Kim Hyung-Soo is a North Korean defector and former researcher at the Long Life Health Institute (Mansumugang Institute) from 1990 to 1994, in charge of conducting extensive scientific research to maintain Kim Jongil’s health. He was subsequently a supervisor at the Worker’s Party of Korea from 1994 to 1995, but was imprisoned at the Pyongyang Hyungjesan area for reeducation. He worked at the Hyesan Hospital Beer Factory as the material advisor, before defecting to South Korea in 2009. Mr. Kim has since served as the Unification Education board member in Kyungki province, and has actively promoted North Korean human rights on social and mainstream media. He has appeared on Radio Free Asia’s Kim Family’s Hidden Secrets and Voice of Asia’s Observing the Economy. Mr. Kim is a graduate of Kim Il Sung University with B.A in Biology with honors in 1987.   

*Mansumugang Health Institute is a public institution in which the workers are paid the highest salary in the country and essentially guaranteed the highest standard of living (equivalent to top 0.1%) in exchange for maintaining the confidentiality of the Kim family’s health condition. Only the elites, namely the graduates of Kim Il Sung University, Pyongyang Medical University, and Kim Chaek University of Technology, are recruited, and employees are required to have no relatives in South Korea.

David Hawk (moderator) has engaged in the documentation and analysis of worst-case violations, the UN human rights system, human rights provisions in conflict resolution, non-governmental human rights advocacy, human rights organization and agency management, and human rights education and training. He is recognized as a leading expert on human rights in a number of countries, most notably Cambodia and North Korea. Hawk was the Executive Director of Amnesty International, USA, during its formative stage in the 1970s. He also directed the UN human rights office during the mid-1990s when it was the largest field operation of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In the early 1980s, Hawk did path-breaking original photographic and archival documentation of the human rights atrocities in Cambodia under Khmer Rouge rule, and researched and authored the first systematic and comprehensive documentation and analysis of the political prison camp system in North Korea. He has served on the Board of Directors of AIUSA and Human Rights Watch/Asia. His most recent publications include The Hidden Gulag and Pursuing Peace While Advancing Rights: The Untried Approach to North Korea. He attended Cornell, Columbia and Oxford Universities, and currently teaches at Hunter College, CUNY.

Bob Carlin is a Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and co-chair of the National Committee for North Korea.

From 2002-2006 he was political advisor to the Executive Director of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), a multinational consortium formed to carry out several key provisions of the 1994 US-DPRK Agreed Framework. He led numerous KEDO negotiating teams to the DPRK, and was on the last KEDO ship to leave the North in January 2006, carrying the final contingent of KEDO employees and contractors back to South Korea.

From 1989-2002, Carlin was chief of the Northeast Asia Division of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. From 1993-2002, he served concurrently as senior advisor to the chief US negotiator to US-DPRK talks, and attended all of the major negotiations with the North Koreans during that period. From 1971-1988, he was an analyst with the CIA.

Carlin has visited North Korea over 30 times. His last visit was in November 2010 as part of a small group from Stanford that was taken to see the North’s uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon.

 Of Interest:

Purchase The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History

Don Oberdorfer: History’s Gracious Scribe by Robert Carlin

  Check out The Two Koreas policy book release event with Robert Carlin from December 10, 2013 here.

David Straub was named associate director of the Korean Studies Program (KSP) at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) on July 1, 2008. Prior to that he was a 2007-08 Pantech Fellow at the Center. Straub is the author of Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea (2015). He was also a member of the New Beginnings policy research group on U.S.-South Korean relations, which was co-sponsored by Shorenstein APARC and the New York-based Korea Society.

An educator and commentator on current Northeast Asian affairs, Straub retired in 2006 from his role as a U.S. Department of State senior foreign service officer after a 30-year career focused on Northeast Asian affairs. He worked over 12 years on Korean affairs, first arriving in Seoul in 1979.

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. His final assignment was as the State Department’s Japan country desk director from 2004 to 2006, when he was co-leader of the U.S. delegation to talks with Japan on the realignment of the U.S.-Japan alliance and of U.S. military bases in Japan.

After leaving the Department of State, Straub taught U.S.-Korean relations at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in the fall of 2006 and at the Graduate School of International Studies of Seoul National University in spring 2007. He has published a number of papers on U.S.-Korean relations. His foreign languages are Korean, Japanese, and German.

Of Interest:

Purchase Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea

Is anti-Americanism dead?

Dr. Jin Park is Chair Professor at the Graduate School of International and Area Studies of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. He is also working as the Executive President of Asia Future Institute, an independent policy think-tank. The purpose of the institute is to research on the future development of Asia and to promote Korea’s role in the region. Dr. Park served in the 16th, 17th, and 18th Sessions of the National Assembly, representing the Grand National Party (renamed to Saenuri Party) in the central Jongno District in Seoul. While in politics, he served as the Chairman of Foreign Affairs, Trade and National Unification Committee of the National Assembly during 2008-2010 period. Dr. Park graduated from the College of law, Seoul National University, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and received a doctorate degree in politics from St. Antony’s College, Oxford University. He has been leading the Korea-Britain Society as the Executive President for the last six years and is a regular member of the Seoul Forum for International Affairs. He speaks Korean, English, Japanese, and conversational Chinese.

Ambassador Oh Joon is the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Republic of Korea to the United Nations in New York. He is serving as the President of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) for a one year term, which began on July 24, 2015. In addition, he serves as the President of the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). He also served as President of the Security Council for May 2014 during the 2013-2014 term.

Prior to this position, he was Ambassador of the Republic of Korea in Singapore from 2010-13 and Deputy Minister for Multilateral and Global Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Seoul from 2008-10. 

From 2005 to 2007, he was Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative at the Permanent Mission of Korea to the United Nations in New York. Ambassador Oh served as Chairman of the United Nations Disarmament Commission (UNDC) for the 2006 session, in addition to representing the Republic of Korea in many meetings of the UN bodies. During the Korean presidency of the 56th session of the UN General Assembly from 2001 to 2002, he worked in the President’s office as Deputy Chef de Cabinet.

From 2003 to 2005, he was Director-General for International Organizations at the Korean Foreign Ministry. During this time, he also chaired the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) from 2004 to 2005.

He joined the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1978 and has served as Special Adviser to the Foreign Minister (2007-08); Minister, ROK Embassy in Brazil (2002-03); Deputy Director-General for Policy Planning (1999-2001); Counselor, ROK Embassy in Malaysia (1997-99); and Director, United Nations Division (1995-97). The ROK Government awarded him an Order of Service Merit twice, first the Order of Green Stripes in 1996 and the Order of Yellow Stripes in 2006.

He received a Master’s degree in International Policy Studies from Stanford University (1991-92); a diploma in International and Comparative Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (1982-83); and a Bachelor’s in French literature from Seoul National University (1974-78). He was a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University (1990-91) and a member of the Korea Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum (WEF) (2010-13).