About the Panelists

Donald S. Zagoria
Trustee
National Committee on American Foreign Policy

Donald S. Zagoria serves as a trustee for the National Committee on American Foreign Policy and supervises three track-two projects on U.S.-China-Taiwan relations, the North Korean nuclear issue and U.S. relations with the ROK and Japan. Zagoria has been writing and lecturing on international politics for 35 years, with a particular focus on relations among the four major powers in the Asia-Pacific region: the United States, Russia, China and Japan. In addition to five books on the subject, he is the author of more than 200 articles. During the Carter Administration, Zagoria served as a consultant to both the National Security Council and the East Asia Bureau of the State Department. He has frequently been called as an expert witness on Asia by the United States Congress. Zagoria teaches courses on American foreign policy and the international relations of East Asia at Hunter College. Zagoria was born in 1928. He received his BA from Rutgers University, and his MA and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He and his wife Janet, also a Ph.D. in political science, have one son, Adam.

Leon V. Sigal
Director
Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project

Leon V. Sigal is director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council in New York. His book, Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea, published by Princeton University Press, was one of five nominees for the Lionel Gelber Prize as the most outstanding book on international relations for 1997-1998 and was named the 1998 book of distinction by the American Academy of Diplomacy. Sigal was a member of the editorial board of The New York Times from 1989-1995. He served in the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, in 1979 as International Affairs Fellow and in 1980 as Special Assistant to the Director. Sigal was also a Rockefeller Younger Scholar in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in 1972-1974 and a guest scholar there in 1981-1984. From 1974-1989 he was a professor of government at Wesleyan University. He was an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs from 1985-1989 and from 1996-2000, and a visiting lecturer at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School in 1988 and 2000. His most recent book, Negotiating Minefields: The Landmines Ban in American Politics, was published in 2006.

Gerald Curtis
Burgess Professor of International Affairs
Columbia University

Gerald Curtis is Burgess Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and former Director of Columbia's Weatherhead East Asian Institute. Professor Curtis is the author of The Logic of Japanese Politics and numerous other books and articles on Japanese politics, government, and foreign policy and U.S.-Japan relations. He currently divides his time between Columbia University and Tokyo where he is active as a columnist, speaker and writer on Japanese domestic affairs and international relations and a senior fellow at the International Institute of Economic Studies. Professor Curtis has held appointments at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London; the College de France, Paris; the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore; and in Tokyo at Keio and Tokyo University, the Research Institute for Economy, Trade and Industry and the Graduate Research Institute for Policy Studies. He is the recipient of the Chunichi Shimbun Special Achievement Award and the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. In 2002 he received the prestigious Japan Foundation Award and in 2004 he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star by the Emperor of Japan. Professor Curtis is a member of the board of the US-Japan Foundation and advisor and consultant to numerous public and private organizations in the United States and Japan.

Evans Revere
Cyrus Vance Fellow in Diplomatic Studies
Council on Foreign Relations

Evans Revere, a long-time Korea expert, is currently on a State Department assignment to the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is Cyrus Vance Fellow in Diplomatic Studies. He is presently directing a Council-sponsored task force on U.S.-China relations. In addition to working on Korean and Japanese issues at the Council, Revere also served as project director for a Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force on U.S. policy toward China. During his 26-year career with the State Department, Revere has served in all of the major capitals of Northeast Asia, visited Pyongyang numerous times, including with then-presidential envoy William Perry. He speaks fluent Korean, Japanese and Chinese. Revere is a graduate of Princeton University and is a three-time winner of the Department of State's Superior Honor Award.

Aleksandr Ilitchev
Senior Political Affairs Officer
United Nations

Aleksandr Ilitchev has been the senior officer with the Division of Asia and the Pacific in the Department of Political Affairs at theUnited Nations Headquarters in New York since February 1997. A career diplomat, Ilitchev graduated from the Moscow State Institute for International Relations with master’s degrees in internationalrelations and journalism in 1974. He served with the RussianForeign Ministry from 1974 to 1992, with overseas assignments in Syria, Washington, DC and New York. He also served as a personal assistant to Foreign Minister Schevardnadze prior to joining the UN Department of Political Affairs in October 1992. As the team leader for Northeast Asia and the Pacific, Mr. Ilitchev accompanied thesecretary-general on his visits to Asia between 1999 and 2006 and acted as principal political advisor to the personal envoy of the secretary-general for the Korean Peninsula from 2003 to 2005. He has made several visits to the region in a personal capacity as well as participated in various forums on Korean affairs and conflict prevention and resolution. Ilitchev has also conducted Ph.D. research in affiliation with the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC and the U.S.A. and Canada Institute in Moscow.