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Home  Contemporary Issues
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Contemporary Issues
The contemporary issues project promotes cross-cultural understanding through public lectures, panel discussions, symposia and workshops that present the rich diversity of Korea and U.S.-Korea relations in historical and contemporary contexts. These programs feature authors, scholars, artists, practitioners from the nonprofit sector, politicians, business leaders and others who are willing to share with the American public their unique expertise on Korea and U.S.-Korea relations.
The focus of this project area is an in-depth exploration of the social, cultural, economic, political, historical and security dimensions of the U.S.-Korea relationship. The objective is to foster a greater awareness, appreciation and understanding of the complexity of these underlying factors, which fuels the power of imagination that is the indispensable wellspring of the capacity for empathy. While divergences of perspectives between Americans and Koreans on many fundamental issues may be inevitable, it is equally inevitable that these divergences must be brought within the realm of imagination to be channeled toward productive engagement based on mutual respect.
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Hollywood images of exotic, silk-clad Asian women and glasses-clad, mathematically gifted Asian men color Westerners' perceptions of Asia. According to Sheridan Prasso, a longtime Asia correspondent and recent author of The Asian Mystique, these stereotypes do more than make people uncomfortable, they complicate everything from major business deals to U.S. foreign policy. The American entertainment industry didn't invent these caricatures-Marco Polo sent lurid reports back to Europe that claimed submissive Chinese women would swarm over European men-but it has spread the image of the delicate, feminine Asian male and "Dragon Lady" Asian female farther and wider than ever before. As a result, Americans have consistently patronized and underestimated Asians, sometimes with disastrous consequences. U.S. automakers GM and Ford believed their Asian competitors couldn't make a full-sized pickup truck, Prasso contended, because on some level they felt it required more masculinity than Asian men had. Now they're losing sales to the Nissan Titan and Toyota Tundra. Similarly, CIA and State Department reports of the era described Vietnam's communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, as weak and passive. Had his American assessors been able to see through their cultural filters, Vietnam might not have been as scarring an experience as it was. As Asian countries become more important players on the world scene, seeing past stereotypes will become all the more important. "There are a number of areas where diplomacy and compromise, and the recognition of real differences, would help so much," Passo said in closing. |
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The geopolitics of East Asia was addressed in a panel discussion held at the Asia Society that was co-presented with The Korea Society. The panelists were: Charles Armstrong, associate professor of history, Columbia University; Calvin Sims, director of development, New York Times Television; and Donald Zagoria, professor of political science, Hunter College. In their presentations, the panelists noted that the groundswell of anti-Japanese sentiment emerging in China and South Korea suggests that the historical enmity between these three countries is continuing to fester despite improved relations among them on the economic and social fronts. They discussed the principal factors accounting for this phenomenon including the reaction to Japanese textbook issues, the proposal that Japan be named a member of the United Nations Security Council, long-standing territorial disputes and a perceived move to the right in Japanese politics. These tensions are not likely to be resolved, or at least moderated, without a proactive response from Japan, they concluded, citing as evidence the steady drumbeat of objections to the policies of the Japanese government by both China and South Korea that were punctuated recently by large demonstrations in China during which the Japanese Embassy was attacked. Moreover, a poll at the end of March by the Asahi Shimbun, the Dong-a-Ilbo and the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that more than 60% of respondents in South Korea and China said they disliked Japan, which represents an increase from earlier surveys. |
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What Does Pyongyang Want? A Personal Interpretation of North Korea's Priorities and Motivations
Lee Sun-Jin, former South Korean deputy minister of foreign affairs and visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution, shared his perspectives on North Korea's often opaque political goals and negotiating tactics. The North's rhetorical bombast and seemingly erratic moves fit into its two overall negotiating strategies: escalating the sense of crisis in the ongoing diplomatic talks, and shifting the focus of the talks. But despite its brinkmanship, the DPRK has made significant accommodations to the U.S. in its effort to reinstate the terms of the 1994 Agreed Framework. At the start of the Six-Party Talks the DPRK demanded a non-aggression treaty from the U.S., yet in recent rounds it has insisted only that the U.S. recognize it as a "dialog partner." Unfortunately, U.S. policymakers haven't shown a reciprocal flexibility and have used an extremely loose definition of "program" to accuse the North of having a secret uranium program, thus exacerbating tensions. This sort of intransigence, Lee warned, would make it very difficult for Seoul to back any U.S. move to bring the DPRK before the U.N. Security Council unless it contained significant incentives for the North.
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Yoo Ki-hong, a former pro-democracy activist and Uri Party member of the ROK National Assembly, presented an overview of the political storm clouds hanging over the adoption of a high school history textbook in Japan. The book, known as the Fusosha textbook, glosses over Japan's occupation of Korea, ignores the subject of Korean "comfort women" and only mentions Japanese responsibility when it comes to taking credit for South Korea's economic progress. Approved for student use by the Japanese authorities, the book flies in the face of Japan's 1982 promise to consult with neighboring countries before designing 20th century history curriculum for its students. In and of itself, Yoo said, the book isn't a major issue. But in the context of recent efforts by Japanese nationalists to renounce the country's longstanding pacifist constitution and re-arm, the glorification of the country's aggression is deeply insulting and unsettling to South Koreans. The lack of atonement it represents has already led both South Korea and China to oppose Japan's ascension to a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.
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