News and discussions about technology in North Korea usually focus on the country’s nuclear programme. Often ignored, however, is the fact that, over the course of the past decade, consumer technology has also evolved. Maybe most importantly, cell phones have become increasingly widespread. They are now a common sight in the streets of Pyongyang and border cities. This is a momentous change which coincides with the emergence of a new generation, millennials, in North Korea.

To learn more about the role that technology, and especially cell phones, plays in North Korean society, we had the pleasure of interviewing Professor Suk-Young Kim. She told us about North Korean millennials and their characteristics, where North Korea stands in terms of technology, how technology and foreign media consumption interact to produce emergent trust networks among North Koreans, and why North Korea’s regime permits the spread of such a technology in the first place.

Suk-Young Kim is a Professor and Head of Theater and Performance Studies at UCLA. She received her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama with a Certificate in Gender Studies from Northwestern University and her Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literature from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her first book, Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea, was the winner of the 2013 James Palais Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies. More recently, she published K-pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance.

This episode was produced in cooperation and with the support of the East Asian Studies Center at The Ohio State University and its Title VI National Resource Center grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The interview was recorded on August 2nd, 2021 remotely from Columbus, OH.

One source of the success of K-Pop idols and groups, in Korea as well as abroad, can be found in their exceptionally active and dedicated fans. For many of them, being a fan goes beyond just listening their idols’ music; it also means buying and collecting merchandise, attending fan events and live recordings, or even translating appearances of their idols for global fans. These are costly endeavors, both in terms of money and time, yet they have become a hallmark of K-Pop’s fan culture.

To learn more about the relationship between K-Pop idols and their fans, we spoke to Dr. Stephanie Choi. She told us about how fans act as both promoters as well as regulators of their idols’ activities, and about the role that intimacy plays in this relationship. We also discussed the origins of fan groups in Korea and their evolution over the decades; the kinds of labor fans engage in to ensure the success of their idol; the rules dictating fans-idol interactions; and the services that idols provide in return to their fans.

Stephanie Choi is Adjunct Assistant Professor in East Asian Studies at New York University. She earned her Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She also holds an M.A. in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University and a degree in Korean Music from Seoul National University. Interviews with Stephanie Choi have been featured in the New Yorker, NBC News, the Korea Herald, and the Korea Times, among others.

This episode was produced in cooperation and with the support of the East Asian Studies Center at The Ohio State University and its Title VI National Resource Center grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

China is a key player on the Korean peninsula: it is not only North Korea’s sole ally, but has also become South Korea’s most important trading partner. Yet, the relationship it has with both Korean states is fraught with tension. Beijing’s hold over Pyongyang has been weakening under the rule of Kim Jong-Un, and Seoul’s alliance with Washington seems to be at odds with Chinese interests.

To understand the relationships China has with both Koreas, we sat down with Professor John Delury. We talked about China’s place in the world and its evolution under the leadership of Xi Jinping, its relationship with South Korea during the Moon administration and with Kim Jong-Un’s North Korea, and about the role the United States plays in these relations.

John Delury is Professor of Chinese Studies at Yonsei University’s Graduate School of International Studies, in Seoul. He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies in History at Yale University. He wrote, together with Orville Schell, Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century, which was published in 2013. Professor Delury’s works have appeared in various publications including Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Asian Survey.

This episode was produced in cooperation and with the support of the East Asian Studies Center at The Ohio State University and its Title VI National Resource Center grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

The Korean family, how it functions and what it looks like, has fundamentally changed over the course of the past decades. The traditional extended family model has given way to the nuclear family and its variants; and Korean society has become more diverse with inter-ethnic marriages more common now than ever before. These changes are not only complex but also carry profound implications for the Korean society.

To learn more about these societal dynamics, we met with Professor Paul Y. Chang. We talked about the demographic revolution that is currently taking place in Korea, how the government has tried to control the nation’s fertility rate since the middle of the 20th century and the challenges it now faces as a result of its past policies.

Professor Paul Y. Chang is Associate Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. He received his PhD in Sociology from Stanford University in 2008. Professor Chang has published several book chapters and articles in various academic journals, including Mobilization, Sociological Forum, Asian Perspectives and the Journal of Korean Studies. His current project focuses on the emergence of non-traditional family structures in South Korea, including single-parent households, single-person households, and multicultural families.

Shamanism has a long tradition on the Korean peninsula and describes a set of ethnic religions and practices. It remains in practice to this day, yet shamanism and the role it plays in Korea have changed significantly over time. In particular, the pre-colonial and colonial era saw a drastic shift in the position it enjoyed within the Korean society.

To learn more about Shamanism during this period, we had the pleasure of interviewing Professor Merose Hwang. She told us about the origins of the word "shaman" in Korea, the Neo-Confucian critique of Shamanism, the approach the Japanese colonial government adopted regarding shamans and how these performed colonial drag.

Professor Merose Hwang is Associate Professor of History at Hiram College. She wrote her dissertation on the Coloniality of Shamanism and has since then published various articles on the topic. Professor Hwang received her PhD from the department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto.

Introduced to Korea during the first millenia, Buddhism has a long history on the Peninsula and remains until today a major influence on the Korean society. This is nothing, however, compared to the clout it enjoyed as state religion during the Koryo period, from the 10th until the end of the 14th century. What caused the downfall of Buddhism in Korea? A popular argument is that Buddhism had become so powerful and corrupt that the state needed to suppress it.

Professor Juhn Ahn opposes this Confucian critique and we had the pleasure of interviewing him on the matter. After an overview of the current narrative, he told us about the societal shifts of the late Koryo dynasty, the problematic integration of newcomers into the Korean elite and how these factors led to the fall of Buddhism’s popularity.

Professor Juhn Ahn is Assistant Professor of Buddhist and Korean Studies at the University of Michigan. In addition to various articles on East Asian Buddhism, he also has a forthcoming book on the subject: Buddhas and Ancestors: Religion and Wealth in Fourteenth-Century Korea. Professor Ahn received his PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

The early days of 1968 brought North Korea into the world’s headlines. Not only did Pyongyang send clandestine forces in an attempt to assassinate the South Korean President in his residence, but North Korea also attacked and captured the American ship USS Pueblo in international waters. One of the crew members died, the other 82 were imprisoned and tortured for eleven months - and released only after their government admitted that the ship was spying on North Korea.

To hear about the historical and political context of this story as well as about the details of the USS Pueblo’s capture and the fate of its crew, we spoke to Professor Mitchell Lerner. In particular, he told us about the questionable suitability of the ship for its mission and the flawed risk analysis carried out by the American government, which casts this incident as an avoidable tragedy.

Professor Mitchell B. Lerner is Associate Professor at the Department of History at The Ohio State University as well as director of the school’s Institute for Korean Studies. Aside from numerous academic articles, he wrote the book The Pueblo Incident: A Spy Ship and the Failure of American Foreign Policy, which was published in 2002. Professor Lerner received his PhD in History from the University of Texas at Austin.

Star Wars and Star Trek are among the highest-grossing movie franchises worldwide - yet they usually do not feature among the most successful films released in South Korea. This illustrates a larger trend: Science Fiction, may it be in the form of movies or books, is not particularly popular in South Korea. In contrast to that, North Korea has a rich tradition of Science Fiction.

To hear more about how the perception and role of Science Fiction differ in the two Korean states, we had the pleasure of interviewing Professor Dong-Won Kim. He told us about the conceptions of technology, society and the future that underpin Science Fiction in South and North Korea, and about how the works of Science Fiction produced in the two countries differ from each other.

Dong-Won Kim is Lecturer in Science, Technology and Society (STSC) at the University of Pennsylvania. He obtained his Bachelor degree from Seoul National University, and his Master and PhD from Harvard University's Department of the History of Science. Previously, he was Dean of the College of Cultural Science at KAIST in South Korea, visiting professor at Harvard University and the National University of Singapore as well as John Hopkins University.

When did Korea modernize? For many the answer lies in the colonial era. While broadly accepted, this view is not without flaws or opponents. One of these critics, Professor Kyung Moon Hwang, offers an alternative perspective. He argues that Korea's modernization is not just a result of Japanese influence. It was a rational process already started in the 19th century during the Joseon dynasty by the government.

To learn more about the modernization of the Korean peninsula, we met with Professor Hwang. He told us about the role the Joseon administration played in this process, the pivotal nature of the Gabo reforms, as well as the different rationalities that directed the development of the Korean peninsula before and during the colonial era.

Kyung Moon Hwang is Professor of History and East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. He obtained his Bachelor in History from the Oberlin College before pursuing graduate studies at Harvard University, where he received his PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations. He is the author of Rationalizing Korea – The Rise of the Modern State, 1894-1945 (University of California Press) and of A History of Korea – An Episodic Narrative (Palgrave Macmillan).

As many observers argue, China’s foreign policy has become more assertive since Xi Jinping became President in 2013. The country once advocating its "peaceful rise" has stoked worries in many of its neighbors and is seen to increasingly pose a challenge towards America’s strong presence in the region. Caught in-between are the two Korean states, and especially South Korea, both in terms of its geographic location as well as its political and economic relations.

To learn more about China's recent foreign policy and the prospects for the future of the region, we had the honor of interviewing Professor Robert S. Ross. We discussed the driving forces behind China’s foreign policy; what role America wants to, should and does currently play in East Asia, and the position of the Korean Peninsula in this context.

Robert S. Ross is Professor of Political Science at Boston College, an Associate at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies of Harvard University, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has written extensively on Chinese security and defense policy, as well as on East Asian international relations, in several books and numerous academic articles. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University in 1984.

From 1910 to 1945, Japan ruled over the Korean Peninsula and tried to assimilate the Korean people into its empire. Part of this ambition was the suppression of the native language, for example by ending Korean language education and newspapers. Under these circumstances, the peninsula’s authors had to find new forms of creative expression – and despite these difficulties they produced insightful fictional works, even during the last, and most oppressive, decade of Japan’s colonial rule.

To learn more about the literature from this era, and about the conditions under which it was produced, we had the pleasure to interview Professor Janet Poole. She spoke to us about some of the authors of this period, the characteristics of their writings, and about what happened to them and the reception of their works after the colonial period.

Janet Poole is Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. Two years ago she wrote “When the Future Disappears: The Modernist Imagination in Late Colonial Korea” (Columbia University Press). Poole received her PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University, her MA in Korean Literature from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa and a BA in Japanese and Korean from the University of London.

The relations between South Korea, Japan and the United States are often described as triangular. The two Asian countries have been long-time alliance partners of America, and all share common interests, such as the denuclearization of North Korea. Yet this North East Asian triangle is facing an uncertain future, and while it has to adapt to the rise of China, America debates its role in the region, and South Korea and Japan keep clashing over historical disputes.

To learn more about these challenges for the relationship between the three countries, we had the pleasure of interviewing Jonathan D. Pollack. He spoke to us about the paradoxical realities of East Asia’s international relations, South Korea’s and Japan’s different perceptions and agendas, and about the implications of these issues for the United States and its presence in the region.

Jonathan D. Pollack is the Interim SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies in the Center for East Asia Policy Studies and a senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. Previously, he was a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and worked for the Rand Corporation. Jonathan Pollack has written numerous books and articles on East Asia’s international relations and received his MA as well as his PhD in Political Science from the University of Michigan.

In the past fifteen years, families in the United States have adopted more than 200.000 children from other countries, and over 20.000 from South Korea. The origins of America’s status as an adoption nation lie in the years after the Second World War and oftentimes in humanitarian intentions. Yet, adoptions are also linked to problematic phenomena, from racial preferences on the side of adopters to economic interests in the adoptees’ home countries.

To learn more about the adoptions that link America and Korea, we had the pleasure to interview Catherine Ceniza Choy. She spoke to us about the historical roots of this phenomenon and the intentions that drive it, the particular development of adoptions from Korea to the United States, and the many interpretations and problems that arise from them.

Catherine Ceniza Choy is Professor of Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at UC Berkeley. She is the author of the book “Global Families - A History of Asian International Adoption in America” (NYU Press) as well as various journal articles and another book on international adoption. Choy received her PhD in History from the University of California in Los Angeles, an MA from the same school and a BA from Pomona College.

In South Korea, child-rearing still remains first and foremost the responsibility of mothers. Pressures from society – and frequently their own families – create expectations as to what children ought to do, eat, and learn. In opposition to these social constraints, mothers employ different strategies and rationales to give their children the best life possible.

To learn more about how women steer the childhood and aspirations of their offspring, a well as their own self-development, we had the pleasure of interviewing Professor Bonnie Tilland. We discussed the relations women maintain across generations, with their parents and parents in law, but also with their own children, how women contest the narrative of "national strength" and other social constructs through their mothering, and how they conceive the future of their children as they grow up.

Bonnie Tilland is Professor at the EASTASIA International College (EIC) of Yonsei University's Wonju campus. She obtained her PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Washington. She also completed a graduate certificate in Feminist Studies and a Master's in International Studies (Korea Studies) from the same institution, as well as a BA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Lawrence University.

Around two million ethnic Koreans live in the United States. This makes them the second largest Korean diaspora, after the one in China; Los Angeles and New York even have the largest Korean populations outside of cities on the Korean Peninsula. Koreans in America have been referred to as a “model minority” due to their educational and economic achievements; yet they also face racial discrimination and isolation.

To learn more about how Koreans have navigated American issues of race and inequality, we met with Professor Nadia Kim. She told us about the history of Korean migration to the United States and the role of America’s military presence in Asia; the socialization process of immigrants that already starts on the Korean Peninsula; and the hardships Korean immigrants face once they arrive in the US.

Nadia Y. Kim is Associate Professor of Sociology at Loyola Marymount University. She obtained her Bachelor at the University of California - Santa Barbara and received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California - San Diego. Her most recent book and the subject of this interview is Imperial Citizens: Koreans and Race from Seoul to LA (Stanford University Press).

South Korea’s international relations have been extensively studied, from its security policies to its approach to foreign aid. But while the country’s diplomats are at the center of its relations with the world, little research has been done on their actual work and South Korea’s diplomatic culture.

To hear more about South Korea's diplomatic style, we had the honor of meeting with Professor Jeffrey Robertson. He spoke to us about the importance of understanding countries’ diplomatic styles, South Korea's diplomatic culture as well as its unique characteristics and the generational change it is currently undergoing.

Jeffrey Robertson is a Visiting Fellow at the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy (APCD) at the Australian National University (ANU) and an Assistant Professor at Yonsei University. In the past, Professor Robertson worked for the Australian Government in the field of foreign policy and North Asia; his most recent book "Diplomatic Style and Foreign Policy" (Routledge) explores the insight gained through the recognition and comprehension of diplomatic style.

South Korea’s democracy is experiencing some eventful years. Last April, the ruling Saenuri party saw an unexpected loss in the parliamentary elections; and next year. in late 2017, President Park Geun-hye’s term in office will end as new presidential elections are conducted. Until then, the opposition parties will likely try to consolidate and attempt to create a unitary platform around a single candidate in order to capture the Blue House.

To learn more about South Korea's democracy, we met with Steven Denney after April’s parliamentary elections. We took a look back at the first three years of President Park Geun-hye's presidency and spoke about the attitudes and peculiarities that shape the country’s democratic process. Additionally, we asked for his opinion about the voices that see South Korea’s democracy threatened by the authoritarian tendencies of the current administration.

Steven Denney is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Toronto and a doctoral fellow at the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs. In addition to various academic articles, Steven Denney is also a frequent contributor to The Diplomat and the Managing Editor of SinoNK.com.

Over the course of the past few decades, the People’s Republic Republic of China opened up and became a land of economic opportunity not only for South Korean companies but also for individual entrepreneurs. Today, over 70.000 South Koreans reside in Wangjing, a district of Beijing known as the city’s Koreatown. The enclave’s quick development has also attracted numerous Chinese citizens of Korean descent from Northern China who made it their home.

To learn about how Korean Chinese and South Koreans live with each other in Wangjing, we had the honor of meeting with Professor Sharon Yoon. She told us about the history of Korean migration to China, the Korean enclave in Beijing as well as the difficulties Korean Chinese and South Koreans face when interacting with each other.

Sharon Yoon is Assistant Professor at Ewha Womans University. She obtained her Bachelor in Asian Studies and Sociology from Dartmouth College and her PhD in Sociology from Princeton University. Before joining Ewha, Professor Yoon was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and at Osaka University.

Just like South Korea is one of America’s most important partners in Asia, so is the United States a key ally for South Korea. The importance of this relationship is visible: the embassy of the United States sits right in the city center of Seoul and more than 25.000 American soldiers are currently stationed throughout the country. In opinion surveys, South Koreans state that they view the United States in a more positive light than any of their regional neighbors.

An important role in the day-to-day management of this relationship is played by the diplomatic staff of the United States in South Korea. We had the unique opportunity to meet Mark Lippert, the current Ambassador of the United States to South Korea, as well as his staff and his basset hound Grigsby in his residence in Seoul. In our brief interview we spoke about his position and responsibilities, America’s perspective on regional issues and President Obama’s “Pivot to Asia.”

Ambassador Lippert obtained his undergraduate and master's degrees from Stanford University, respectively in political science and international policy studies. Before he became Ambassador to South Korea in 2014, he was Chief of Staff for President Obama’s National Security Council and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs.

Relations between Japan and South Korea are perplexing: the two countries are major trade partners and popular tourist destinations for each other’s people, they are democracies in a region with numerous authoritarian regimes and alliance partners of the United States. Yet, despite all this, their relations are troubled by territorial and historical issues that limit mutual understanding and cooperation.

To learn more about these contentious relations, we met with Scott Snyder to talk about his latest book, The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States (Columbia University Press), which he wrote together with Brad Glosserman. We discussed the two countries' identities and perceptions of each other, the role that Japanese and Korean political leaders play in this context, the stakes that the United States has in this situation – and a possible way forward.

Scott Snyder is Senior Fellow for Korea studies and Director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a think tank based in Washington D.C. He has received his BA from Rice University and his MA from the regional studies East Asia program at Harvard University. He was also a Thomas G. Watson fellow at Yonsei University in Seoul. We previously interviewed him in Episode 22 about South Korea’s role as a Middle Power.

South Korea is going to great lengths to attract international university students, for example through scholarships and programs taught in English. Over the past decade, the number of foreign students has increased eightfold and now over 85.000 foreign students attend Korean universities. But while welcome on paper, they find themselves in a largely homogeneous society in which multiculturalism is a contentious issue – and this causes friction.

To learn more about the situation of these students and multiculturalism in the Korean education system, we had the honor of interviewing Professor Rennie Moon. We discussed the different types of multiculturalism present in universities, the factors motivating student to come to Korea, the barriers limiting interactions between Korean and foreign students, as well as the role of foreign faculty members within the Korean education system.

Rennie J. Moon is an Assistant Professor at the Underwood International College of Yonsei University with a focus on higher education in the context of globalization. Her research and writings have been published not only in academic journals but also in newspapers, such as the Comparative Education Review, the Donga-Ilbo and Korea Daily Joongang Ilbo. Professor Moon obtained her Bachelor’s degree at Wellesley College and her PhD in International Comparative Education at Stanford University.

The events on the Korean peninsula don’t take place in a vacuum; they are influenced by the great powers that have a stake in the region. The People’s Republic of China, in particular, makes its weight felt: it is the largest trade partner of both Korean states and considered by many to be the linchpin in the international disputes surrounding North Korea. But while China has long been reluctant to put pressure on Pyongyang, recent developments in the North Korean nuclear program have seemingly led it to reconsider its position.

To better understand China's foreign policy since Xi Jinping became President more than three years ago and its position with regards to North Korea, we had the honor of meeting with Bonnie S. Glaser. She spoke to us about the growing assertiveness of China in international affairs, the role its President plays in these changes, China's perception of North Korea, and the future prospects for the region.

Bonnie S. Glaser is a senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Previously, she served as a consultant for various U.S. government offices, including the Departments of Defense and State. Her writings have been published various in academic journals and newspapers, including the China Quarterly, Asian Survey, and International Security as well as in The New York Times. Bonnie Glaser received her B.A. in political science from Boston University and her M.A. with concentrations in international economics and Chinese studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

South Korea is one of the world’s largest market for video games and famous for the success of its competitive players. A core element of the country’s gaming culture are the so-called PC Bangs: internet cafés with a focus on competitive online gaming. They are ubiquitous in South Korea, cheap and equipped with up-to-date gaming computers, and usually open around the clock.

In order to learn more about the workings, culture and history of PC Bangs -- and about why they are popular in Korea but virtually unknown elsewhere -- we spoke to Jun-Sok Huhh. As he argues, their emergence is the result of the country’s historical circumstances during the 1990s, they have shaped what games Koreans play and how they play them, but are now struggling in the face of recent developments in the gaming industry.

Jun-Sok Huhh is game industry analyst at NCSoft, one of South Korea’s largest game development companies. He obtained his Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD degrees in Economics from Seoul National University and has written multiple academic papers on the culture, business and history of PC Bangs and gaming in South Korea.

At first glance, advertisement in South Korea is no different from what can be seen in many other countries. At the same time, the country’s political, economic and social history has shaped how goods and services are promoted, and what is seen as the right way to do so.

To learn more about South Korean advertising, its unique features and its industry, we met with Professor Olga Fedorenko. We talked about the history of South Korean advertising, its relation to democracy, why it has been described in South Korea as the "flower of capitalism," and how advertisement was and is an arena where social norms are renegotiated.

Olga Fedorenko is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Seoul National University. She obtained her Bachelor in Korean studies from the Institute of Asian & African Studies at Moscow State University and holds an MBA from Yonsei University. She completed her PhD in East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. She has published various articles and chapters on advertising in South Korea and is currently working on a book manuscript: Flower of Capitalism - South Korea Advertising at Crossroads.

While Europe experienced the Middle Ages and waged war in the Crusades, the Korean peninsula was ruled by the Koryo dynasty, which lasted from 918 to 1392 AD. This era is remembered for the unification of the previous three Korean kingdoms, its pottery, Buddhist wood carvings and movable type technology; yet there is comparatively little popular knowledge about the period’s political system and society.

To learn more about the Koryo dynasty, we had the privilege of meeting with Professor Remco Breuker who discussed with us some of its characteristics and especially its pluralistic nature.

Professor Breuker is Professor of Korean Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He obtained his PhD from the same university and pursued graduate studies there as well as at Seoul National University. He has published on Korean history in various academic journals, translated numerous modern and historic texts from Korean, and is the author of Establishing a Pluralist Society in Medieval Korea - History, Ideology, and Identity in the Koryŏ Dynasty, which was published in 2010

One of Korea's most successful exports is Taekwon-Do: a martial art practiced by tens of millions around the globe and recognized as an olympic sport since the 2000 games in Sydney. Yet, far from being united, the world of Taekwon-Do has suffered various schisms. The story of its founder is as disputed as it is marred in the politics of the Korean Peninsula, and as a discipline Taekwon-Do is represented by two competing organizations on the international stage.

To learn more about the history of Taekwon-Do and the life story of its founding father, General Choi Hong Hi, we had the honor of interviewing Dr. George Vitale. He kindly offered to guide us through the complex politics of Taekwon-Do, the endeavors of General Choi, and of course the distinctive aspects of this modern martial art.

Dr. Vitale holds an 8th dan -- the second highest rank -- in Taekwon-Do and was inducted into the Official Taekwon-Do Hall of Fame in 2009 for his lifetime achievements, and provided assistance to Grandmaster Jung Woo-Jin in bringing a team of North Korean athletes to tour the United States. He is also the first (and only) American to have earned an academic PhD (in Taekwon-Do) from North Korea in 2011. He previously served for over two decades in the New York State Police, which included a senior role in the security detail for two New York State governors.

For the past two decades, North Korea has repeatedly caused international concern with its development and testing of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. But while the political aspects of these programs receive plenty of media attention, it is difficult to gain a realistic picture of the technologies at work, their effectiveness and the actual stockpiles in North Korea.

To learn more about North Korea's weapons programs, and especially the country’s missiles, we had the pleasure of interviewing Daniel A. Pinkston, lecturer in International Relations with Troy University in Seoul. Professor Pinkston is also the Northeast Asia Deputy Project Director for the International Crisis Group in Seoul and, before that, was director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Middlebury College.

Professor Pinkston received his M.A. in Korean studies from Yonsei University and his Ph.D. in international affairs from the University of California, San Diego. He wrote The North Korean Ballistic Missile Program (2008) for the Strategic Studies Institute, and has published various academic articles and book chapters on security issues on the Korean peninsula.

For North Korean defectors, escaping from North Korea is only the beginning of a long and perilous odyssey towards permanent resettlement in South Korea or elsewhere. The overwhelming majority of defectors start their journey by crossing the Chinese border, stepping foot into a land where they risk arrest and repatriation should they ever be caught. Their status as illegal immigrants makes them vulnerable to all kinds of exploitation, such as forced labor, human trafficking and prostitution.

One organization helping defectors on the ground and smuggling them out of China is Liberty in North Korea (LiNK), a non-governmental organization headquartered in the United States. We had the pleasure of interviewing its Director of Research & Strategy, Sokeel Park, who talked to us about the dangers defectors face in China and LiNK’s mission to provide them with much needed relief and support.

Sokeel Park worked for the Korean government and the United Nations before joining LiNK’s Seoul office, where he is charge of research and global media outreach. He belongs to the community of Global Shapers of the World Economic Forum and has lectured about North Korea and LiNK’s operations around the world. Sokeel Park holds a Bachelor in Psychology from the University of Warwick and an M.A. in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

North Korea and China have a special relationship. The two countries are each other’s only military alliance partners, and China is commonly seen as shielding North Korea from the discontent of the international community. But while this relationship started as an ideological alliance and was forged in blood during the Korean War, it has seemingly become of a more pragmatic nature in recent years.

In order to understand the history of Sino-North Korean relations better, we sat down with Professor John Delury. We talked about the premodern interactions between China and the Korean peninsula and the insights they hold for the situation today, about the distrust that has long characterized relations between China and North Korea, and about where the countries stand today with regards to each other.

John Delury is Associate Professor of Chinese Studies at the Graduate School of International Studies of Yonsei University in Seoul. He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies in History at Yale University. In 2013, he published with Orville Schell the critically acclaimed Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century (Random House). Professor Delury’s writings have appeared in various publications including Foreign Affairs, 38 North and Asian Perspective.He is also active on Twitter.

It’s been four years since Kim Jong-un came to power in North Korea after the death of his father in 2011. To assess how the comparatively young and inexperienced leader has been doing so far, we had the pleasure of meeting with Andrei Lankov, the guest of our first episode.

With him we spoke about Kim Jong-un's approach to the North Korean economy, the country’s relationship with China, the impact and value of the international community’s sanctions, and whether North Korea has become more stable ever since it is in the hands of Kim Jong-un.

Andrei Lankov is Professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Leningrad State University and also attended Pyongyang's Kim Il-sung University. He has published books in English and Russian and contributes to various news outlets, including The Korea Times and Al Jazeera.

Korea has a culture rich in poetry, yet the language barrier makes it difficult for foreign audiences to access it. For this episode we spoke to Brother Anthony of Taizé about the history and the aesthetics of Korean poetry, about the difficulties translating it with all its nuances and context - and about Ko Un, who has been labeled as the People’s Poet of Korea and is one of the country’s most famous and prolific writers.

Brother Anthony is Emeritus Professor in the English Department of Sogang University and Chair-Professor at Dankook University. In 1994, he was naturalized as a South Korean citizen under the name An Sonjae and since then has been awarded the Ok-gwan Order of Merit for Culture by the Korean government as well as an honorary Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) by HM Queen Elizabeth.

He has received numerous awards for his translations of Korean poetry, including the Korea Times Translation Award, the Republic of Korea Literary Award (Translation), the Daesan Award for Translation and the Korea PEN Translation Prize.

Defecting from North Korea is not only a tremendously difficult and perilous enterprise – it remains a lifetime challenge, even after one has successfully defected and resettled to South Korea. Many refugees struggle to adapt to their new life and must bear a sense of longing, guilt, and sometimes even an urge to go back. Most had to leave friends and family members behind, and while North Korea is certainly ruled by a brutal, ruthless regime, it remains home to those who were born there.

Our guest for this episode is Hyeonseo Lee, who defected from North Korea at the age of 17 and eventually reached Seoul after ten years in China, where she lived in fear of arrest and deportation. She wrote about her experience in the international bestseller The Girl with Seven Names and delivered an acclaimed TED Talk in 2013 that was watched over five million times on Youtube and TED.com. She is now an outspoken activist for North Korean refugees and has been featured in major media outlets worldwide.

Hyeonseo gracefully accepted our interview request and talked to us about life in North Korea, her “accidental” decision to defect and how it changed her life, the struggle to adapt to South Korean society and economy, the sense of guilt and various discriminations North Koreans defector all too often face, and the irony of her meeting with her future husband, Brian – an “American bastard”.

One particular genre in the Korean musical tradition is pansori (판소리): a form of storytelling typically performed by a singer and a drummer. Pansori can be traced back to shamanistic practices and was only formalized and given its name in the 18th century, under the Choseon dynasty.

A key element of contemporary renditions of pansori is the expression of han (한/恨) - a sentiment of pain or lament that many consider unique to the Korean national psyche.

In this episode, we had the privilege of interviewing Professor Heather Willoughby, who has extensively researched the spirit of pansori and what she called the “sound of han”. We talked about the origins of this vocal tradition, how one becomes a pansori singer, and of course the relationship between pansori and han.

Heather Willoughby is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies of EWHA Womans University. She received her Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Ethnomusicology from Columbia University.

Contemporary Korean music is not limited to K-Pop. South Korea boasts a vibrant indie music scene, and neighborhoods such as Seoul’s Hongdae have live bands performing across various venues every night.

Our guest for this episode, Stephen Epstein, is probably one of the most acute observers and academic researchers of the Korean independent music scene. He kindly agreed to talk to us about the genesis of Korean indie rock since the 1980s, its political and societal underpinnings, the relationship between indie and mainstream, and of course some of the most influential bands in Korean indie music.

Stephen Epstein is Associate Professor and Director of the Asian Studies Programme at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. He earned his BA from Harvard and his MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Epstein has published widely on contemporary Korean society, popular media and literature, and has translated numerous works of Korean and Indonesian fiction. Recent work on Korean popular music includes the articles Girls’ Generation? Gender, (Dis)Empowerment and K-Pop (with James Turnbull), and Into the New World: Girls’ Generation from the Local to the Global. He is also the co-producer of the documentary Us and Them: Korean Indie Rock in a K-Pop World (2015), a follow-up to his earlier documentary Our Nation: A Korean Punk Rock Community (2002; both co-produced with Timothy Tangherlini). Both movies were selected by several film festivals worldwide.

South Korea maintains a complex relationship with the United States. While many South Koreans remain grateful for their liberation from Japanese rule in 1945 and consider proximity with the United States a proven catalyst for security and prosperity, others believe the U.S. often behaves as a condescending hegemon, and that its military presence is preventing Korean reunification from ever taking place.

As a result, South Korea is a country where several anti-American demonstrations took place but where at the same time, U.S. ambassador Mark Lippert received outpours of support when he was assaulted by a knife-wielding man in March 2015.

To make sense of this dichotomy, we had the pleasure of hosting for this episode David Straub, the author of the recently published book: Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea (Brookings Institution Press), which focuses on anti-American protests between 1999 and 2002..

David Straub is the associate director of the Korea Program at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He retired in 2006 from his role as a U.S. senior diplomat after a 30-year career focused on Northeast Asia. He worked over 12 years on Korean affairs, first arriving in Seoul in 1979.

Among various distinguished postings, Mr. Straub served as head of the political section at the U.S. embassy in Seoul from 1999 to 2002 during popular protests against the United States, and he played a key working-level role in the Six-Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear program as the State Department's Korea country desk director from 2002 to 2004. He also served eight years at the U.S. embassy in Japan and received his final assignment as Japan country desk director in Washington from 2004 to 2006.

David Straub taught U.S.-Korean relations at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies in 2006 and at Seoul National University’s Graduate School of International Studies in 2007. He has published a number of papers on U.S.-Korean relations and is fluent in both Korean and Japanese - as well as German.

Historical disputes between South Korea and Japan revolve around one key issue: how much, and in what fashion should Japan apologize for its colonial past. Many Koreans argue that Japan has never authentically and honestly apologized for the crimes it committed during the Imperial era. An increasing number of Japanese believe, to the contrary, that South Korea is using the “apology business” as a political bargaining chip, and that no amount of apologies, however heartfelt, will ever be enough.

To make sense of this complex situation and see past the underlying politics, we had the pleasure of interviewing Professor Alexis Dudden about her book Troubled Apologies Among Korea, Japan and the United States (Columbia University Press, 2008). Professor Dudden is our first returning guest: we had a great conversation back in Episode 28 about Imperial Japan’s attempts to provide legal and moral legitimacy to its colonization of the Korean Peninsula, based on her first book, Japan’s Colonization of Korea: Discourse and Power, published in 2005 (University of Hawai’i Press).

Professor Dudden is Professor of History at the University of Connecticut; she received her BA from Columbia University and her PhD in history from the University of Chicago. She has published in various academic journals and news outlets, including the Journal of Asian Studies, Dissent and The New York Times. Professor Dudden is currently working on her third book, Islands, Empire, Nation: A History of Modern Japan, under contract with Oxford University Press.

According to the PISA education ranking, Korean pupils perform significantly better than most OECD students in all categories tested (namely: math, reading, and science).Yet this success comes at a steep price: the Korean school system is often described as nothing short of brutal. Its students are among the least happy and most stressed worldwide.

At the core of this system is the Suneung (수능) examination which determines university admissions. Because only a fraction of Suneung takers will ever be admitted to the best colleges, competition is fierce. Desperate to give their children an edge, parents invest in evening schools, private tutoring and bootcamps, fueling an entire industry now worth several billion dollars.

For this episode, we had the pleasure of interviewing Steven Dhoedt, who co-directed Reach for the SKY, a documentary that premiered at the 2015 Busan International Film Festival and was selected for the DOK Leipzig festival in Germany. Reach for the SKY tells the story of several students, their families and teachers, as they prepare for the dreaded Suneung.

Steven Dhoedt is a Belgian filmmaker, producer and cinematographer. He studied film at the Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema and Sound (RITCS) in Brussels and worked for several years in Hong Kong as a freelance producer and director. He founded VISUALANTICS in 2003, a Brussels-based independent production house; his films have screened in numerous festivals worldwide and have been broadcasted in over thirty countries. He is also the director of State of Play (2013), a documentary that follows several South Korean professional video gamers.

While Italy’s Sicilian Mafia, Hong Kong’s Triads, and Japan’s Yakuza may well be some of its best known examples, organized criminality is present in every country - and South Korea is no exception. Yet, while this is a popular topic for Korean movies, in practice the general public knows little about this criminal underworld – and even fewer can speak about it from personal experience. We were lucky to interview Jonson Porteux who spent a year doing research in the company of both gang members and law enforcement officials.

Jonson Porteux is Assistant Professor at Hosei University in Japan. In his dissertation he explored how the Korean state and criminal gangs interact, and how the former tolerates and even utilized the violence offered by the latter. We spoke about his personal experiences, the historical origins of the Korean government’s cooperation with criminal gangs, and the modus vivandi of these criminals.

Professor Porteux completed his B.A. in Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and earned his PhD in Political Science from the University of Michigan.

On November 30th, 2015, high-ranking officials from most countries on Earth will convene for two weeks at the so-called “COP21” summit in Paris. The objective of this international conference is to reach a strong agreement, which many parties hope will be legally binding, to curb greenhouse gas emissions and keep global warming below 2° Celsius.

To learn more about South Korea’s efforts and interests with regards to the COP21 negotiations, we had the pleasure of interviewing Chung Suh-Yong, who is a professor at Korea University and one of the leading experts on the political and economic aspects of climate change in South Korea.

Professor Chung was a Member of the Presidential Committee for Green Growth, the Honorary Committee to Host the Green Climate Fund in the Republic of Korea and the Council of the Global Green Growth Institute. He sat on the Policy Advisory Board of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is currently the Director of the Seoul Center for Climate Sustainable Development Law and Policy. He also chairs the Committee on International Cooperation at the Seoul Climate Change Center.

Professor Chung holds degrees in law and international relations from Seoul National University and the London School of Economics. He received his PhD from the Stanford School of Law.

The Korean bar exam is one of the toughest in the world. While open to all, only a thousand candidates are admitted every year, less than 5% of test-takers. Hopeful applicants often study for years in the hope of passing the bar, yet with failure comes foregone income, young people joining the workforce at an ever increasing age and, of course, severe ailments such as depression and suicidal tendencies.

The Korean government recently enacted a sweeping reform: the bar examination in its traditional format is gradually phased out and replaced with a law education system modeled after the United States’: students are now required to attend a graduate law school before sitting the bar exam, but have much greater odds of succeeding.

But what does it mean for the education of the next generations of Korean lawyers, the Korean judicial system and its underlying philosophy? To learn more, we had the pleasure of interviewing Jasper Kim.

Jasper Kim is Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies of Ewha Womans University. He is the Director of the Center for Conflict Management and was a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

Professor Kim earned his bachelor from the University of California, San Diego, his MSc from the London School of Economics (LSE), and his J.D. from the Rutgers University School of Law. He is a U.S. licensed lawyer (in Washington D.C) and, prior to joining Ewha, worked for Barclays Capital and Lehman Brothers.

Legally, South Korea does not recognize the existence of its northern neighbor. Yet North Korea remains a pervasive feature of South Korean politics both domestically and internationally. The discourse Seoul holds on Pyongyang, however, is far from homogeneous and inconsistencies abound: in a single speech it is not uncommon for North Koreans to be described both as brothers and as enemies. To make sense of this conundrum, we met with Dr. Sarah (A.) Son who studied South Korea’s narrative on North Korea to talk about her research and the practical implications of this narrative: South Korea’s handling of North Korean defectors.

Dr. Son is Research Fellow at the Academy of Korean Studies and a contributor to NK News since 2012. Prior to her current position, she was a Research Fellow at the Asiatic Research Institute at Korea University in Seoul, with a focus on identity and inter-Korean relations.

Dr. Son earned a Bachelor in International Relations (Hons) from Bond University in Australia, where she was awarded the John Hardy medal for Most Outstanding Humanities and Social Sciences Graduate, and an MA in International Law and International Economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (SOAS). She completed her PhD at SOAS as well, where she researched national identity and policy as related to the Korean unification and the issue of North Korean defector resettlement in South Korea.

South Korea’s culture scene is booming and Seoul is steadily establishing itself as a regional and increasingly global hotspot for design, fashion and music.

Our guest for this episode, Tom Bueschemann, is a household name in the Korean creative scene. Originally from Germany and now based in Korea, he is the co-founder and CEO of Platoon, a creative network that brings together designers, artists, movie directors, photographers and other creative minds.

In Korea, Platoon is arguably best known for its Kunsthalle, an art space in Seoul’s Gangnam neighborhood that has become a social and cultural landmark. It provides a platform for hip crowds, young artists and changemakers from all horizons, while hosting communication events for some of the world’s major brands.

Tom kindly agreed to talk to us about Seoul’s artistic and cultural ecosystem, and how he and his business partners decided to set up shop in Korea almost a decade ago.

The newest “textbook controversy” currently shaking up South Korean politics is a stark reminder that defining history, and writing about history, is neither neutral nor a-political. The Korean government is currently drawing heavy criticism for its attempt to unify all teaching materials into a single, state-commissioned textbook. The move triggered nationwide protests, including over 15,000 educators across the country and a petition signed by over 300 professors from the nation’s top universities.

To provide context and shed light on these “history wars” between Japan and Korea, and within Korea itself, we decided to take a step back from today’s controversies and had the privilege of interviewing Professor Henry H. Em. He recently published The Great Enterprise: Sovereignty and Historiography in Modern Korea (Duke University Press, 2013) in which (In his most recent book) he explains how Meiji Japan methodically surveyed Korea’s history in order to find aspects of its past that would justify Imperial control over Korea. Professor Em also shows how postcolonial South Korea then promoted a national counter-narrative of its own, with the goal of attaining equal standing among sovereign nations in the new world order.

Henry H. Em is Associate Professor of Korean Studies at the Underwood International College of Yonsei University. He was previously Fulbright Senior Scholar to Korea, Visiting Professor at Korea University and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris (EHESS), as well as Associate Professor at NYU.

Professor Em earned his B.A. and M.A. in East Asian Studies as well as his Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago.

News correspondents are the eyes and ears of the outside world on the Korean peninsula. We wanted to know more about their work and were lucky to interview Elise Hu, who recently established National Public Radio (NPR)’s bureau in Seoul and now serves as NPR’s International Correspondent for Japan and the Korean Peninsula. We talked about NPR’s rationale for choosing Seoul as its new permanent regional bureau, journalism as practiced in the United States and South Korea, and some of her most memorable stories here in Seoul.

Elise Hu joined NPR in 2011 as the coordinator of StateImpact Network, a state government reporting project by NPR member stations. Before joining NPR, she was one of the founding reporters of the Texas Tribune, a nonprofit digital news startup, and worked as state political reporter for local networks in Texas and South Carolina. She also reported from Asia for the Taipei Times.

Elise Hu is the recipient of several distinctions, including a Gannett Foundation Award for Innovation in Watchdog Journalism. She has taught at Georgetown University and Northwestern University and also advises the John S. and James L. Knight foundation, a private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the promotion of quality journalism and media innovation. Elise Hu graduated with honors from the University of Missouri-Columbia’s School of Journalism.

In 2000, then President Kim Dae-jung became the first Korean to receive a Nobel Prize, for his life’s work dedicated to democracy and, to quote the Nobel Committee: “peace and reconciliation with North Korea in particular." The award was granted shortly after the first North-South Korean summit in June of the same year, and in recognition of the merits of the Sunshine Policy in general. Yet fifteen years later, Kim Dae-jung’s legacy remains controversial: not only is the success of the policy debatable, but some have also criticized the costs he was willing to pay in the name of reconciliation.

An outspoken critic of Kim Dae-jung’s approach to North Korea is journalist and author Donald Kirk, who published in 2010 a b iography of the late president with a focus on his political career and the Sunshine Policy entitled: Korea Betrayed: Kim Dae Jung and Sunshine. In this episode we spoke with him about Kim’s priorities when dealing with North Korea and his lifelong quest for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Donald Kirk is a veteran journalist and correspondent in the Asia-Pacific. He has reported from many of the conflicts and hotspots in the region since 1965 and covered the Vietnam, Gulf and Iraq wars. He has also extensively reported on Korean affairs, including the assassination of President Park Chung-hee in 1979, the Gwangju Uprising in 1980, the nuclear crisis of 1994 and the 2000 Inter-Korean Summit. He is the author of several publications, among them an unauthorized biography of Chung Ju-yung, the founder of Hyundai.

Donald Kirk is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Chicago. He has received numerous awards, including the Overseas Press Club of America Award, the George Polk Award for foreign reporting and the Chicago Tribune’s Edward Scott Beck award. He was also a Ford fellow at Columbia University, a Fulbright Scholar in India during the sixties and in the Philippines during the nineties, and the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities grant at MIT among many others.

The Korean War is commonly remembered as fought by the North and South Korean armies, as well as American and Chinese troops. Little memory remains of the bravery and sacrifice of British soldiers in the Korean theater, despite a human cost which far exceeded that of all others wars fought by Britain since the Second World War. Upon the attack on South Korea in the summer of 1950, British troops stationed in Hong Kong were hastily sent to support their American allies and defend what little territory remained under Southern control. These men, who formed the 27th Infantry Brigade and 41 Commando, knew little if anything about Korea prior to their deployment, yet they undertook some of the war’s most critical missions.

Our guest for this episode, author and journalist Andrew Salmon, wrote two books documenting the deployment of British forces during the war. Scorched Earth, Black Snow covers the 27th Brigade and 41 Commando in the second half of 1950, from hasty preparations in Hong Kong to desperate battles in the Korean winter. To The Last Round, set in 1951, follows Britain’s 29th Infantry Brigade and sheds light on one of its battalions, the Glosters, who fought an entire Chinese army to the very last cartridge near the Imjin River, despite being surrounded and utterly outnumbered.

In this interview, we talked about the significance of the Korean War for Britain, the importance of preserving the memory of these men and their sacrifice, and what the author tried to convey with his book.

Andrew Salmon covers the Korean peninsula for Forbes, The Washington Times, the Daily Telegraph and the South China Morning Post. He is also a frequent contributor to major South Korean outlets. In addition to his books on the Korean war, he also wrote Modern Korea: All that Matters, an introductory book on modern Korean history, and is now interested in researching the history of Seoul. Mr. Salmon holds a BA in History and Literature from the University of Kent at Canterbury and an MA in Asian Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.

High-speed internet, smartphones and mobile services are ubiquitous in South Korea. Not only does this make the country a technological frontrunner, it also shapes the everyday lives of its people.

What are the unique characteristics of mobile technology and culture in South Korea ? Especially, how do children and the elderly interact with it? And what developments might we see in the future? In this episode, we talk to Damien Spry who conducts research on South Korea’s mobile phone culture.

Damien Spry is Assistant Professor for Media and Communication at Hanyang University in Seoul. His research focusses on new media forms, mobile and social technology, and how the youth as well as the elderly interact with it. Professor Spry has published numerous texts in journals, books and newspapers. He received his BA from the University of Adelaide, his MA from the University of Technology in Sydney and his PhD from the University of Sydney.

As of July 2015, South Korea’s central bank owned foreign exchange reserves worth over 370 billion US dollars -- an astounding amount. This so-called “war chest” is a direct result of South Korea’s painful experience during the Asian Crisis in 1997-1998.

Confronted with massive capital flight as foreign investors demanded repayment for the loans they had granted Korean firms -- which were mostly denominated in U.S. dollars -- the Korean central bank quite literally ran out of foreign currency. In effect, the Korean private sector could not get hold of enough U.S. dollars and other major foreign currencies to pay back their cross-border debts. This situation led to a severe financial crisis, which left South Korea no choice but to petition the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help.

The Asian Crisis took a severe toll on Korea: corporate bankruptcy rates skyrocketed and over two million people lost their jobs. To prevent future economic downturns from leading into another foreign exchange crisis, the Korean central bank has been building up massive foreign currency reserves ever since.

While this is arguably a rational policy, is it necessarily an optimal strategy in today’s world? Our guest for this episode, Youngwon Cho, argues that South Korea’s foreign exchange “hoarding” also implies significant opportunity costs and that a significant share of this “war chest” would be best allocated elsewhere. South Korea’s attempt to invest its massive reserves has yielded so far mixed results.

Youngwon Cho is Associate Professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada and Visiting Scholar at Korea University’s Asiatic Research Institute in Seoul. He is a specialist in financial globalization and emerging markets, as well as in the regional security complex in East Asia. Professor Cho has published in several academic journals, including the Journal of Contemporary Asia, Pacific Focus, and the Journal of East Asian Affairs. He was also a recipient of the SAGE Prize in International Scholarship for best article on international affairs for his paper entitled Method to the Madness of Chairman Kim: The Instrumental Reality of North Korea’s Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons, published in International Journal. Professor Cho received his B.A. (Hons) from Carleton University and earned his M.A. and PhD from Queen’s.

The Sunshine Policy – the idea that South Korea should approach North Korea through dialogue, cooperation and reconciliation – has been highly contentious ever since its inception in the late 1990s. Its initiator, former President Kim Dae Jung, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for reaching out to Pyongyang; at the same time, however, critics have branded the Sunshine Policy as [a naive attempt to appease a dangerous dictatorship] naive appeasement with a dangerous dictatorship. Even today the dispute about the right foreign policy approach towards North Korea splits the South Korean political discourse.

One of the leading experts on the Sunshine Policy is Chung-In Moon. For this episode we spoke to him about the history of this policy, whether or not it failed, the philosophical underpinnings of the Sunshine Policy’s supporters and opponents, and his opinions about how South Korea and the international community should approach North Korea.

Chung-In Moon is Professor of Political Science at Yonsei University and Editor-in-Chief of Global Asia. He is also Executive Director of the Kim Dae-jung Presidential Library and Museum, and previously served as Dean of Yonsei’s Graduate School of International Studies. Professor Moon is currently a member of the Presidential Committee on Unification Preparation of the Park Geun-Hye administration. Previously, under former President Roh Moo-hyun, Professor Moon also served as Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Northeast Asian Cooperation Initiative and was Ambassador for International Security Affairs on behalf of the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The late 19th century in Korea was a period of political and social turmoil. Japanese interference culminates in the assassination of Queen Min and King Kojong later seeking refuge in the Russian legation. At the same time, Korea is confronted with vast scale civil strife as Koreans hostile to the growing influence of foreign nations foment riots and angry mobs roam the streets of Seoul.

This is the Korea the Sills witnessed between early 1894 and the later months of 1896. John Sill, who had been sent to Seoul as Ambassador of the United States, and his wife, Sally Sill, wrote a steady stream of letters to their children and acquaintances who had remained in America. The Sills’ correspondence is a remarkable account of the lives of Westerners in Korea; the tensions between Western influence and traditional values; Japan’s gradual power grab on the Peninsula; and of the dying days of the Joseon dynasty.

Our guest for this episode is Robert D. Neff, who transcribed the Sills’ letters and undertook meticulous research to contextualize them for the general public and scholars alike. The result of his hard work is a fascinating book: Letters from Joseon: 19th Century Korea Through the Eyes of an American Ambassador’s Wife, a detailed account of life and politics during a critical period of late Joseon, as seen by the Sills.

Robert D. Neff is a freelance writer and historical researcher specializing in Korean history during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He has authored and co-authored several books, including The Lives of Westerners in Joseon Korea and Korea Through Western Eyes. His writings have appeared in various publications, including Christian Science Monitor, Asia Times, 10 Magazine, Korea Times and the Korea Herald. Robert Neff’s current research focuses on Western gold mining concessions in northern Korea (1883-1939).

In the early 2000s, North Korea became increasingly isolated internationally, acquiring nuclear weapons technology while diplomatic channels such as the Six Party Talks came to a halt. During the two presidential terms of George W. Bush, Washington’s policy towards Pyongyang focused on demonization and confrontation rather than engagement – famously placing North Korea on the so-called “Axis of Evil” – and was repeatedly criticized by experts and policymakers alike. Yet the question remains whether the United States deserve the blame – and whether this criticism might paint a one-sided image.

To learn more about the American views and policy towards North Korea during the Bush years, we had the honor of talking to Victor D. Cha who was in the White House at the time. He worked as Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council between 2004 and 2007 and also served as Deputy Head of Delegation for the United States at the Six Party Talks in Beijing. For this episode, we talked about his time in the Bush administration and his views on the current situation surrounding North Korea.

Professor Victor D. Cha is director of Asian Studies and holds the D.S. Song Chair in Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University. He has published articles in numerous academic journals, including International Security and Foreign Affairs, and is a frequent contributor to various media such as CNN, the New York Times and Time. His most recent book, The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future was selected by Foreign Affairs as a best book of 2012 on the Asia-Pacific. Professor Cha holds a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University, and Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University and in Philosophy, Politics, and Economy (PPE) from the University of Oxford

Modern international relations are a direct result of a series of Treaties ratified in Westphalia during the 17th century. The “Westphalian Peace” enshrined the rights of states to claim sovereignty over their domestic affairs and territories -- and thus promoted the fundamental principle that all states, no matter how weak or powerful, are equal in international law.

The advent of the West has made these Westphalian principles the global norm of international affairs; and Asia is no exception. What is often forgotten, however, is that Asia before the arrival of the Western powers was under a fundamentally different system -- in effect a hierarchical order in which China held the highest status. Thanks to its might and advanced Confucian culture China was at the center of a system where there could be no equality among nations; yet where emulation and cooperation were possible, trade thrived and, importantly, stability could be found.

This is the argument of Professor David C. Kang, who kindly agreed to be our guest for this episode. Together, we look back into the ancient regional order of premodern Asia and explore whether the history of Asian international relations can inform us as to the present state of affairs in the region -- and maybe even help us make sense of China’s rise.

David C. Kang is Professor of International Relations and Business at the University of Southern California, with appointments in both the School of International Relations and the Marshall School of Business. He is also director of the Korean Studies Institute and the East Asian Studies Center.

Professor Kang’s latest book is East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (Columbia University Press, 2010). He is also author of China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia (Columbia University Press, 2007); Crony Capitalism: Corruption and Development in South Korea and the Philippines (Cambridge University Press, 2002); and Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies (Columbia University Press, 2003), co-authored with Victor Cha. Professor Kang has published numerous articles in top academic journals, and his co-authored article Testing Balance of Power Theory in World History was awarded “Best article, 2007-2009” by the European Journal of International Relations. David Kang has also written opinion pieces in the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. He received an A.B. with honors from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from Berkeley.

On April 16th 2014, the MV Sewol, a ferry bound for the island of Jeju, capsized off the coast of Jindo County, the South-westernmost region of South Korea. Out of the 476 people on board, 304 died – most of them from Danwon High School in the city of Ansan.

The Sewol disaster is one of the biggest human catastrophes in South Korea’s recent history and has triggered a significant amount of perplexity and soul-searching among its citizens. How could a disaster of this magnitude occur in such a technologically advanced country? Why were the rescue efforts so uncoordinated and inefficient? Is South Korea’s “palli palli” (fast) culture to blame; putting profit ahead of people’s safety?

The families of the victims have been looking for answers ever since and continue to demand that an independent inquiry shed light on what really happened. Our guest for this episode, Jun Michael Park, has been following the Sewol families in their struggles, documenting their lives in the aftermath of the tragedy and their quest for truth and justice. We talk about his work, what the Sewol families are trying to achieve, and how we can explain the hatred far-right groups have demonstrated against them.

Jun Michael Park is a documentary photographer and visual storyteller from Seoul. He has worked for Der Spiegel, Welt am Sonntag, Cicero Magazine and Brand Eins in Germany, as well as Greenpeace East Asia, Save the Children, Asia Society Korea Center and many more. Jun is a winner of a Silver Award in the Press-Feature Story category at Prix de la Photographie Paris (Px3) 2015 and is selected for this year's Eddie Adams Workshop in New York.

The Democracy Index published by the British magazine The Economist ranks South Korea as a “full democracy”, ahead even of countries such as France or Spain. The CIA World Factbook also lists South Korea as a “fully functioning modern democracy”. Yet many experts and activists denounce what they consider to be a rise in authoritarian tendencies within the current Park Geun-hye administration, including: attacks on free speech, crackdowns on dissent and a general stalling of the process towards more liberties as well as better public management and stronger government transparency and accountability.

At the same time, South Korea is party to the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international membership organization of more than 60 governments that have pledged to improve their democracy and transparency. Our guest for this episode, Geoffrey Cain heads the Korea research team of the OGP and kindly agreed to talk to us about the state of Korean democracy, improvements that should be made and Korea’s commitments within the framework of the OGP.

In addition to his duties at the Open Government Partnership, Mr. Cain is an award-winning journalist focusing on Asian affairs and the two Koreas in particular. He is senior correspondent for GlobalPost and has written for various outlets including The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, Far Eastern Economic Review, TIME and Foreign Policy. His reporting was a finalist for a 2015 Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) award. A former Fulbright scholar, Mr. Cain holds an MA (Distinction) from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and a BA from The George Washington University, which he attended on a music scholarship.

Much of our knowledge about North Korea comes from a limited number of sources: documents made public by foreign governments, defector testimonies, correspondents in neighboring countries, and ultimately North Korea’s official news agency.

But what about intelligence agencies? How do they manage to gather intelligence – and how much do they actually know about North Korea? For this interview, we had the privilege to host Dr. Sue Mi Terry who provided us with a unique look into the U.S. intelligence community and its attempts to deal with North Korea.

Dr. Terry is a Senior Research Scholar at the Columbia University Weatherhead East Asia Institute and founder of Peninsula Strategies Inc., an advisory firm specializing in Korean issues. She has also served as the National Intelligence Fellow in the David Rockefeller Studies Program at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

Prior to her academic and consulting career, Dr. Terry served as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council, and also served as Director for Korea, Japan and Oceanic Affairs at the National Security Council during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. Earlier in her career, she served as Senior Analyst on Korean issues at the CIA Directorate of Intelligence, where she was a top-rated Korean linguist.

Dr. Terry earned her PhD in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She holds a Master’s in International Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from NYU.

North Korea is commonly referred to as the “Hermit Kingdom”, a term that already implies how difficult it is to get a realistic idea of the country, its people and politics. One result of this inaccessibility is the proliferation of myths about North Korea, and as Professor Sung Yoon Lee from Tufts University argues, they have repeatedly misinformed the outside world’s thinking and behavior towards the country.

We had the chance to interview Prof. Lee on the nature of said myths, their origins, and how to deal with North Korea.

Sung-Yoon Lee is the Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies and Assistant Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is Research Associate at the Harvard Korea Institute and a former Research Fellow with the National Asia Research Program. He has published articles and op-eds in several academic journals and media outlets, including Asia Policy, Foreign Affairs, Korea Policy Review, The New York Times, and many more. Professor Lee earned his MA in Law and Diplomacy and his PhD from Tufts.

According to the National Statistical Office, South Korea will become a “hyper-aged” society by 2025. The speed at which this demographic transition is occurring is already having major economic and social repercussions, which are bound to worsen in the coming decades. Issues such as the funding of pension liabilities, pushing back the mandatory retirement age, incentivizing companies to retain their older workers, and dealing with the ever increasing elderly population living below the poverty line are already on top of the political agenda.

Population ageing is a very difficult topic to apprehend because it encompasses both philosophical aspects (such as the idea of solidarity between generations) and complex technical issues (for instance the arcanes of pension finance). We were very lucky to interview for this episode an expert with almost two decades of both research and practical experience in the field: Dr. Phang Hanam.

Dr. Phang is the President of the Korea Labor Institute (KLI) and the Korea Pension Association. He is also Professor at Yonsei University, and was Minister for Employment and Labor between March 2013 and July 2014 under current President Park Geun-hye. In his former capacity as Senior Research Fellow at KLI, he authored several academic papers on demographic trends and pension systems in South Korea and the region, with a focus on old-age income security and productivity issues.

After completing his B.A. at Hanguk University of Foreign Studies and earning an M.A. in Sociology from Vanderbilt University, Dr. Phang completed his PhD in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

South Korea’s path to democracy was long and arduous; as historian Bruce Cumings concluded, there “may be no country more deserving of democracy in our time than the Republic of Korea”. While many initially assumed Korea would transition towards a liberal democratic system following the end of Japanese colonialism, decades of authoritarianism and dictatorship ensued. Despite being founded as such in 1947, it is only four decades later that South Korea became a democracy in practice with the election of President Roh in December 1987.

While the 1980s was the decade that saw democracy eventually triumph, the role played by pro-democracy movements in the 1970s has all too often been forgotten. Despite General Park Chung-hee iron fist rule, several social movements and constituencies – students, liberal church groups, unions, lawyers and journalists – structured and organized themselves during those years, paving the way for the major successes of the following decade.

This is the core argument of Protest Dialectics: State Repression and South Korea’s Democracy Movement (Stanford University Press, 2015), written by Professor Paul Y. Chang, who kindly agreed to be our guest for this episode.

Professor Chang is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. He received his PhD in Sociology from Stanford University in 2008. He taught at Yonsei and Singapore Management University before joining the Harvard faculty in 2013. He currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Korea Institute at Harvard University and is affiliated with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and the Harvard Asia Center’s Council on Asian Studies. Professor Chang has published several book chapters and articles in various academic journals, including Mobilization, Sociological Forum, Asian Perspectives and the Journal of Korean Studies.

Co-Founder, Urban Detail - on the traditional Korean house, the Hanok, in Korea's past and present

Whether in Myeondong, Yeoido, or in the famous Gangnam - skyscrapers and design buildings abound in Seoul. The South Korean capital, a city in ashes at the end of the Korean War, has become within a few decades a vibrant city and a fine example of architectural innovation and modernity. What fewer people know, however, is that recently there has also been a renewed interest in Korean traditional architecture. The hanok, the Korean ancestral house, has become increasingly popular among South Koreans and the government is now actively promoting it, domestically and abroad.

In order to learn more about the hanok, its characteristics and history, as well as its current position in South Korean society, we met with Daniel Tändler, an architect specialized in the renovation of hanoks in Seoul.

Daniel Tändler initially studied Economics at the University of Göttingen before changing field and studying Architecture and Urban Planning at RWTH Aachen (University of Aachen) in Germany. After graduation, he worked for a Korean architecture firm, a guga, during several years and eventually founded Urban Detail - Seoul, a planning office for traditional and modern Korean architecture and design with two Korean partners. He has also contributed to the foundation of the Chamoori cooperative, a construction company focused on traditional Korean architecture.

Japan’s conquests in Asia during the late 19th and early 20th century had very material objectives: to secure resources and extend Japan’s power and influence. There is no denying Japanese imperialism inflicted great hardship upon its victims, and Korea in particular. Japan took great care however in justifying its actions from a legal and normative perspective. The goal was to convince the western “Great Powers” of the time that Japan was a civilized nation, one of “them”, and should be treated accordingly – it was no longer a land to conquer but a fellow colonial power. From a social darwinist perspective, Japan’s decision to engage in colonization was a deliberate strategy to avoid the fate of countless other nations that had fallen under Western imperialism and in a single word: survive.

Professor Alexis Dudden from the University of Connecticut is our guest for this episode. She wrote extensively about the discourses and legal rationales that Japanese scholars and government officials relied on to justify the takeover and subsequent colonization of its neighboring countries, with a focus of course on Korea. She published two seminal books: Japan’s Colonization of Korea: Discourse and Power (University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), which provided the groundwork for this interview, and more recently Troubled Apologies Among Korea, Japan and the United States (Columbia University Press, 2008). She is currently working on her third book, Islands, Empire, Nation: A History of Modern Japan, under contract with Oxford University Press.

Professor Dudden received her BA from Columbia University and her PhD in history from the University of Chicago. She has published in various academic journals and news outlets, including the Journal of Asian Studies, Dissent and the New York Times.

Once only a staple of American politics and of a few Western countries, think tanks have gained popularity worldwide for their role as policy advisors. South Korea is no exception and the past years have seen the establishment of a number of institutions in Seoul, such as the Asan Institute and the East Asia Institute. Yet while think tanks provide extensive research and useful advice to policy makers, critics have started to call into question their independence, their integrity and their usefulness.

One of these critics is Professor Emanuel Pastreich who argued in a recent article that think tanks suffer from a number of shortcoming. At the same time, he asserted that Korea – and specifically Seoul – has the potential to become a hub for think tanks in East Asia. We sat down with him to discuss the ideological biases of think tanks, the inaccessibility to wider public of their debate, and the need to include the youth in the policy process.

Professor Pastreich is Associate Professor at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. He received a B.A. in Chinese from Yale University, a M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Tokyo, and a Ph. D. in East Asian Studies from Harvard University. He taught previously at University of Illinois and George Washington University. In 2007 he established the Seoul-based think tank The Asia Institute, has advised regional government in Korea and published a number of studies on technology, the environment and international relations in multiple languages.

While some may believe Starcraft II to be “just a video game”, it is one of the most famous titles played competitively by professional gamers. “eSports”, as the discipline is called, is a fast growing, dynamic and profitable industry with full-time players who regularly compete for six-figure prize money.

Seoul has become a global hub for eSports, due to the presence of top-ranked players, a solid industry ecosystem, and large audiences eager to watch competitions live. eSports in Korea have become a cultural phenomenon in their own right: successful gamers have their own fan base and train like professional athletes, big companies are eager to sponsor teams and competitions, there are television channels devoted to live gaming and the government is actively promoting eSports abroad.

Our guest for this episode, Nick Plott, is at the very center of eSports in Korea. A former professional StarCraft gamer in the United States, Nick moved to Seoul to work for the Korean broadcasting company GOMTV and became the first Western StarCraft commentator in the country. He and his co-caster Dan Stemkoski, known in the industry under the nicknames Tasteless and Artosis, are now considered the most famous eSports commenting duo in the world and have become major celebrities in their own right.

Nick kindly agreed to talk to us about his work as a professional “caster”, the unique features of Korean video game culture and, of course, the rise of Seoul as a major hub for eSports worldwide.

Despite South Korea’s economic development, and its status as a full member of the OECD group of nations, critics continue to denounce the conservative nature of the Korean society. As we mentioned here before, South Korea ranks very low in indexes measuring inequality between men and women (e.g. the Global Gender Gap Report, published by the World Economic Forum), alongside countries one would not necessarily associate Korea with (such as Qatar or Nigeria).

Such rankings reflect tangible societal expectations, norms and behaviors that South Korean women are expected to embrace, but which they sometimes also resist or transgress. Our guest for this interview, Professor Aljosa Puzar, has dedicated much of his research to the coming of age of young women in Korea and the process he describes as their “dollification”. Professor Puzar argues that in terms of esthetics, behavior, and expected social roles young women are encouraged to become “dolls” – and to develop a femininity that does not threaten already established structures of patriarchy.

Professor Puzar is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at the Underwood International College of Yonsei University. He completed a PhD in Literary Theory and History from the University of Rijeka, Croatia and recently obtained his second PhD in Critical and Cultural Theory from the University of Cardiff, under the title: “Coming of Age in South Korea: Ethnographies and Histories of Transgression”. Professor Puzar has authored and co-authored many books and publications and his writings have been featured in several academic journals, including the Journal of Current Cultural Research, Asian Women and Studies in Symbolic Interaction.

South Korea’s recent affluence has sparked a renewed interest in the nation’s traditional arts and crafts, architecture, and music. Once keen to modernize at any cost, Koreans now pay serious attention to preserving their cultural heritage and promoting it both domestically and abroad.

One aspect of traditional Korea experiencing a strong revival is the art of hanbok, the traditional Korean attire. The domestic industry has grown rapidly in the past decade, featuring up-and-coming professionals keen to marry Korean traditional style with modern fashion, as well as attracting Western designers and global brands always on the lookout for new fashion trends.

Our guest for this episode is In Oh, a leading hanbok designer in Seoul. We talk about her work and inspiration, her customers and her dream of making the hanbok a modern, young and mainstream fashion item.

Before opening her own workshop, Inohjudan, in the vicinity of one of Seoul’s traditional palaces, In Oh assisted famous hanbok masters and worked in the United States for several years. She attended Santa Monica College and studied fashion design at the Los Angeles Trade Technical College.

South Korea remains a strongly homogeneous country, yet in recent years there has been an increasing inflow of migrants. Workers from developing countries in Asia hope to find employment in Korea’s labor-intensive industries while highly skilled workers from OECD nations are attracted to Korea’s booming financial centers and corporate headquarters. Foreigners now amount to 3.5% of the total population.

One particular element of immigration in Korea however is the strong influx of migrant women. Faced with declining fertility rates and the rural exodus of young women looking for better prospects in urban areas, the Korean countryside as well as cities have been bringing foreign brides, raising concerns about their inclusion into Korean society, the discriminations they may face, and how Korea intends to manage its newfound “multiculturalism”.

Our guest for this episode, Sohoon Lee, is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, focusing on the experience of migrant women in South Korea. We talk about Korea’s immigration policies and their underlying ideology, the particular situation of migrant women, and what recent migration trends mean for Korean nation building.

Sohoon Lee has written policy papers for UN Women, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, and worked at the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) in areas of ASEAN human rights mechanisms, indigenous people in Southeast Asia, and documentation of human rights violation. She completed her BA (Hons.) with high distinction in Asia-Pacific Studies at the University of Toronto and earned a Master of Human Rights and Democratization (Asia-Pacific) at the University of Sydney.

While South Korea has become a major economic power, it is surrounded by far larger players in Asia. It may never be able to play a leading role in shaping both regional and international affairs, but is currently looking for ways to assert itself on the global stage. These aspirations are typical of what scholars define as a Middle Power - an international actor that is neither small nor large.

Our guest for this episode is Scott Snyder, who has written extensively on Korea, its middle power diplomacy and its efforts to find a voice in international politics. We talked about Korea’s role in the G20, its summit diplomacy of the past years and its efforts to cooperate with other middle powers.

Scott Snyder is senior fellow for Korea studies and director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), based in Washington D.C. He has edited and co-authored several publications, the most recent of which being The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States (Columbia University Press, 2015).

Prior to joining CFR, he was a senior associate in the international relations program of The Asia Foundation, where he founded and directed the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy. He was also a senior associate at Pacific Forum CSIS and a Pantech visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Scott Snyder received a BA from Rice University and earned his MA from the regional studies East Asia program at Harvard University. He was also a Thomas G. Watson fellow at Yonsei University in Seoul.

He currently writes for the CFR blog Asia Unbound.

In South Korea, military service is a mandatory rite of passage for each and every able-bodied, male citizen. Conscription is strictly enforced and public opinion has very little tolerance for draft dodgers.

Our guest for this episode, Young Chun, learned this the hard way. Born the son of Korean immigrants in Champaign, Illinois, and raised in Chicago and Seattle, he traveled to Korea at the end of 2002. He soon discovered that he was listed as a Korean citizen, despite his parents acquiring U.S. citizenship. The Korean Army wasted no time to draft him, and with his little command of Korean, Young had to start his service in January 2004. He served both in Korea and Afghanistan.

Young wrote about his tough experience in his first book, The Accidental Citizen-Soldier, which sheds a unique light, from an outsider’s perspective, on life in the Korean military, its hardships, and sometimes its absurdity.

Young Chun holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Visual Art from the University of Washington and an MA in International Studies from Seoul National University (SNU). He currently resides in South Korea and teaches English at SNU.

In 2012, the Obama administration announced it would "Pivot" to Asia. Yet, as President Obama's second term is coming to an end, many important issues in East Asia and especially concerning North Korea remain unchanged -- or may have even worsened since the Bush era. During the last six years, North Korea sank the South Korean navy vessel Cheonan, shelled Yeonpyeong Island, conducted two nuclear tests and is probably closer than ever to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power.

What has been the attitude of the White House towards North Korea since Obama came to power? What were the President’s expectations towards Pyongyang at the start of his presidency? And can we expect further developments or has the Obama administration reached its “lame duck” phase? To answer these questions, we had a short talk with David Sanger, Chief Washington Correspondent for the New York Times.

David Sanger has covered a wide variety of issues for the Times, with a focus on foreign policy, nuclear proliferation and Asian affairs. He has reported from New York and Washington and was the Time’s bureau chief in Tokyo for several years. Mr. Sanger was twice a member of Times reporting teams that won the Pulitzer Prize, and belonged to a team nominated for the Prize in 2011 for their coverage of the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan. David Sanger wrote two books on the Obama Presidency: The Inheritance (2009) and Confront and Conceal (2012). He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Strategy Group. David Sanger graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1982.

Since withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003, North Korea successfully conducted three nuclear tests and officially declared in 2009 that it had developed a nuclear weapon. Beyond Pyongyang’s rhetorics and the rumors around its atomic program, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s true nuclear capabilities remain largely unknown.

Does North Korea have the technology and the weapon systems to deliver a nuclear warhead on targets in South Korea or, even further, in America? What would be the actual destructive power of these payloads? What is the current American and South Korean doctrine regarding nuclear deterrence? And perhaps more importantly, is effective deterrence towards North Korea and its nuclear weapons even feasible?

To answer these questions, there is probably no one more qualified than our guest for this episode: Dr. Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation and a Professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He specializes in “asymmetric threats” such as weapons of mass destruction, and Northeast Asian military issues. These include the future military force requirements in South Korea, the Korean military balance, counters to North Korean chemical and biological weapon threats in Korea and Japan, dealing with a North Korean collapse, changes in the Northeast Asia security environment, and deterrence of nuclear threats.

Dr. Bennett has worked with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, U.S. Forces in Korea and Japan, the U.S. Pacific Command and Central Command, the ROK and Japanese militaries, and the ROK National Assembly. He received his Bachelor of Science in Economics from the California Institute of Technology and his PhD in policy analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School.

Since its rapid growth in the nineties, K-Pop has become a multi-billion dollar industry and an integral part of South Korea’s image both domestically and abroad. In stark contrast and despite support from the South Korean government, Korean traditional music, or Gugak, remains a somewhat unknown tradition in and outside Korea.

How do we define Korean traditional music? What position does it hold in contemporary South Korean society? What role has the government played in its evolution since the end of the Korean War? Will Gugak follow a path similar to K-Pop – a product designed for export – or is it still a living and thriving tradition? To answer these questions, we had the pleasure of interviewing Prof. Hilary Vanessa Finchum-Sung.

Prof. Finchum-Sung earned her Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Indiana University in 2002 and is now Associate Professor in the Department of Korean Music at Seoul National University. She has served as the Chair of the Interdisciplinary Major in Music Education at Seoul National University, and formerly worked as a lecturer and researcher at the University of San Francisco and UC Berkeley. She has also published in several academic journals, including Ethnomusicology, The World of Music, and the Seoul Journal of Korean Studies.

Seventy years ago, at the end of the Second World War, Germany and the Korean Peninsula were divided. Yet, while the former has now been reunited for twenty five years, Korean reunification remains a distant prospect. Under what conditions could, then, unification happen? What steps are being taken right now to prepare for this possibility? And what lessons can we draw from the German experience of reunification? In order to answer these questions, we had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Bernhard Seliger.

Dr. Seliger is since 2002 the resident representative in Seoul of the Hanns Seidel Foundation, which is associated with the German conservative party CSU. He is Associate Editor of the North Korean Review and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Korean Journal of Unification Affairs. He was also a Guest Professor at Seoul National University’s Graduate School of Public Administration from 2004 to 2007. Dr. Seliger received his PhD from the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel. His doctoral dissertation was awarded the First Prize of the Wolfgang-Ritter Foundation.

The sinking of the Sewol one year ago highlighted, among several other issues, the failure of the Korean media to report on the unfolding situation in an accurate and professional manner. Korea’s second-largest newspaper, the JoongAng Ilbo, published a full-page apology to its readers soon after the disaster, seeking forgiveness for its faulty reporting.

Our guest for this episode, John Francis Power, argues that this is only one of many examples of the various issues plaguing the Korean news landscape. In a feature article he wrote for Groove Korea last year, John depicts an industry under pressure from both government and corporate interests, and where investigative journalism and rigorous reporting are often discouraged.

John Power is an Irish journalist based in Seoul since 2010. He has written over 200 articles on a broad range of Korea-related topics, including food safety, domestic violence, politics, libel law, rail safety and various other issues. John has worked for The Korea Herald and Yonhap News, and has published his work in several international media outlets, including Christian Science Monitor, The Diplomat, the BBC, Australia’s ABC and Ireland’s RTE.

This year will mark the 70th (and not the 60th, as we erroneously refer to in episode's introduction) anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Yet, whereas European countries have learnt to live and thrive with each other, this seems far from being the case for Korea and its former colonial master: Japan. Historical disputes are commonplace and the relation between the two states seems to deteriorate year after year.

Why do these historical disputes exist between Japan and Korea? Under which conditions did they develop and why have they not been resolved since the end of the Second World War? In order to answer these questions, we had the privilege of speaking with Professor Kan Kimura.

Professor Kimura obtained his Bachelor's, Master's and Phd in Law from Kyoto University, writing his doctoral dissertation on South Korean nationalism. A Professor at Kobe University's Graduate School of Cooperation Studies since 1997, he was also a visiting scholar at various institutions, including Korea University, the Australian National University and Harvard. Professor Kimura was also a member of the First and Second Japan-Korea Collaborative History Research Committees initially set up by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Korean President Kim Dae-jung to promote "mutual understanding concerning accurate facts and recognition of history."

South Korea is a vibrant democracy, having successfully completed its transition from authoritarian rule since the late 1980s. At the same time, a number of laws and regulations dating back to the Park Chung-hee era are still in effect. Libel and defamation laws in particular seem to be invoked by the authorities with increasing frequency. Critics argue the government is attempting to influence the public discourse and silence dissenters.

One of these critics is Professor Park Kyungsin, who has been advocating freedom of speech and opinion in South Korea, especially online. He gracefully agreed to be our guest for this episode, to talk about internet and press censorship, defamation and libel law, and the political environment of these measures.

Professor Park is a lawyer and law professor at the Korea University Law School, the Executive Director of the PSPD Public Interest Law Center, Commissioner at the Korean Communication Standards Commission and one of the leading figures behind OpenNet, a non-governmental organization defending the freedom and openness of South Korea’s internet. He earned his J.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles and an A.B. in Physics from Harvard.

To everyone living in Korea, KakaoTalk is a household name. Yet the popular messaging app is only the poster child of a much larger start-up ecosystem. Forbes Magazine hailed Korea as “the next global hub for tech startups”, and the government pledged to spend several billion dollars to foster a “creative economy”. To learn more about entrepreneurship in Korea and understand the macro-trends at work behind the scenes, we had the pleasure to talk to Richard Min.

Richard founded two of Korea’s first major startup accelerators: SeoulSpace and KStartup, attracting investment from global brands such as 500Startups, Samsung and Google’s Entrepreneurship Program. He is currently a Venture Partner at Naxuri Capital and the Managing Director of Fashion Technology Accelerator, here in Seoul. Richard is also the founder of the +822 Convergence Conference and Cityfest, which will take place in Seoul this october. He hosts his own weekly show on TBS Primetime radio and was featured in several news outlets, including INC Magazine and Bloomberg.

During the 1990s, North Korea suffered one of the worst famines of the 20th century. The result of this “Arduous March,” as the regime calls it, was not only a humanitarian catastrophe: the large-scale suffering also ignited economic and social changes that are still shaping the country today. This is the analysis of James Pearson and Daniel Tudor, who argue in their latest book, "North Korea Confidential", that this experience, although highly traumatic, helped sow the seeds of capitalism in North Korea.

In North Korea Confidential, Tudor and Pearson depict a changing society, communist by outside perception only , where the poor now almost exclusively survive thanks to the little businesses they maintain to complement their almost worthless official wages. Pyongyang is the seat of a new economic elite that conducts trade with China and beyond. Foreign currencies have taken over in some parts of the country as the primary medium of exchange, and consumerism seems almost celebrated as a virtue - the winners of North Korea’s economic revolution flash expensive items and take great care in following the latest fashion trends.

James Pearson, a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Seoul and co-author of "North Korea Confidential", is our guest for this episode of Korea and the World. He holds a Master’s in Oriental Studies from the University of Cambridge, and a Bachelor’s in Chinese and Korean from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where his interest in North Korea began.

Behind the glitter of Korea's economic success story lies a land of fault lines and social strife. Regionalism and factionalism are defining aspects of Korea’s politics and social fabric, while the rights of workers and minorities are sacrificed in the name of economic efficiency and social conformity. The media cannot report freely, foreign journalists and scholars are under pressure to spin a positive image of Korea abroad, and Koreans themselves live in fear of repression should they express ideas their government does not share.

This rather grim portrayal of South Korea is what you may be tempted to take away from KoreaExpose.com. According to its founder and editor-in-chief, Dr. Se-Woong Koo, Korea Expose is dedicated to covering topics that do not receive enough attention from both South Korean and foreign media. As he argues, reporting about poverty, discrimination and disenfranchisement isn’t compatible with the image South Korea wants to broadcast to the world.

We talked to Dr. Koo about his plans for Korea Expose, the media’s failure to cover difficult and often controversial topics, and some of the injustices Korea suffers from.

After receiving his PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University, Dr. Koo was a Korea Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris and taught Korean studies at Stanford, Yale and Ewha Womans University. His writings have been featured in numerous publications, including Foreign Policy and The New York Times.

Suki Kim is a Korean-American writer who was born in Seoul and moved to the United States at the age of 13. Driven by her Korean roots and her family background - her uncle disappeared in the Korean War, leaving her mother and grandmother scarred for life - Suki developed a keen interest in North Korean affairs.

After visiting North Korea several times and writing extensively about the land, Suki Kim landed a job as an English teacher at the newly constructed PUST, or Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. Aside from that fact that it was in North Korea, funded by a Christian missionary organization, and that Suki herself was there as an undercover writer, PUST was not a regular college: all of its students were boys and happened to be the children of North Korea’s highest elite.

Suki Kim wrote about her experiences in her most recent book, “Without You, There is No Us”, published by Crown Publishing [Group]. The book traces her life during the six months she lived on campus with 270 students, 50 of which she taught personally. She carefully describes her impressions of these young men, how she tried to broaden their horizon as much as she could, and how she felt and survived in a world of mind games and unsaids, where constant propaganda, censorship and the fear of repression so heavily weigh on one’s shoulders.

 

“Without You, There is No Us” is Suki Kim’s first major book of non-fiction. Her debut novel, “The Interpreter”, was a finalist for a PEN Hemingway Prize and was translated into five languages. She also wrote cover feature essays for Harper’s Magazine and The New York Review of Books as well as many op-eds and essays for The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. She has been the recipient of several high profile scholarships, including a Fulbright Research Grant, the Guggenheim fellowship and the Soros Foundation’s Open Societies fellowship. Suki Kim graduated from Barnard College with a BA in English and also studied Korean literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

Koreans sure like to watch movies: last year, the domestic film industry made more money than ever before. One movie in particular was seen by no less than a third of the population. Korean cinema has also been able to establish itself abroad, with blockbusters such as Oldboy or Snowpiercer being among the most famous examples.

In this episode, we dive into the Korean movie ecosystem in order to learn more about the reasons for this success, both domestically and abroad, but also to look at the differences between mainstream and independent moviemaking as well as the political environment shaping the industry.

To navigate the realm of the Korean silver screen, there is probably no better guide than Simon McEnteggart, Korean movie buff extraordinaire and founder of one of the best reference sites for Korean cinema on the Internet: hangukyeonghwa.com. We had the pleasure of welcoming him as our guest for this episode of Korea and the World.

A look into South Korea reveals a confusing number of influences: the society is commonly described as Confucian, the politics are clearly influenced by Christianity, yet visit South Korea and you may think Buddhism is the religion of the land - there are temples virtually everywhere. Almost a quarter of the Korean population define themselves as Buddhists.

Yet how can we explain Buddhism’s seeming lack of power and influence in shaping contemporary Korean politics and society? Why are there no strong Buddhist political parties or charismatic Buddhist leaders setting the agenda?

To find answers, we sat down with Seoul National University Professor Sem Vermeersch and took a long hard look together at Buddhism in Korea, from its introduction from China in the 4th century to our modern times.

To the surprise of many, Swiss and Swedish forces are tasked with monitoring the military buildup on the inter-Korean border. Their officers are stationed in Panmunjeom, at the heart of the DMZ's Joint Security Area, where they carry out inspections and review operations. We had the honor of interviewing Major General Urs Gerber about his work there, life in the DMZ, and his dealings with North Korea on a daily basis.

South Korea did not only experience rapid economic development, it is also the first country to successfully transition from development aid recipient to major aid donor. How the country handles this new role and provides support to developing countries was the focus of our interview with Professor Iain Watson.

In our fifth episode we talk to Karl Friedhoff of the ASAN Institute about what the South Korean public sentiment is towards North Korea, China and Japan, and about the public opinion about the foreign policies of the South Korean government.

The portrayal of women in Korea's media and entertainment industry provides the backdrop for our fourth episode. Together with media specialist and acclaimed blogger James Turnbull we explored gender politics in the Korean society and its depiction in Korean pop culture.

Our third episode led us to Busan where we met with Professor Robert Kelly of Pusan National University. In our interview we talked about the American role in East Asia, and the ways in which nationalism and territorial disputes complicate the international relations in the region.

In our second episode we talked to Daniel Tudor, a British journalist and the author of two books on South Korea. He discusses with us the appeal of the country to foreign audiences – and where the limitations of this appeal might lie.

For our first episode we sat down with Andrei Lankov, one of the world’s foremost experts on the society of North Korea. As he argues, the real North Korea is different from the one we know through the media – and important changes are happening there at this moment.