Leap from satire to Korean drama and other works by a mid-century master. Delve into a China raw, volatile and often uncontrollable in a novel equal parts muckraking, a transnational love story, and panoramic social critique.
Two of America’s premier translators of Korean literature, the Fultons reflect on two recent releases: Sunset, a first ever English-language compilation of the works of the great midcentury writer Ch’ae, known widely for his satire, and Cho’s striking novel portraying China on the verge of world dominance. Cho’s The Human Jungle provides a literary complement to the Society’s ongoing work on Korea’s regional relations.
Dr. Stephen Noerper, Senior Director, introduces and facilitates the dialogue with the Fultons on these important new translations. Copies of Sunset are available for purchase and signing by the Fultons.
Found in Translation: Sunset: A Ch’ae Manshik Reader and Cho Chongnae’s The Human Jungle
Award-winning author Krys Lee speaks to the release of her debut novel, How I Became a North Korean, at this first cultural event at the Korea Society’s new location at 350 Madison Avenue at 45th Street. A Yonsei University assistant professor of creative writing, Krys Lee is a recipient of the Rome Prize and finalist for the BBC International Short Story Award. This captivating new release tells the story of three young people who struggle to make new lives in the dangerous area where China borders North Korea. Krys Lee appears in conversation with Korea Society senior director and Columbia University professor Stephen Noerper. A signing and reception follows the discussion.
About the NovelAbout the AuthorAbout the Publisher
Three disparate characters’ lives converge when they flee their homes and find themselves in a small Chinese town just across from North Korea. As they fight to survive in a place where danger seems to close in on all sides, in the form of government informants, husbands, thieves, abductors, and even missionaries, they come to form a kind of adoptive family.
Transporting the reader to one of the least-known environments in the world, and exploring how humanity persists even in the most desparate circumstances, How I Became a North Korean is a brilliant and essential first novel by one of our most promising writers. (Jacket text)
Special thanks to Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Isaac Stone Fish is a senior fellow at the Asia Society in New York City, on sabbatical from Foreign Policy Magazine. While at Foreign Policy, he was the publication’s Asia Editor: he managed coverage of the region, and wrote about the politics, economics, and international affairs of China, Japan, and North Korea. Formerly a Beijing correspondent for Newsweek, Stone Fish spent seven years living in China prior to joining Foreign Policy. While there, he traveled widely in the region and in the country, visiting every Chinese province except lonely Jiangxi.
His views on international affairs have been widely quoted, including in MSNBC, NPR, CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate, The Guardian, PRI, the BBC, the Sydney Morning Herald, Talking Points Memo, and Al-Jazeera, among others; and in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, and Vietnamese media. An experienced public speaker, Stone Fish has given talks at Columbia, Cornell, Duke, the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, the University of Washington in Seattle, University of Groningen in Holland, Fudan University (in Mandarin), among other universities; and at conferences, think tanks, and events around the world.
Besides publishing in Foreign Policy, where he has worked for the last four years, Stone Fish’s articles have also appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Slate, The Daily Beast, Time, and the Los Angeles Times. While in Beijing, he served on the board of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of China, and, when the sky wasn’t the color of glue, was an avid runner.
A fluent Mandarin speaker, Stone Fish is a graduate of Columbia University, where he studied Chinese literature. He is also a Global Shaper at the World Economic Forum, and a non-resident senior fellow at the University of Nottingham’s China Policy Institute. In his spare time, he is writing a novel on North Korea.
Thomas Byrne (moderator) joined The Korea Society as its President in August of 2015. He comes to the Society from Moody’s Investor Services, where he was Senior Vice President, Regional Manager, Spokesperson, and Director of Analysis for the Sovereign Risk Group in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions. Before moving to Moody’s in 1996, he was the Senior Economist of the Asia Department at the Institute of International Finance in Washington DC. Tom has an MA degree in International Relations with an emphasis on economics from The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Before his graduate work, he served in South Korea for three years as a US Peace Corps volunteer. President Byrne teaches as an adjunct professor, at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in New York City and at Georgetown University’s Graduate School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C.
The Korea Society welcomes Korean War veterans and guests to the Korean War memorial in lower Manhattan’s Battery Park. Now in its second year, this annual salute to Korean War veterans on Armistice Day (July 27) features solemn taps, moving reflections, and song and instrumental renderings to mark the War’s end and the valor of US, South Korean, and UN forces during the conflict. This year’s proceedings begin at 12 noon at the memorial, and Korea Society members and the general public are welcome. A lunch for invited veterans follows the ceremony.
Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow and Director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy Scott Snyder joins Senior Director Stephen Noerper to discuss next steps on denuclearization and dialogue with North Korea post-US Presidential election. Snyder, author of South Korea at the Crossroads, weighs the likelihood of a North Korean test or other attention-grabber pre or post-inauguration, the dispositions of Washington, Seoul and Pyongyang, and the possibility of renewed talks.
Next Steps with North Korea with Scott Snyder
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2020 | 12 PM
The Korea Society 350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor New York, NY 10017
Scott A. Snyder is senior fellow for Korea studies and director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). His program examines South Korea’s efforts to contribute on the international stage; its potential influence and contributions as a middle power in East Asia; and the peninsular, regional, and global implications of North Korean instability. Mr. Snyder is the author of South Korea at the Crossroads: Autonomy and Alliance in an Era of Rival Powers (January 2018) and coauthor of The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States (May 2015) with Brad Glosserman.
With growing cyber attacks possibly linked to North Korea and an eye to the vulnerability of financial and government systems, the Korea Society hosts a private round table discussion on North Korea’s Cyber Threat. The discussants for this by-invitation session are the Council on Foreign Relations’ Adam Segal and Symantec’s Vikram Thakur. Adam Segal is the Ira A. Lipman Chair in Emerging Technologies and National Security and Director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Vikram Thakur is a Senior Manager within Symantec’s Security Response Team. The session is moderated by Society President Thomas Byrne and Senior Director Stephen Noerper.
North Korea’s Cyber Threat
with
Adam Segal
ra A. Lipman chair & Director, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)
Adam Segal is the Ira A. Lipman chair in emerging technologies and national security and director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An expert on security issues, technology development, and Chinese domestic and foreign policy, Segal was the project director for the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force report Defending an Open, Global, Secure, and Resilient Internet. His book The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age (PublicAffairs, 2016) describes the increasingly contentious geopolitics of cyberspace. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Economist, Foreign Policy, The Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs, among others. He currently writes for the blog, “Net Politics.”
Vikram Thakur is a Senior Manager within Symantec’s Security Response team. He manages a team of analysts investigating, researching and compiling actionable intelligence from the multitude of attacks happening every single day. In addition, Thakur liaises such research with various global law enforcement agencies and industry partners, with the intention of bringing cyber criminals to justice and mitigating online risk for end users. He has held multiple roles within the past 8 years at Symantec, all of which encompassed researching, analyzing and responding to online threats to better protect end users. He holds a graduate degree in Computer Science, which he earned from Florida State University.
2017 marks the 60th anniversary of The Korea Society’s founding by Korean War commander, General James Van Fleet. The Korea Society’s original board was comprised of leaders from public service, arts, commerce and media. At the conclusion of the initial board meeting at the Waldorf Astoria, General Van Fleet welcomed broadcasting’s ranking member, Edward R. Murrow, as well as New York City’s Cardinal Spellman and other leaders to celebrate the creation of a society aimed at educating Americans on Kor ea.
Sixty years later, the Society provides dozens of policy, corporate, arts and culture programs annually for it members, public servants, analysts, business leaders, educators, students, veterans and a public interested in learning more about Korea. The Society opens its new doors at 350 Madison at 45th Street in midtown Manhattan in July 2017. Its lofty new environs suggest Korea’s rise on the international stage and feature an enlarged public event space, fine arts gallery, dedicated board room for roundtable sessions, and an outdoor terrace.
In September 2017, the Korea Society resumes its anniversary year program offerings and hosts its annual gala. Check out koreasociety.org for a full listing of “Celebrating 60” programs.grapple.
The Korea Society is moving over the coming months from 950 Third Avenue to 350 Madison Avenue at 45th Street. The new headquarters occupy the 24th and 25th floors—the top of the building—and feature soaring views toward the adjacent and historic Grand Central Terminal and toward Times Square and the Hudson River. The new facilities feature an enlarged public meeting hall, executive roundtable area, and gallery with seventeen foot ceilings. The new interiors speak to a minimalist aesthetic befitting Korean traditional and contemporary design and the use of natural materials—oak, cherry, stone—iron and granite. The insert atop the public meeting space references both Korean traditional roofs and the bridges of New York City. Join the Korea Society staff and members for outdoor terrace and indoor gallery performance and a host of policy, corporate, arts and culture programs in the new facilities late summer and fall 2017.
The exciting new home of the Korea Society sits a mere block from its 1957 offices in the historic Graybar Building. Now on the other side of the breathtaking and restored Grand Central Terminal at 45th Street, The Korea Society’s new headquarters sit atop 350 Madison in a building shared with the World Economic Forum and other distinguished organizations and offices. With the top two dedicated floors featuring seventeen-foot high ceilings—thirty-four at its central staircase—the eye soars upward, connoting Korea’s dramatic rise over two generations. Atop the stairwell on the 25th floor, one peers over Grand Central, back toward the original Korea Society Inc. offices of General James Van Fleet and the UN to the east, with lights of Times Square and the waters of the Hudson to the west off the rooftop terrace. The heart of the new Korea Society lies in the juncture on the 24th Floor of the gallery, boardroom, and public meeting spaces, the symbolic convergence of policy and arts upon which Van Fleet and several midcentury leaders founded the organization. These renderings convey the excitement and drama of the Society’s new home. Please join us for events at 350 Madison in 2019.
Korea Society President Thomas Byrne convenes a discussion on Korea-China Relations, with former Newsweek Beijing Correspondent Isaac Stone Fish and Stimson Center Senior Associate Yun Sun, formerly with the International Crisis Group’s office in Beijing. This session follows on the Society’s March Korea-China session with Harvard’s John Park and focuses on the twists and turns of South Korea’s economic and political relations with China, and examines the complexity of China’s support for UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea.
Korea-China Relations: Part II
with
Yun Sun
Senior Associate with the East Asia Program at the Stimson Center
Isaac Stone Fish
Senior fellow at the Asia Society in New York City, on sabbatical from Foreign Policy Magazine
About the SpeakersAbout the AuthorAbout the Publisher
Yun Sun is a Senior Associate with the East Asia Program at the Stimson Center. Her expertise is in Chinese foreign policy, U.S.-China relations and China’s relations with neighboring countries and authoritarian regimes
From 2011 to early 2014, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, jointly appointed by the Foreign Policy Program and the Global Development Program, where she focused on Chinese national security decision-making processes and China-Africa relations. From 2008 to 2011, Yun was the China Analyst for the International Crisis Group based in Beijing, specializing on China’s foreign policy towards conflict countries and the developing world. Prior to ICG, she worked on U.S.-Asia relations in Washington, DC for five years. Yun earned her master’s degree in international policy and practice from George Washington University, as well as an MA in Asia Pacific studies and a BA in international relations from Foreign Affairs College in Beijing. https://www.stimson.org/users/3326#profile-expert
Isaac Stone Fish is a senior fellow at the Asia Society in New York City, on sabbatical from Foreign Policy Magazine. While at Foreign Policy, he was the publication’s Asia Editor: he managed coverage of the region, and wrote about the politics, economics, and international affairs of China, Japan, and North Korea. Formerly a Beijing correspondent for Newsweek, Stone Fish spent seven years living in China prior to joining Foreign Policy. While there, he traveled widely in the region and in the country, visiting every Chinese province except lonely Jiangxi.
His views on international affairs have been widely quoted, including in MSNBC, NPR, CBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate, The Guardian, PRI, the BBC, the Sydney Morning Herald, Talking Points Memo, and Al-Jazeera, among others; and in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, and Vietnamese media. An experienced public speaker, Stone Fish has given talks at Columbia, Cornell, Duke, the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, the University of Washington in Seattle, University of Groningen in Holland, Fudan University (in Mandarin), among other universities; and at conferences, think tanks, and events around the world.
Besides publishing in Foreign Policy, where he has worked for the last four years, Stone Fish’s articles have also appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Slate, The Daily Beast, Time, and the Los Angeles Times. While in Beijing, he served on the board of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of China, and, when the sky wasn’t the color of glue, was an avid runner.
A fluent Mandarin speaker, Stone Fish is a graduate of Columbia University, where he studied Chinese literature. He is also a Global Shaper at the World Economic Forum, and a non-resident senior fellow at the University of Nottingham’s China Policy Institute. In his spare time, he is writing a novel on North Korea.
Thomas Byrne (moderator) joined The Korea Society as its President in August of 2015. He comes to the Society from Moody’s Investor Services, where he was Senior Vice President, Regional Manager, Spokesperson, and Director of Analysis for the Sovereign Risk Group in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions. Before moving to Moody’s in 1996, he was the Senior Economist of the Asia Department at the Institute of International Finance in Washington DC. Tom has an MA degree in International Relations with an emphasis on economics from The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Before his graduate work, he served in South Korea for three years as a US Peace Corps volunteer. President Byrne teaches as an adjunct professor, at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in New York City and at Georgetown University’s Graduate School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C.
Join Korea Society senior director and Columbia University adjunct professor Stephen Noerper in conversation with Tong Yang, Korea Foundation and Korea Stanford Alumni Chair of Korean Studies Gi-Wook Shin. Professor Shin appears remotely from Stanford University. This rapid reaction program examines the winner and losers in the election, priorities and next steps for the new Korean President, and implications for United States policy given tensions around the Korean Peninsula.
Special Taping: Rapid Reaction on the Korean Presidential Elections
with
Gi-Wook Shin Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
If you have any questions, please call (212) 759-7525, ext. 358.
About the Speaker
Gi-Wook Shin is the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center; the Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Chair of Korean Studies; the founding director of the Korea Program; a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and a professor of sociology, all at Stanford University. As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, and international relations.
Shin is the author/editor of twenty books and numerous articles. His recent books include Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War (2016); Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015); Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); Asia’s Middle Powers? (2013); Troubled Transition: North Korea’s Politics, Economy, and External Relations (2013); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010); Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (2007); Rethinking Historical Injustice and Reconciliation in Northeast Asia (2006); and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (2006). Due to the wide popularity of his publications, many of them have been translated and distributed to Korean audiences. His articles have appeared in academic journals including American Journal of Sociology, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Political Science Quarterly, International Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, Pacific Affairs, and Asian Survey.
Shin is not only the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, but also continues to actively raise funds for Korean/Asian studies at Stanford. He gives frequent lectures and seminars on topics ranging from Korean nationalism and politics to Korea’s foreign relations and historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia. He serves on councils and advisory boards in the United States and South Korea and promotes policy dialogue between the two allies. He writes monthly columns to Dong-A Daily (Korea) and Nikkei Asian Review (Japan).
Before coming to Stanford, Shin taught at the University of Iowa and the University of California, Los Angeles. After receiving his BA from Yonsei University in Korea, he was awarded his MA and PhD from the University of Washington.
