On April 15, 2008, His Excellency Lee Myung-Bak, the 17th President of the Republic of Korea, addressed the members, friends and guests of The Korea Society at the organization’s 2008 annual dinner. Stanley C. Gale, chairman of Gale International, and a co-chair of the dinner, introduces president Lee.
New Beginnings Project: Post-Election Prospects for U.S.-ROK Relations During a press conference held in New York at The Korea Society, three members of the New Beginnings project delivered a summary of their just released report on the post-election prospects for U.S.-ROK relations. The New Beginnings project was launched in January, 2008 under the joint auspices […]
With some of the highest rates of broadband and wireless Internet penetration in the world, Korea and Japan are home to thriving online communities that affect politics, shape public opinion, and forge new forms of social bonding. In Korea, the net has empowered citizen journalism and created a new national pastime of “massively multiplayer online […]
A Panel Discussion When the New York Philharmonic became the first American orchestra to play in North Korea on February 26, 2008, decades worth of Cold War reality was stood on its head. With the stars and stripes standing on stage, the 1500 North Koreans in the audience stood at attention as the musicians launched […]
When assessing the impact of the mid-1990s famine on the North Korean population, experts have been working on an assumption: that North Koreans living in the country’s breadbasket provinces were relatively better nourished than those in other provinces. Though a reasonable premise, Hazel Smith, professor of international relations at Warwick University and author of Hungry […]
From 18th Century Britain to 20th Century South Korea Over the last two and half decades, most developing countries have experienced slowing growth, rising inequality and greater economic instability. Ha-Joon Chang attributes these problems to a raft of policies—such as privatization, free trade and strong intellectual property protection—imposed on the developing world in bad faith […]
The U.S.-ROK military alliance is strong, according to General B.B. Bell, commander of United States Forces Korea, and the time has come to make it stronger by implementing the agreed upon transfer of wartime operational control from American to Korean commanders. Speaking with Evans J.R. Revere, president of The Korea Society, General Bell praised the […]
A Discussion of David Halberstam’s The Coldest Winter David Halberstam’s final book, The Coldest Winter, a new history of the Korean War, has been on America’s bestseller lists for months. The widespread attention being garnered by the book seemingly is at odds with the popular perception in the U.S., which often labels the conflict in […]
The upcoming presidential election in South Korea on December 19 could mark a critical turning point in U.S.-ROK relations and the ongoing negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear programs. At stake are potential realignments in economic, political and military relationships that will have a significant impact on all the countries of the Northeast Asian region, including […]
In 1993, Cullen Thomas was a young man who wanted to see the world and South Korea was one of his first stops. Convicted of smuggling hashish and sentenced to 3 ½ years in Korean prison, the world he ended up seeing—one in which the Confucian customs of Korean society take on a harsh character—wasn’t […]
