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The Culture, Policy and Society programming 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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 Book Café
with
Kim Sunée
Author, Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Kim Sunée was only three years old when her mother left her on a marketplace bench with a fistful of food and promised to be right back. When she was taken in by the police three days later and told she had been abandoned, all she had left in the world was a handful of crumbs. Through her adoption by a couple in New Orleans, her adolescence as only one of two Asian children in her community and her relationship with a famous French businessman, the pursuit of fine food has been a constant for Kim in her search for an identity that seems at once intimate and elusive.
Reading from her new memoir Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love and the Search for Home and taking questions, Kim Sunée will bring the audience along on her lyrical journey of sustenance and self, from Korea to America to Provence.
Supporting Organization 
About the Presenter
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 with
Hazel Smith
Professor of International Relations, University of Warwick
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
When assessing the impact of the mid-1990s famine on the North Korean population, experts have been working on an assumption: that North Koreans living in the country's breadbasket provinces were relatively better nourished than those in other provinces. Though a reasonable premise, Hazel Smith, professor of international relations at Warwick University and author of Hungry for Peace: International Security, Humanitarian Assistance and Social Change in North Korea, has researched reams of data and found that the variable impact of the famine on North Koreans had less to do with the agricultural production of their province than with its economic fluidity.
 Outlining the results of her research at The Korea Society, Smith explained that as food shortages became critical, the government's public food distribution system collapsed and the population turned to informal, and previously illegal, market mechanisms to feed itself. Local markets sprang up across the country, developing more fully in some provinces than others. North Koreans who lived in provinces with well developed market structures ate better than those who didn't.
The provinces that harvested the most food weren't automatically the ones with the most developed markets. Smith cited the example of South Hwanghae. Though one of the country's most agriculturally productive provinces, its marketization process faced obstacles. Close to Pyongyang, it was easy for central government authorities who opposed market systems to impose their authority in South Hwanghae. Geography was another important factor. Whereas the populations of provinces close to the border had opportunities to mix with Chinese merchants and jump start provincial commerce, South Hwanghae was far from the border and thus isolated. As a result, South Hwanghae residents suffered the most severe malnutrition in the country.
This pattern, of provinces with greater access to foreigners (and their hard currency) as well as greater openness to market mechanisms surviving the famine better, was consistent throughout the nationwide data.
About the Speaker
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 with
General B.B. Bell
Commander of United States Forces Korea
Monday, January 28, 2008
The U.S.-ROK military alliance is strong, according to General B.B. Bell, commander of United States Forces Korea, and the time has come to make it stronger by implementing the agreed upon transfer of wartime operational control from American to Korean commanders.
Speaking with Evans J.R. Revere, president of The Korea Society, General Bell praised the simplicity of the two countries' alliance agreement. Signed in 1953, the agreement embodies the allies' mutual defense pledge that remains unchanged today. What has changed, Bell explained, is the joint command structure delineating responsibility for command of the allied forces on the Korean peninsula in any given situation.
This is covered in a separate agreement that exists independently of the alliance and is subject to change as circumstances warrant. In 1994, for example, responsibility for peacetime operations was shifted from an American to a Korean commander. More recently, the two allies have agreed to a parallel shift in wartime operational control that is scheduled to be implemented in 2012.
Noting that the ROK's armed forces have improved tremendously over the last 20 years, Bell said that he had no qualms about placing American soldiers under a Korean commander. "We trust Korean general officers to lead senior theater command," he said. "I proclaim proudly and loudly all the time that the competencies of the Korean flag officers are second to none."
As the transfer date draws closer, however, concern has been voiced in both countries that the impending change in command structure represents a diminished American commitment to Korea.
While sensitive to these concerns, Bell does not share them. Korean control over the country's defense is an important symbol of sovereignty and the alliance remained strong through the 1994 operational command transfer, despite similar worries expressed at the time.
Expressing confidence that a shared commitment to peace and stability in Northeast Asia will keep the alliance vital, Bell concluded: "This alliance has a reason for being that far exceeds the specific command and control structures.
About the Presenter
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A Discussion of David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter 
with
Bruce Cumings
Professor of History, University of Chicago.
Author, The Origins of the Korean War.
Thomas McGrath
Partner, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.
Yung Duk Kim
Former President and CEO, Hyundai Corporation (USA).
Independent management, technology and finance consultant.
George Drake
Former Professor, Sociology at Western Washington University.
Creator of the Korean War Children’s Memorial in Bellingham, Washington.
Evans J.R. Revere
President, Korea Society.
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
David Halberstam’s final book, The Coldest Winter, a new history of the Korean War, has been on America’s bestseller lists for months. The widespread attention being garnered by the book seemingly is at odds with the popular perception in the U.S., which often labels the conflict in Korea as the “forgotten war.” In this respect, the publication of The Coldest Winter provides an invaluable opportunity to reexamine how and why the tragic events of more than half a century ago remain relevant to the search for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula today. Join us for a presentation and panel discussion revisiting this devastating period of Korea’s recent past and its continuing connections to contemporary American history.
The program will include a presentation by prominent Korean War scholar Bruce Cumings on how Halberstam’s work relates to our evolving understanding of the Korean War. This presentation will be followed by a discussion with Thomas McGrath, who was deployed as a soldier with the U.S. Army in Korea during the war, Yung Duk Kim, who was caught up in the war as a young civilian, and George Drake, Director of Research of the Korean War National Museum. They will share their first-hand experiences of this turbulent era in a conversation moderated by Evans J.R. Revere, the president of The Korea Society. The program will conclude with a Q&A session involving all of the participants.
Bringing the period to life, a series of vivid photographs from The Korea Society’s traveling exhibition, Living Through the Forgotten War: Portrait of Korea, will be on display during the program.
About the Speakers
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Policy
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