Category: Geopolitical Affairs

Former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon discusses his new book Resolved: Uniting Nations in a Divided World on its release, in conversation with Korea Society board chairwoman Ambassador Kathleen Stephens and with a welcome by Korea Society president and CEO Tom Byrne. This event is co-hosted with the Korea Economic Institute of America.

Resolved: Uniting Nations in a Divided World

Tuesday, June 15, 2021 I 9 AM

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

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Ban Ki-moon is a South Korean diplomat and former foreign minister who served as the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 2007 to December 2016. Throughout his career, Ban worked to mobilize international efforts against a slate of global pressures including: climate change, extreme poverty, and armed conflict to make the world a safer and more equitable place. His motto: Mission Possible.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR:

Amb. Kathleen Stephens
Chair, Board of Directors, The Korea Society
President & CEO, Korea Economic Institute

Ambassador (ret.) Kathleen Stephens is a former American diplomat. She was U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea 2008-2011. Korea has been a leit motif of Ambassador Stephens’ life and career since she served in rural Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer and trainer, 1975-1977. She was in Korea 1983-1989, first as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul reporting on Korea’s domestic political and human rights scene, and later leading the U.S. Consulate in Busan.

Other overseas assignments included postings to China, former Yugoslavia, Portugal, Northern Ireland, where she was U.S. Consul General in Belfast during the negotiations culminating in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and India, where she was U.S. Charge ‘d Affaires (2014-2015).

Ambassador Stephens also served in a number of policy positions in Washington at the Department of State and the White House. These included acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (2012), Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (2005-2007), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (2003-2005), and National Security Council Director for European Affairs at the Clinton White House.

Stephens was William J. Perry Fellow for Korea at Stanford University 2015-2018. She is a Mansfield Foundation Distinguished Fellow, Pacific Century Institute board chairman, vice-chair of the board of trustees for The Asia Foundation, and board chair of The Korea Society.

She has been President and CEO of the Korea Economic Institute of America since September 2018, based in Washington, DC.

Join us for this discussion about the dynamics of U.S.-Japan-Korea trade relations and regional economic integration, featuring Asia Society Policy Institute Vice President Wendy Cutler, Waseda University Professor Emeritus and Economic Research Institute for East Asia and ASEAN Senior Research Advisor Shujiro Urata, and Korea Development Institute and Johns Hopkins University Professor Wonhyuk Lim. How can the three countries overcome obstacles to cooperate on shared challenges to achieve prosperity and shape the economic rules of the road? What will the Biden administration mean for U.S. trade policy? This program is co-hosted by the Korea Society, the Japan Society and Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), with moderation by Korea Society president Tom Byrne, and an introduction by Japan Society president Joshua W. Walker.

Challenges and Opportunities for U.S.-Japan-Korea Trade Relations
with
Wendy Cutler, Shujiro Urata and Wonhyuk Lim

Thursday, June 3, 2021 | 8 AM

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

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Wonhyuk Lim is a professor at the Korea Development Institute School of Public Policy and Management and adjunct lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Since he joined KDI in 1996, his research has focused on state-owned enterprises and family-based business groups (chaebol). He has also written extensively on development issues, in conjunction with policy consultation projects under Korea’s Knowledge Sharing Program (KSP). After the 2002 Presidential Election in Korea, he worked for the Presidential Transition Committee and the Presidential Committee on Northeast Asia and helped to set policy directions for the restructuring of the electricity and gas sector and for Northeast Asian energy cooperation. Dr. Lim was at Brookings as a CNAPS Fellow in 2005-06. After returning to KDI in 2007, he became Director of the Office of Economic Development Cooperation, precursor to the Center for International Development (CID).

Wendy Cutler is Vice President at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) and the managing director of the Washington, D.C. office. In these roles, she focuses on building ASPI’s presence in the nation’s capital and on leading initiatives that address challenges related to trade, investment, and innovation, as well as women’s empowerment in Asia. She joined ASPI following an illustrious career of nearly three decades as a diplomat and negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), where she also served as Acting Deputy U.S. Trade Representative. During her USTR career, she worked on a range of bilateral, regional, and multilateral trade negotiations and initiatives, including the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, U.S.-China negotiations, and the WTO Financial Services negotiations. She has published a series of ASPI papers on the Asian trade landscape and serves as a regular media commentator on trade and investment developments in Asia and the world.

Shujiro Urata is Professor Emeritus, Waseda University. He received his Ph.D in Economics from Stanford University in 1978. Before joining Waseda University in 1986, he was research associate at the Brookings Institution and an economist at the World Bank. He is currently affiliated with Economic Research Institute for East Asia and ASEAN (ERIA), Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), and Japan Center for Economic Research (JCER). His focus of research is in international trade and development economics.

Stimson Center senior fellow and China Program director Yun Sun and Asia Society Arthur Ross director of the Center for US-China Relations Orville Schell join senior director Stephen Noerper to discuss where Korea sits relative to China and US priorities. They explore China policy in the new US administration, alliances and expectations, and prospects for improvements or further deterioration in Sino-US ties. This program is made possible thanks to the support of the Korea Foundation.

Korea and Sino-US Relations
with
Orville Schell and Yun Sun

Thursday, April 1, 2021 | 1 PM

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

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York. He is a former professor and Dean at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Schell is the author of fifteen books, ten of them about China, and a contributor to numerous edited volumes. His most recent books are: Wealth and Power, China’s Long March to the 21st Century; Virtual Tibet; The China Reader: The Reform Years; and Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China’s Leaders. Schell was born in New York City, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University in Far Eastern History, was an exchange student at National Taiwan University in the 1960s, and earned a Ph.D. (Abd) at University of California, Berkeley in Chinese History. He worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, and has traveled widely in China since the mid-70s. He is a Fellow at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communications at USC and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Yun Sun is a Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the East Asia Program and Director of the China Program at the Stimson Center. Her expertise is in Chinese foreign policy, U.S.-China relations and China’s relations with neighboring countries and authoritarian regimes. From 2011 to early 2014, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, jointly appointed by the Foreign Policy Program and the Global Development Program, where she focused on Chinese national security decision-making processes and China-Africa relations. From 2008 to 2011, Yun was the China Analyst for the International Crisis Group based in Beijing, specializing on China’s foreign policy towards conflict countries and the developing world.

 Of interest:

Biden Finds China Is Too Big to Simply Lecture – Bloomberg

China Boosts Ties With North Korea, Russia in Wake of U.S. Talks – Bloomberg