldier, which sheds a unique light, from an outsider’s perspective, on life in the Korean military, its hardships, and sometimes its absurdity. Young Chun holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Visual Art from the University of Washington and an MA in Internat

In 2012, the Obama administration announced it would "Pivot" to Asia. Yet, as President Obama's second term is coming to an end, many important issues in East Asia and especially concerning North Korea remain unchanged -- or may have even worsened since the Bush era. During the last six years, North Korea sank the South Korean navy vessel Cheonan, shelled Yeonpyeong Island, conducted two nuclear tests and is probably closer than ever to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power. What has been the attitude of the White House towards North Korea since Obama came to power? What were the President’s expectations towards Pyongyang at the start of his presidency? And can we expect further developments or has the Obama administration reached its “lame duck” phase? To answer these questions, we had a short talk with David Sanger, Chief Washington Correspondent for the New York Times. David Sanger has covered a wide variety of issues for the Times, with a focus on foreign policy, nuclear proliferation and Asian affairs. H

Since withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003, North Korea successfully conducted three nuclear tests and officially declared in 2009 that it had developed a nuclear weapon. Beyond Pyongyang’s rhetorics and the rumors around its atomic program, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s true nuclear capabilities remain largely unknown. Does North Korea have the technology and the weapon systems to deliver a nuclear warhead on targets in South Korea or, even further, in America? What would be the actual destructive power of these payloads? What is the current American and South Korean doctrine regarding nuclear deterrence? And perhaps more importantly, is effective deterrence towards North Korea and its nuclear weapons even feasible? To answer these questions, there is probably no one more qualified than our guest for this episode: Dr. Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation and a Professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He specializes in “asymmetric threats” such as

Since its rapid growth in the nineties, K-Pop has become a multi-billion dollar industry and an integral part of South Korea’s image both domestically and abroad. In stark contrast and despite support from the South Korean government, Korean traditional music, or Gugak, remains a somewhat unknown tradition in and outside Korea. How do we define Korean traditional music? What position does it hold in contemporary South Korean society? What role has the government played in its evolution since the end of the Korean War? Will Gugak follow a path similar to K-Pop – a product designed for export – or is it still a living and thriving tradition? To answer these questions, we had the pleasure of interviewing Prof. Hilary Vanessa Finchum-Sung. Prof. Finchum-Sung earned her Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Indiana University in 2002 and is now Associate Professor in the Department of Korean Music at Seoul National University. She has served as the Chair of the Interdisciplinary Major in Music Education at Seoul National

Seventy years ago, at the end of the Second World War, Germany and the Korean Peninsula were divided. Yet, while the former has now been reunited for twenty five years, Korean reunification remains a distant prospect. Under what conditions could, then, unification happen? What steps are being taken right now to prepare for this possibility? And what lessons can we draw from the German experience of reunification? In order to answer these questions, we had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Bernhard Seliger. Dr. Seliger is since 2002 the resident representative in Seoul of the Hanns Seidel Foundation, which is associated with the German conservative party CSU. He is Associate Editor of the North Korean Review and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Korean Journal of Unification Affairs. He was also a Guest Professor at Seoul National University’s Graduate School of Public Administration from 2004 to 2007. Dr. Seliger received his PhD from the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the Christian-Al

The sinking of the Sewol one year ago highlighted, among several other issues, the failure of the Korean media to report on the unfolding situation in an accurate and professional manner. Korea’s second-largest newspaper, the JoongAng Ilbo, published a full-page apology to its readers soon after the disaster, seeking forgiveness for its faulty reporting. Our guest for this episode, John Francis Power, argues that this is only one of many examples of the various issues plaguing the Korean news landscape. In a feature article he wrote for Groove Korea last year, John depicts an industry under pressure from both government and corporate interests, and where investigative journalism and rigorous reporting are often discouraged. John Power is an Irish journalist based in Seoul since 2010. He has written over 200 articles on a broad range of Korea-related topics, including food safety, domestic violence, politics, libel law, rail safety and various other issues. John has worked for The Korea Herald and Yonhap News,

This year will mark the 70th (and not the 60th, as we erroneously refer to in episode's introduction) anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Yet, whereas European countries have learnt to live and thrive with each other, this seems far from being the case for Korea and its former colonial master: Japan. Historical disputes are commonplace and the relation between the two states seems to deteriorate year after year. Why do these historical disputes exist between Japan and Korea? Under which conditions did they develop and why have they not been resolved since the end of the Second World War? In order to answer these questions, we had the privilege of speaking with Professor Kan Kimura. Professor Kimura obtained his Bachelor's, Master's and Phd in Law from Kyoto University, writing his doctoral dissertation on South Korean nationalism. A Professor at Kobe University's Graduate School of Cooperation Studies since 1997, he was also a visiting scholar at various institutions, including Korea University, t

South Korea is a vibrant democracy, having successfully completed its transition from authoritarian rule since the late 1980s. At the same time, a number of laws and regulations dating back to the Park Chung-hee era are still in effect. Libel and defamation laws in particular seem to be invoked by the authorities with increasing frequency. Critics argue the government is attempting to influence the public discourse and silence dissenters. One of these critics is Professor Park Kyungsin, who has been advocating freedom of speech and opinion in South Korea, especially online. He gracefully agreed to be our guest for this episode, to talk about internet and press censorship, defamation and libel law, and the political environment of these measures. Professor Park is a lawyer and law professor at the Korea University Law School, the Executive Director of the PSPD Public Interest Law Center, Commissioner at the Korean Communication Standards Commission and one of the leading figures behind OpenNet, a non-governmen

To everyone living in Korea, KakaoTalk is a household name. Yet the popular messaging app is only the poster child of a much larger start-up ecosystem. Forbes Magazine hailed Korea as “the next global hub for tech startups”, and the government pledged to spend several billion dollars to foster a “creative economy”. To learn more about entrepreneurship in Korea and understand the macro-trends at work behind the scenes, we had the pleasure to talk to Richard Min. Richard founded two of Korea’s first major startup accelerators: SeoulSpace and KStartup, attracting investment from global brands such as 500Startups, Samsung and Google’s Entrepreneurship Program. He is currently a Venture Partner at Naxuri Capital and the Managing Director of Fashion Technology Accelerator, here in Seoul. Richard is also the founder of the +822 Convergence Conference and Cityfest, which will take place in Seoul this october. He hosts his own weekly show on TBS Primetime radio and was featured in several news outlets, including INC M

During the 1990s, North Korea suffered one of the worst famines of the 20th century. The result of this “Arduous March,” as the regime calls it, was not only a humanitarian catastrophe: the large-scale suffering also ignited economic and social changes that are still shaping the country today. This is the analysis of James Pearson and Daniel Tudor, who argue in their latest book, "North Korea Confidential", that this experience, although highly traumatic, helped sow the seeds of capitalism in North Korea. In North Korea Confidential, Tudor and Pearson depict a changing society, communist by outside perception only , where the poor now almost exclusively survive thanks to the little businesses they maintain to complement their almost worthless official wages. Pyongyang is the seat of a new economic elite that conducts trade with China and beyond. Foreign currencies have taken over in some parts of the country as the primary medium of exchange, and consumerism seems almost celebrated as a virtue - the winners o

Behind the glitter of Korea's economic success story lies a land of fault lines and social strife. Regionalism and factionalism are defining aspects of Korea’s politics and social fabric, while the rights of workers and minorities are sacrificed in the name of economic efficiency and social conformity. The media cannot report freely, foreign journalists and scholars are under pressure to spin a positive image of Korea abroad, and Koreans themselves live in fear of repression should they express ideas their government does not share. This rather grim portrayal of South Korea is what you may be tempted to take away from KoreaExpose.com. According to its founder and editor-in-chief, Dr. Se-Woong Koo, Korea Expose is dedicated to covering topics that do not receive enough attention from both South Korean and foreign media. As he argues, reporting about poverty, discrimination and disenfranchisement isn’t compatible with the image South Korea wants to broadcast to the world. We talked to Dr. Koo about his plans fo

Suki Kim is a Korean-American writer who was born in Seoul and moved to the United States at the age of 13. Driven by her Korean roots and her family background - her uncle disappeared in the Korean War, leaving her mother and grandmother scarred for life - Suki developed a keen interest in North Korean affairs. After visiting North Korea several times and writing extensively about the land, Suki Kim landed a job as an English teacher at the newly constructed PUST, or Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. Aside from that fact that it was in North Korea, funded by a Christian missionary organization, and that Suki herself was there as an undercover writer, PUST was not a regular college: all of its students were boys and happened to be the children of North Korea’s highest elite. Suki Kim wrote about her experiences in her most recent book, “Without You, There is No Us”, published by Crown Publishing [Group]. The book traces her life during the six months she lived on campus with 270 students, 50 of

Koreans sure like to watch movies: last year, the domestic film industry made more money than ever before. One movie in particular was seen by no less than a third of the population. Korean cinema has also been able to establish itself abroad, with blockbusters such as Oldboy or Snowpiercer being among the most famous examples. In this episode, we dive into the Korean movie ecosystem in order to learn more about the reasons for this success, both domestically and abroad, but also to look at the differences between mainstream and independent moviemaking as well as the political environment shaping the industry. To navigate the realm of the Korean silver screen, there is probably no better guide than Simon McEnteggart, Korean movie buff extraordinaire and founder of one of the best reference sites for Korean cinema on the Internet: hangukyeonghwa.com. We had the pleasure of welcoming him as our guest for this episode of Korea and the World.

A look into South Korea reveals a confusing number of influences: the society is commonly described as Confucian, the politics are clearly influenced by Christianity, yet visit South Korea and you may think Buddhism is the religion of the land - there are temples virtually everywhere. Almost a quarter of the Korean population define themselves as Buddhists. Yet how can we explain Buddhism’s seeming lack of power and influence in shaping contemporary Korean politics and society? Why are there no strong Buddhist political parties or charismatic Buddhist leaders setting the agenda? To find answers, we sat down with Seoul National University Professor Sem Vermeersch and took a long hard look together at Buddhism in Korea, from its introduction from China in the 4th century to our modern times.