Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, East 207, Encina Hall
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Japanese "nationalism" (if such a term is even applicable) depended less on imagined similarities among Japanese than it did on their contrived customary differences from foreign peoples such as the Ainu. The boundaries of the early modern Japanese realm were ethno-geographical, and Ainu identity and difference was critical in constructing the borders of Japan.
After 1799, the Tokugawa shogunate and, later, the Meiji state, undertook policies of deculturation and assimilation toward the Ainu, because the Meiji strategy toward state building relied less on difference than on myths of internal homogeneity. The Meiji state conscripted Ainu into the myth of Japanese homogeneity through assimilation; but earlier forms of Ainu autonomy and difference first had to be destroyed.
Interestingly, wolf eradication offers one vantage point from which to view the process of Ainu deculturation and assimilation in the context of the colonization of Hokkaido and the creation of the modern myths that provided the foundation for Japan's ethnic nationalism. Ainu origin mythology held that the Ainu people were born from a union of a wolf and a goddess, and so when Ainu tracked and killed wolves and wild dogs under state bounty programs legitimized as "imperial grants," they committed mythological patricide, replacing their origin myths with Japanese ones that, over the course of the late Meiji period, served as the foundation of Japan's modern nation.
Japan Brown Bag Series
Co-hosted with the Center for East Asian Studies
Philippines Conference Room
Dear members of the Korean Studies community,
I trust that all of you have had a great summer and are now ready for the beginning of a new academic year. I welcome all of you back to campus and to another exciting year for the Korean Studies Program (KSP) at Stanford University.
First of all, I welcome the new members to our program this year. Philip Yun and John Feffer are our inaugural Pantech Fellows and will conduct research related to Korea, both North and South. Both Philip and John have distinguished careers and will be great assets to all of us at KSP. Philip has held high-level positions at the State Department and worked closely with former Secretary of Defense, Dr. William Perry, in addition to practicing law in both Korea and the U.S. John is an accomplished writer and editor, and his most recent publication is North Korea/South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis. I would also like to welcome Jasmin Ha, who will serve as our new Program Coordinator and assistant to me. She worked previously at The Korea Society in New York City and brings to us both her experience and vision for Korean studies at Stanford. Soyoung Kwon, a North Korean expert, will also be staying at APARC as a Shorenstein Fellow for the coming year.
Hong Kal and Chiho Sawada, post-doctoral research fellows, will remain with us for another year. Hong has accepted a tenure-track assistant professorship at York University, but will not start her appointment until the 2005-06 year. Rakhi Patel, our student assistant, will continue to work part-time to assist Jasmin and myself.
We will resume our popular luncheon seminars on October 15 with a presentation by Eric Larson of the Rand Corporation on his project on South Korean attitudes towards the United States. There will also be numerous other exciting events and programs on Korea-related issues throughout the coming year. Please visit our website for more detailed and continuously updated information.
KSP is also now home to the Journal of Korean Studies for which Chiho and I serve as associate editor and co-editor, respectively, of the journal. In addition, we have been engaged in a number of exciting projects. I have just finished my overdue book on Korean ethnic nationalism and am currently working with Kyu Sup Hahn, a doctoral student in Communications, on a project on U.S. media coverage of Korea and South Korean media coverage of the U.S. from 1992-2004. We will also continue on-going projects such as "Globalization in Korea" and "Historical Injustice, Reconciliation, and Cooperation." I appreciate the assistance of the many students and researchers who have been working with me on these projects over the years.
This year we will do an international search to fill the William Perry Chair in contemporary Korea. This is an extremely important appointment for the Korean Studies Program at Stanford, and you will have the opportunity to meet candidates throughout the year.
Thanks again for your continued support of the Korean Studies Program at Stanford. I look forward to seeing you at the various KSP events and programs throughout the year.
Cordially,
Director
A lecture by Timothy Garton Ash to mark the 15th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the election of the 44th President of the United States.
Timothy Garton Ash's new book Free World: America, Europe and the Surprising Future of the West will be published in the United States on November 9, the day the Berlin Wall was breached in 1989. He is a Professor of European Studies at Oxford University and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His previous books include The Magic Lantern, his eyewitness account of the velvet revolutions of 1989, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity, The File: A Personal History, In Europe's Name: Germany and the Divided Continent" and "History of the Present.
Oak Lounge
Between 1979 and 1992, the JKS became a leading academic forum for the publication of innovative in-depth research on Korea. Now under the editorial guidance of Gi-Wook Shin and John Duncan, this journal continues to be dedicated to quality articles, in all disciplines, on a broad range of topics concerning Korea, both historical and contemporary.
This edition's contents:
Articles
Book Reviews
During the Choson period, ojin or portraits of kings were regarded as the most important of all figural images. From the beginning of the Choson dynasty, many ojin were produced and housed in chinjon or portrait halls. King T'aejo (r. 1392-1398), the founder of the Choson dynasty, enshrined one of his ojin at the Chunwon Hall in Yonghung, where he was born, and another in a chinjon in Kyongju, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Silla. The third king T'aejong (r. 1400-1398), who was the fifth son of King T'aejo, established two more chinjon: Munso Hall in the capital city Hanyang and Kyemyong Hall in Kaesong, the capital of the previous Koryo dynasty. He also enshrined two additional portraits of King T'aejo in Pyongyang, the old capital of Kokuryo, and in Chonju, the royal family's ancestral home. As a result, there were altogether six chinjon in the early Choson period.
In contrast to the Koryo dynasty when chinjon were often established at Buddhist temples, most Choson royal chinjon had no relation to Buddhism. Instead, they were built in a Confucian architectural style and were used for the observance of ancestor worship ceremonies based on Confucian rites.
Choson ojin and chinjon often manifested the king's authority and power. Due to his usurpation of the throne by killing his brother, King T'aejong struggled to maintain his legitimacy throughout his reign. He used ojin and chinjon to consolidate his kingship and to suppress challenges posed by high officials. Therefore, ojin in the early Choson dynasty was a very political art form, and most recorded discussions on ojin were based on political context with little or no regard for artistic agendas.
Philippines Conference Room
Philip Zelikow is the Executive Director of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, better known as the "9/11 Commission." He will speak about his work with the Commission.
Dr. Zelikow is also the Director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs and White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia. After serving in government with the Navy, the State Department, and the National Security Council, he taught at Harvard before assuming his present post in Virginia to direct the nation's largest research center on the American presidency. He was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and served as executive director of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former Presidents Carter and Ford, as well as the executive director of the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age.
Kresge Auditorium
Stanford University
In an Oct. 20 talk co-sponsored by SIIS and the World Affairs Council of Northern California, Philip Zelikow, executive director of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States -- better known as the 9/11 Commission -- discussed the United States' continued vulnerability to terrorist attacks; the intelligence reforms that are needed to better protect the country; the attacks and accusations he has endured as head of the controversial commission; and his satisfaction that the body's final report has been widely disseminated to the American public, in a book that has become a best-seller. Zelikow's talk was held at Kresge Auditorium on the Stanford campus.
Zelikow is the White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia, and is director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs (also at the University of Virginia), the nation's largest research center on the American presidency. Before assuming his present positions in Virginia, he served in government with the Navy, the State Department and the National Security Council, and then taught at Harvard University. He was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and served as executive director of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former Presidents Carter and Ford. He was also the executive director of the Markle Foundation's Task Force on National Security in the Information Age.
Zelikow's books include The Kennedy Tapes (with Ernest May), Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (with Condoleezza Rice), and the rewritten Essence of Decision (with Graham Allison). He has also been the director of the Aspen Strategy Group, a policy program of the Aspen Institute.
Zelikow's talk was covered by the Stanford Daily and Stanford Report.
South Africa will experience routine electricity blackouts in a few years unless new electricity policy and investment decisions are formulated and implemented this year.
This is the inexorable conclusion that emerges from scenario and modelling exercises undertaken separately by the National Electricity Regulator, Eskom and large energy-intensive industries.
Growing electricity demand will outstrip existing national supply capacity next year or the year thereafter, assuming a prudent reserve margin to allow for maintenance and unscheduled plant shutdowns.
Hydro-electricity imports, mainly Cahora Bassa in Mozambique, will provide respite for about another year. Thereafter, we need further generation capacity or significant energy savings and demand-side measures.
Eskom has started re-commissioning old moth-balled coal-fired power stations to meet this challenge. Camden, the first plant, will be relatively easy to re-commission and work has commenced. Grootvlei will be more difficult and Komati, the last plant that Eskom plans to re-commission, will be the most uncertain and expensive.
If successful, these old generating stations will give us a breather until around 2008. And then we need new generation capacity.
2008 might seem years away, but investment decisions, environmental impact assessments, plant construction and commissioning take many years. For a hydro-electric or pumped storage scheme, this could take ten years. A coal-fired power station could take six years or more, and gas turbines - two to four years.
If our economy grows faster, or we are not able to implement effective demand-side measures, new power generation capacity might be needed even earlier.
Government is aware of this situation. The President confirmed, in his state of the nation address in parliament in May, that a tender for new capacity will be awarded early in 2005.
The Department of Minerals and Energy has appointed technical advisors to prepare and manage this tender. However, their work schedule indicates that the contract with a new Independent Power Producer will only be concluded early in 2006, and this will only happen if the bid manages to comply with National Treasury's Public Private Partnership regulations. The DME will have to show that Eskom cannot build a new plant more cheaply - an interesting possibility given Eskom's competitive cost of capital and the potential for transfer-pricing with its current portfolio of extremely low-cost generating plant.
Given these tight time constraints, it is not unlikely that we shall have to resort to buying, on an emergency basis, a series of highly expensive, paraffin-burning open-cycle gas turbines.
There is a dangerous assumption that the current tender process for new generation capacity answers concerns about supply security. It does not.
The challenge is not only to manage the current tender process within tight time-constraints. We need to make decisions this year about procuring much more capacity than the approximately 1000 MW anticipated in the current tender.
A likely planning scenario indicates that this year, 2004, we need to make investment decisions on a new pumped-storage scheme, a new pulverised coal-fired plant and a green-field coal fluidized-bed combustor or a combined-cycle gas turbine. In short, we need to start placing orders for a range of new power plant. In ensuing years we shall need to continue to order new plant.
These challenges raise the question of whether a part-time committee of government officials, assisted by consultants, is the most appropriate and sustainable mechanism to continue to procure new power? It also provokes debate about what market structure is appropriate to encourage the most efficient and cost-effective investment decisions?
Following the 1998 While Paper on Energy Policy, and a number of subsequent studies, Cabinet decided, in May 2001, to restructure the power sector by unbundling Eskom's electricity transmission division into an independent company and selling-off 30% of Eskom's generation plants. New capacity would be provided by private investors and an electricity trading market would be established comprising a power exchange and a parallel market for bilateral power contracts and financial hedges. None of this happened.
What is emerging is a quite different market model. In her budget speech, the Minister of Minerals and Energy stated that "the state has to put security of supply above all and above competition especially". The Minister of Public Enterprises has indicated that Eskom will not be privatised and that a strong state-owned utility is important for social and economic development.
Eskom is thus likely to continue to dominate the market. It may even be permitted to build new generation plant. Private sector investment will be permitted only on the margins in the form of Independent Power Producers. They will sign long-term power purchase agreements with Eskom (or with an independent transmission company or system operator, if these are eventually separated form Eskom).
Government will now need to clarify whether the emerging market model for the electricity sector is its preferred model or is merely a temporary measure to secure emergency supplied. This is not a trivial question - for it strikes at the heart of the cost and efficiency issues in the power sector, and will have long-term consequences for electricity prices in this country.
Few remember the controversial electricity price-hikes by Eskom in the late 1970s and 1980s when it made investment mistakes that resulted in huge unused power generation capacity. History demonstrates the potential weaknesses of the old industry model where state-owned monopoly utilities simply pass the costs of poor investment decisions to consumers.
The current tender process is also full of risk. A small number of officials and technical advisors will decide how much new power is needed, using which fuel sources, when and where. While a degree of (once-off) competition might be possible through the tender bids, long-term power purchase agreements could tie-up non-competitive electricity prices for decades.
Plans for a new market structure, where investors have to compete to sell their power in a power exchange or a contract market, have been sacrificed in the face of security of supply concerns.
Periods of supply uncertainty and shortages are never a good time to design and implement new competitive market structures. The long period of large capacity surpluses that provided a window of opportunity for major reform has disappeared. Now we have to patch the current system and prepare for the future.
The default IPP/ single-buyer model that is emerging now requires the establishment of a robust and sustainable institutional structure (probably best attached to the power system operator) that will be responsible for long term planning, security of supply and procurement of generation capacity.
We can avoid future black-outs. But we need to act now.