The Korea Program at Stanford will mark its 20-year anniversary with a conference focused on North Korean issues and South Korea’s pop culture wave (Hallyu), two aspects of Korea that continue to intrigue the public, exploring how to translate this public attention into an increased academic interest in Korea.

This event is made possible by generous support from the Korea Foundation and other friends of the Korea Program.

Featuring a keynote address by
Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary-General of the United Nations
 

DAY 1: Thursday, May 19, 9:00 a.m. - 5:15 p.m.

9:00-9:15 a.m.
Opening and Welcome Remarks

Gi-Wook Shin, Director of Asia-Pacific Research Center and Korea Program, Stanford
Michael McFaul, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford
Gabriella Safran, Senior Associate Dean of Humanities and Arts, Stanford

9:15-10:45 a.m.
Panel on North Korea

Moderated by Yumi Moon, Associate Professor of History, Stanford

Siegfried Hecker, Professor Emeritus, Management Science and Engineering; Senior Fellow Emeritus, FSI, Stanford
Kim Sook, former ROK Ambassador to UN; Executive Director, Ban Ki-moon Foundation for a Better Future
Joohee Cho, Seoul Bureau Chief, ABC News

11:00-11:50 a.m. 
Korea Program at Stanford: Past, Present, and Future 

Moderated by Kelsi Caywood, Research Associate, Korea Program, APARC, Stanford

Paul Chang, Associate Professor of Sociology, Harvard University
Joon-woo Park, former ROK Ambassador to EU and Singapore; 2011-12 Koret Fellow
Jong Chun Woo, former president of Stanford APARC-Seoul Forum; Professor Emeritus, Seoul National University
Megan Faircloth, Senior in East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford

11:50 a.m.-12:30 p.m.        Lunch Break

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Introduction by H.R. McMaster, former National Security Advisor; Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford

Moderated by Gi-Wook Shin, Director of APARC and Korea Program, Stanford
 

2:00-3:30 p.m.
Panel on the Korean Wave

Moderated by Dafna Zur, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures; Director of Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford

SUHO, Leader of EXO
Angela Killoren, CEO of CJ ENM America, Inc.
Marci Kwon, Assistant Professor of Art and Art History, Stanford

3:45-5:15 p.m.
Documentaries on K-pop and North Korean Human Rights (teaser)*

Moderated by Haley Gordon, Research Associate, Korea Program, APARC, Stanford

Introduction of the films by Director Hark Joon Lee and Director of Photography Byeon Jaegil 

Vivian Zhu, Junior in International Relations and East Asian Studies, Stanford
Youlim Kim, Third-year PhD student in Microbiology & Immunology, Stanford
*The documentaries will not be shown on the livestream

Day 2: Friday, May 20, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

9:00-10:30 a.m.
How to Translate Interest in North Korea and K-pop into Korean Studies

Moderated by Gi-Wook Shin, Director of Asia-Pacific Research Center and Korea Program

David Kang, Professor of International Relations and Business, USC
Yumi Moon, Associate Professor of History, Stanford
Michelle Cho, Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto
Dafna Zur, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures; Director of Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford

10:45 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Future Visions of K-pop

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Introduction by Gi-Wook Shin, Director of Asia-Pacific Research Center and Korea Program

Conversation with:
Dafna Zur, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures; Director of Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford
SUHO, Leader of EXO

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Russia’s invasion in Ukraine has transformed the landscape of international security in a multitude of ways and reshaped foreign policy in many countries. How did it impact Japan’s foreign policy? From nuclear sharing to the Northern Territories, it sparked new debates in Japan about how to cope with Putin’s Russia and the revised international order. With NATO reenergized and the United States having to recommit some resources in Europe, how should Japan counter an expansionist China, an emboldened North Korea, and a potentially hamstrung Russia to realize its vision of Free and Open Indo-Pacific? What might be the endgame in Ukraine and how would it impact the clash of liberal and authoritarian forces in the Indo-Pacific region? Featuring two leading experts on world politics and Japan’s foreign policy, this panel tackles these questions and charts a way forward for Japan.

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About The Seminar: 

Social media users who report content are key allies in the management of online misinformation. However, no research has been conducted yet to understand their role and the different trends underlying their reporting activity. Hubert Etienne presents an original approach to studying misinformation by examining it from the reporting users’ perspective at the content-level and comparatively across regions and platforms. This leads Etienne to propose the first classification of reported content pieces, resulting from a review of items reported on Facebook and Instagram in France, the UK, and the US in June 2020 to observe meaningful distinctions regarding misinformation reporting between countries and platforms as it significantly varies in volume, type, topic, and manipulation technique. Etienne identifies four reporting behaviors, from which he derives four types of noise capable of explaining the majority of the inaccuracy in misinformation reporting. He finally shows that breaking down the user reporting signal into a plurality of behaviors allows us to build a simple classifier trained on a small dataset with a combination of basic users-reports capable of identifying these different types of noise.

Speakers:

Hubert Etienne is a philosopher conducting research in AI ethics and computational philosophy at École Normale Supérieure and Meta AI. His research focuses on social interactions, especially the moderation of problematic interactions in cyberspace. He is a lecturer in AI ethics à Sciences Po, in data economics at HEC Paris and in digital regulation at the National School of Administration. He is currently a visiting fellow at Harvard University.

Julie Owono is the Executive Director of the Content Policy & Society Lab (CPSL) and a fellow of the Program on Democracy and the Internet (PDI) at Stanford University. She is also the Executive Director of digital rights organization Internet Sans Frontières, one of the inaugural members of the Facebook Oversight Board, and an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University. She holds a Master’s degree in International Law from la Sorbonne University in Paris, and practiced as a lawyer at the Paris Bar.

Register: https://bit.ly/3Ncvj7B

AHPP “Aligning incentives” series final webinar: May 12th 6pm PDT, May 13th 9am in Hong Kong and Singapore

How has Myanmar’s health system dealt with the devastation caused by the coup and the pandemic, and what are the current opportunities and challenges for response and recovery? In this panel of two experts, Dr. Thin Zaw will first discuss how Myanmar’s health system and health workforce are endeavoring to respond to the syndemic crisis, a deadly combination of the global pandemic, the military coup, and post-coup civil conflicts. She will also discuss how stakeholders are working together to try to mitigate the crisis, and how a federal health system could be built up to align incentives for effective collaboration among ethnic health organizations. Second, Dr. Tun will provide a grassroots medical humanitarian perspective on what is happening in Myanmar. He will present results of a mixed-methods survey conducted in non-military-controlled areas from October to December 2021, discussing how Myanmar professionals including healthcare workers are spearheading the Civil Disobedience Movement, helping internally displaced people, and trying to address the healthcare needs of populations in conflict areas.

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Register: bit.ly/3tymltK

Gender and socioeconomic differences affect a country's ability to support its older adult population. Specifically, the longevity risk associated with females' longer life expectancy entails different needs between genders in old age. In the first project, we aimed to quantify gender differences in the aging experience of OECD countries. Our second project compares differences in projections of disability and chronic diseases among future cohorts of older adults, including disparities by educational attainment. The model projected future chronic diseases and disability trends in Singapore and South Korea from 2020 to 2050. This presentation focuses on gender and socioeconomic differences in aging.

Register: bit.ly/3wpm8uB

Most studies on China’s relations with Southeast Asian states focus on China’s power and how such power has been used to achieve influence in the region. The emphasis is on intention and causation: how China willingly uses its power to coerce, coopt, or persuade others to behave in a certain way. Professor Han will acknowledge but go beyond this conventional approach to explore the unintended outcomes and ripple effects that are also associated with China’s presence in Southeast Asia. His talk will feature a typology for use in thinking about China’s regional presence and the various everyday forms that it takes. He will argue that we need to understand such nuance and complexity if we are to make sense of China’s relations with Southeast Asia and what they imply.

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Myanmar’s junta is more than a year old.  The vast majority of the country’s people oppose the junta and favor democracy.  But the devil is in the details.  Many in the opposition want some form of multi-ethnic federal democracy.  But levels of disagreement and distrust among different communities, including some of the Ethnic Armed Groups, are impeding a unified vision to push the military out of power and establish civilian rule.  This webinar will examine the choices and challenges faced by the opponents of the regime as they try to unite these communities against it on behalf of a better future for Myanmar.

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