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Category: U.S.-Korea Alliance and Relationship

The Hungnam Rescue

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Join us for an inspiring and heartwarming story timed for the holiday season about the largest wartime humanitarian evacuation in history. During The Korean War, naval and merchant ships from America and its allies rescued almost 100,000 North Korean refugees. Among these ships was a humble freighter, the SS Meredith Victory. Although it was built to accommodate only a few passengers and crew, a staggering 14,000 refugees were crammed on board, filling five cargo holds and the entire main deck. The ship carried them all to safety despite lacking food, mine detection equipment, doctors, interpreters, sanitation facilities, and heat or lights in the cargo holds. The 75th Anniversary of this incredible event in 2025 will be marked by a major long-term exhibition at the American Merchant Marine Museum (AMMM), U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, alongside exhibitions in Korea. Speakers include Burley Smith, who was just 21 when he took part in the rescue as Junior Third Mate fresh out of Kings Point. Today, aged 95, he is the last surviving crew member. Joining Burley is Dr. Joshua Smith, Director of the American Merchant Marine Museum, in conversation with Korea Society policy director Jonathan Corrado.

 

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The Korea Society thanks the Korea Foundation, our corporate sponsors, and individual members for their generous support, which has made this program possible. 

 

The Hungnam Rescue

Thursday, December 5, 2024 | 6 PM (EST)


 The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

 

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About the Speakers:

 

Dr. Joshua M. Smith grew up in the United States on Cape Cod and coastal Maine. He holds degrees from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, Maine Maritime Academy, East Carolina University, and the University of Maine. He is author of Borderland Smuggling: Patriots, Loyalists, and Illicit Trade in the Northeast, 1783-1820, which explores smuggling on the Maine-New Brunswick border and won the John Lyman Award in American Maritime History in 2007. In 2009 he published Blockhouse and Battery: A History of Fort Edgecomb as part of that historic site’s bicentennial, and Battle for the Bay: The Naval War of 1812, which explores dimension of maritime warfare off New England’s coast. He has also edited a two volume collection of documents in American maritime history in conjunction with the National Maritime Historical Society entitled Voyages. He currently is an associate professor of humanities and Interim Coordinator of the American Merchant Marine Museum at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, in Kings Point, New York as well as serving as Department Head of the Humanities Department until September, 2015. Professor Smith lives in Port Washington, NY with his wife and daughter.
 
 

Burley Smith was born in Islip, New York, on January 9, 1929. As a child during the Great Depression, his family moved around but he spent most of his elementary and high school years in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He does not remember learning about Korea in school, but his strong interest in learning about what was happening in the world fueled his love for reading newspapers and learning about Korea. Shortly after graduating from the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York, he was assigned as a Junior Third Mate to the SS Meredith Victory in Norfolk, Virginia. During his six month assignment in Korea, his vessel was part of the convoy for General MacArthur’s infamous Inchon Landing and the revered Heungnam Evacuation.

Force Multiplier: The U.S.-Korea Alliance Amid Strategic Competition

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How can the U.S.-Korea Alliance rise to the challenge of an increasingly complex and fraught geopolitical environment? As competing strategic triangles solidify in Northeast Asia, what new challenges and opportunities will arise for the U.S.-Korea relationship and peace and security in the region? This conversation seeks to see through the cycle to identify underlying trends, plot trajectories, and propose policy recommendations. Join us for a conversation with three thought leaders on the security and diplomacy of Northeast Asia: Seth Bailey, Director for the Office of Korean and Mongolian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, Markus Garlauskas, Director of the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and Rachel Minyoung Lee, Senior Fellow for the Stimson Center’s Korea Program and 38 North. The discussion is moderated by Korea Society policy director Jonathan Corrado. This program is produced in cooperation with the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

 

Force Multiplier:
The U.S.-Korea Alliance Amid Strategic Competition

Tuesday, October 1, 2024 | 12 PM (EDT)


 The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

 

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About the Speakers:

 

Seth Bailey became Director for the Office of Korean and Mongolian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State in July 2023. His last assignment was in Honolulu as a visiting professor and Senior Diplomatic Fellow at the DoD-affiliated Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. From 2019-2022, Seth served as the Minister Counselor for Political Affairs at U.S. Embassy Beijing, where he led negotiations with the PRC. Seth has also served overseas assignments in South Korea, Sri Lanka, China, and Afghanistan. In Washington, Seth has served on the China Desk, in the Economic Bureau, the Bureau of Legislative Affairs, and in the Bureau of Counterterrorism. Seth was an attorney before joining the State Department.

 

 

Markus Garlauskas is the director of the new Indo-Pacific Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, which replaces the former Asia Security Initiative. He leads this new initiative’s efforts focused on security, prosperity, and freedom in the Indo-Pacific region. He led projects focused on deterrence and defense issues in East Asia as a nonresident senior fellow from August 2020 until assuming his duties as director in January 2023. Garlauskas served in the US government for nearly twenty years. He was appointed to the Senior National Intelligence Service as the National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for North Korea on the National Intelligence Council from July 2014 to June 2020. As NIO, he led the US intelligence community’s strategic analysis on North Korea issues and expanded analytic outreach to non-government experts. He also provided direct analytic support to top-level policy deliberations, including the presidential transition, as well as the Singapore and Hanoi summits with North Korea.

 

 

Rachel Minyoung Lee is a Senior Fellow for the Stimson Center’s Korea Program and 38 North. Lee was a North Korea collection expert and analyst with Open Source Enterprise (OSE; formerly known as Open Source Center) in the US government from 2000 to 2019. During that time, she wrote on the gamut of North Korean issues, from leadership, domestic politics and economy, and foreign policy, to social and cultural developments. As Analysis Team Lead, Lee led a team of collection officers and analysts to track and analyze North and South Korean issues with implications for Pyongyang’s regime stability and regional security. Most recently, from 2022 to early 2024, Lee headed engagement and network-building efforts at the Vienna-based Open Nuclear Network (ONN). Lee earned her B.A. in English literature and her M.A. in international law, both at Korea University in Seoul.

How National Stories Shape Democracy in Asia

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Join us for this book talk with Dr. Aram Hur, who discusses Narratives of Civic Duty: How National Stories Shape Democracy in Asia. At a time when nationalism appears to be stoking regional conflicts and democratic backsliding in Asia and beyond, Dr. Hur’s book argues for the positive capacity of nationalism. The book received the 2023 Robert A. Dahl Award from the American Political Science Association for “scholarship of the highest quality on the subject of democracy” by an untenured scholar. Dr. Hur is the Kim Koo Chair in Korean Studies and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. She was the recipient of The Korea Society’s Sherman Family Emerging Scholar Lecture Award in 2021. This program is a collaboration between The Korea Society’s Policy Department and the Education Department, and is moderated by Linda Tobash, Senior Advisor for Education. The discussant is Dr. Darcie Draudt, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

The book is available to purchase from Cornell University Press here.

 

How National Stories Shape Democracy in Asia

Friday, October 13, 2023 | 12 PM (EDT)


 The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017

 

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About the Speakers:

 

Dr. Aram Hur is Kim Koo Chair in Korean Studies and Assistant Professor of Political Science at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. Her research focuses on nationalism and democracy, with specialization in issues of identity change, integration, and democratic support in East Asia. Her work appears in leading disciplinary journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, and Comparative Political Studies and is widely cited in domestic and international media. She is the 2021 Korea Society Sherman Emerging Scholar Awardee and a 2018-19 CSIS US-Korea NextGen Scholar, selected as one of the “next generation of Korea specialists in the United States.” Previously, she taught at the University of Missouri, where she also served as Co-Director of MU’s Institute for Korean Studies. She holds a PhD in Politics from Princeton University, an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a BA with honors from Stanford University.
 
 

Dr. Darcie Draudt, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. A political scientist and policy analyst, she publishes regular commentary on South and North Korean domestic politics and foreign policy, Northeast Asian relations, and US-Korea policy. Draudt currently holds nonresident fellowships at the George Washington University Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS), the Korea Economic Institute, the National Bureau of Asian Research, and the European Centre for North Korea Studies (ECNK) at the University of Vienna. She has been named a member of the National Committee on North Korea and one of the Next Generation Korea Peninsula Specialists at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy. Draudt holds a PhD in Political Science from the Johns Hopkins University, an MA in Korean Studies from the Yonsei University Graduate School of International Studies, and a BA with Honors in Anthropology from Davidson College. Draudt lived in Seoul, South Korea, from 2008 through 2013.