Charles K. Armstrong is The Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies in the Social Sciences in the Department of History and the Director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University. A specialist in the modern history of Korea and East Asia, Professor Armstrong has published several books on contemporary Korea, including The Koreas (Routledge, 2007), The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 (Cornell, 2003), Korea at the Center: Dynamics of Regionalism in Northeast Asia (M.E. Sharpe, 2006), and Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy, and the State (Routledge, second edition 2006), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. His current book projects include a study of North Korean foreign relations in the Cold War era and a history of modern East Asia. Professor Armstrong is a frequent commentator in the US and international media on Korean, East Asian, and Asian-American affairs. Professor Armstrong teaches courses on modern Korean history, the international history of East Asia, the Vietnam War, and US-East Asian relations, among others.
He received his BA from Yale, MA from the London School of Economics, and PhD from the University of Chicago. He joined the Columbia faculty in 1996.
On August 4, 2008, Dr. Charles Armstrong, director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University, presented a two-part overview of Korean history at The Korea Society in New York. In this first lecture, he provides a general introduction to contemporary Korea before delving into Korean history, starting with the founding myth of Tangun and progressing up to the late nineteenth century when Korea opened up to modern diplomatic relations with Japan and the West.
