Stanford’s Korean Studies Program (KSP) has recently been awarded with a major gift from Hana Financial Group and a grant from the Korea Foundation, which will provide a major boost to Stanford’s already strong K-12 outreach education offerings. KSP will collaborate closely with the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) on its outreach activities.

Hana Financial Group has provided $600,000 for the next five years in support of an annual Hana-Stanford Conference on Korea for U.S. Secondary School Teachers. The first conference took place this summer, from July 23 to 25, at Stanford. It brought together secondary school educators from across the United States and a cadre of Korean teachers from Hana Academy Seoul for intensive and lively sessions on a wide assortment of Korean studies-related topics ranging from U.S.-Korea relations to history, and religion to popular culture. In addition to scholarly lectures, the teachers took part in curriculum workshops and received numerous classroom resources developed by SPICE.

The Korea Foundation has awarded a three-year grant of $609,527 to support the new K-12 Education on Korea in the United States curriculum development project. Gary Mukai, director of SPICE, noted, “The coverage of Korea in U.S. high school curriculum is often limited to the Korean War.” To help address the identified need to broaden the coverage of Korea, KSP will work with SPICE to develop three high school-level curriculum units and Stanford’s first distance-learning course on Korea for high school students. The curriculum units will examine the experience of Korean Americans in U.S. history; various aspects of traditional and modern Korean culture; and the development of South Korea’s economy. The distance-learning course, called the Sejong Korean Scholars Program (SKSP), will be offered in 2013.

The SKSP will annually select 25 exceptional high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors (from public and private schools) from throughout the United States to engage in an intensive study of Korea. The SKSP will provide students with a broad overview of Korean history, literature, religion, art, politics, and economics—with a special focus on the U.S.–Korean relationship. Top scholars, leading diplomats, and other professionals will provide lectures to students as well as engage them in dialogue. These lectures and discussions will be woven into a broader curriculum that provides students with reading materials and assignments. The SKSP will encourage these students to become future leaders in the U.S.–Korean relationship and lifelong learners of Korea.

“We’re grateful to receive these two major sources of funding for Korean studies outreach education, and look forward to working with SPICE to establish Korea as a subject taught regularly in classrooms throughout the United States,” said Gi-Wook Shin, director of KSP.

Connie Straub selected a small pink jar from the bottles and utensils scattered on the picnic table. “It’s shrimp – kind of a shrimp paste,” she told her audience, giving the jar a skeptical glance. “But it’s optional, it really doesn’t matter.”

Laughter erupted from the crowd of Koreans and Americans new to their cuisine. Straub, who grew up in Korea, set the jar aside and reached for a bottle of soy sauce – the base, she explained, for a traditional Korean marinade.

The cooking demonstration was part of a national conference that brought nearly two dozen American teachers to Stanford to learn about Korean history, culture, security, and politics from scholars at the university and other schools. Teachers and students from Hana Academy Seoul, a private high school in South Korea, also attended.

Stanford’s Korean Studies Program (KSP) co-sponsored the conference, along with the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), an organization that works with Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies to develop curricula on international topics for American elementary and secondary school students.

Despite Korea’s growing economic clout and important role in international security, little is taught about Korean history, politics, and culture in American schools. The conference organizers are trying to change that.

“South Korea is an incredibly important U.S. ally and partner,” Gi-Wook Shin, founding director of KSP and a sociology professor, told the conference participants. “And Korean-Americans are becoming a very important part of American society.”

David Straub, the program’s associate director who is married to Connie Straub, said South Korea is significant “not only because of the North Korean division… [and] because it is the world’s eighth-largest trading economy…but also because of its impressive development.”

Since 1979, South Korea’s per-capita GDP has increased more than twentyfold. The country has also undergone sweeping political reform and dramatic social change in the last three decades.

“I don’t know of any other country that’s developed as quickly,” Straub said. “Not only economically, but also socially and culturally.”

SPICE has produced several middle and high school curriculum units focused on Korea. Each teacher attending the conference received a collection of SPICE materials, and SPICE staff also conducted curriculum demonstrations and shared instructional strategies during the event.

SPICE director Gary Mukai said he believes early exposure to the country’s history and culture could inspire students to study Korea in college and beyond.

“Coverage of Korea in U.S. high schools has generally been limited to the Korean War,” he said. “The fact that the coverage is so limited really restricts students’ understanding of a very vibrant country.”

Mukai told visiting teachers that he hoped the conference would lead to “the creation of a community of learners” including both Korean and American teachers.

The teachers appeared to be fulfilling Mukai’s hopes. On the first day of the conference, after a presentation by Hana Academy teachers on the Korean educational system, American and Korean teachers discussed educational policy.

James Covi, who teaches world history at Lakeside High School in Seattle, commented on Korea’s efforts to move away from rigorous standardized testing in secondary education.

“Here in the U.S., we look at [Korean] test scores and we’re quite jealous,” Covi said, laughing. “Maybe there’s some common ground in the middle we’re trying to meet at?”

Covi attended the conference to expand his knowledge of Korea, which he said is insufficient to “teach [Korea] well.” He said he enjoyed learning more about Korean culture, through events such as the cooking demonstration and presentations on the educational system, as well as about the divided peninsula’s history and politics.

American teachers also learned from several visiting Korean students, who delivered short presentations on Korean society. The students also interacted with American teachers during meals and social events, answering questions about academics and daily life in Korean high schools. 

“The concept of coming abroad to meet other people from this country, and to talk about my country, was really exciting,” said Minji Choi, one of the students. “It’s a great opportunity.”

But the best opportunity for cross-cultural engagement may have come in a simpler form, as Connie Straub concluded her demonstration and her audience scattered to nearby tables piled high with traditional Korean food. The spread including several varieties of the fermented and fragrant vegetable dish known as kimchi, often approached with skepticism by the uninitiated.

The American teachers quickly shed their inhibitions – and then their misconceptions. “It’s delicious,” said one, a loaded forkful raised to her mouth. “The cucumber is extraordinary.”

 

Security concerns at the Olympics have dominated headlines over the past month after private contractor G4S failed to recruit the number of guards it had promised. The British government responded by deploying military personnel, and now there are more British troops guarding the streets of London than in Afghanistan.

Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at the FSI and CISAC, explains what kinds of threats exist at the Games, the challenges of securing such a large event and whether the failure by G4S will make the Olympics an easier or more attractive target.

What motivates terrorists?

Terrorists want to make a political statement. So you have to ask, "What kind of political statement would attacking the Olympics be?" Al-Qaida could regard the Olympics the way they regard the United Nations. They attacked U.N. headquarters in Iraq and a U.N. agency in Algiers. They regard the U.N. as a tool of the oppressor. That said, they don't talk about the Olympics the way they do about the U.S. – the great Satan, etc. And Muslim countries are competing in the Olympics. Of course they oppose many of the regimes of those countries, like Saudi Arabia.

But I'm not aware of any specific threat to the Olympics or chatter about the Olympics.

Is al-Qaida the only terrorist group to be concerned about?

People will be concerned about Hezbollah now because of the series of foiled attacks against Israel and the successful attack in Bulgaria. Hezbollah and al-Qaida have global reach. But when we talk about al-Qaida, we can't forget the groups affiliated with the main organization: al-Qaida in Iraq and al-Qaida in Yemen, for example. There's also the Pakistani Taliban and other al-Qaida linked groups there.

What kinds of terrorist attacks are of most concern?

We've tended to think, and I stress think, that al-Qaida wants spectaculars. In terms of their attacks in general, targets have often been public transportation. Think of Madrid and London. They're also fond of multiple targets at once, and as regards the U.S., it seems they're still focused on airplanes. We could be dead wrong and they could do something that's totally different but this is the pattern. 

It could be that they'd like a big explosion in the middle of Trafalgar Square, but it wouldn't have to be during the Olympics. There are crowds in Trafalgar Square all the time.  However, if Britain were the target, terrorists might think it's particularly embarrassing and spectacular to attack during the Olympics because it would heighten the fear factor.  On the other hand, it's easier to mount an attack when there is not the high level of Olympics security.

Has there always been a great fear of attacks at Olympics?

The hostage taking in Munich in 1972 (of Israeli athletes) and then the bombing in Atlanta in 1996 have made us afraid that something would happen at the Olympics because it's so prominent.

A recent study concludes that security has been effective. But we don't really know that entirely. We don't know what the terrorists are thinking. We don't know whether they looked at all of the security precautions and said, "This is going to take a lot of work and we will probably fail because security is so good. Let's do something else."

Is London exceptional, because of its size or politics?

From the point of view of this year's Olympics, London could be as much of a target as the Olympics themselves.  But Britain was attacked in 2005 because of their involvement in the war in Iraq, now over. I'm not sure if that changes Britain's vulnerability. We're in the realm of speculation because we don't really know how the adversary is thinking about this. So there is a risk in London but if I were in London I'd be more afraid of a traffic jam.

What does the failure by G4S to provide enough guards say about using private contractors to protect public safety?

Outsourcing security is widespread. A lot of people who were with the military in Iraq and are in Afghanistan are contractors. Everybody contracts out security these days.

But, the question deserves to be looked at. Is it a good idea to rely on these private firms? Would it be a good idea even if all of their people showed up? Are their guards reliable, are they trustworthy, or do they pose a security problem? Have they all been properly vetted to ensure they haven't been infiltrated by al-Qaida and don't include people who are mentally unstable? It raises a lot of questions about who provides security against terrorism for very large international events.

Does the use of military personnel at the last minute create vulnerabilities?

It's possible to imagine that some very determined and nefarious groups would look at this situation and say it's not really going to win us much fame and glory to go shooting a bunch of private security guards, but now the military is a target by being deployed on the streets of London. If someone wanted to attack them, they might think here is the opportunity.

But this switch also means that anybody who decided now that they wanted to target the military or the Olympics won’t have much time to plan. Typically, not always but typically, attacks that cause large numbers of casualties and a lot of destruction have been elaborately planned for a long time – even the lone wolf types like Anders Breivik in Norway or the recent attack in Colorado. Individuals or groups plan in advance and work to get the weapons and explosives, which is not easy. So even if somebody got the idea of doing something it wouldn't be so simple in this short time to come up with a plan and acquire the right materials.

How hard is it to guard a place like London, as well as the Olympics?

It's hard to protect lots of people in a big city. There are lots of crowds, lots of movement. It's not as though you can extend a perimeter; it's a moving target all the time. The Olympics might be a target, London has been a target, so the combination of the two could cancel each other out but I'm sure security officials are worried.

Yet, at this point, if I were the British government dealing with the fallout of the security firm's lack of preparedness, I'd much rather rely on soldiers who have been vetted and have experience than security officers who were quickly brought together.

Brooke Donald is a writer for the Stanford News Service.

During the first annual Hana-Stanford Conference on Korea, co-sponsored by KSP and SPICE, nearly two dozen U.S. secondary school educators gathered at Stanford, July 23 to 25, to learn about Korea, from hangul (Korean alphabet) to daily life in North Korea. They returned home with new ideas and numerous resources for teaching about Korea.

Original version published in the 2007–08 Shorenstein APARC Annual Overview

Since 2005, Denise Masumoto has managed Shorenstein APARC’s Corporate Affiliates Visiting Fellows Program. Each summer, Masumoto welcomes a new group of fellows and their families to the Center, and helps them to navigate their new country. She also oversees the program curriculum and connects fellows with Center faculty who share their research interests.

How has the program changed since you took over?

When I started at Shorenstein APARC, the program was well established, and it gets better every year. Today, there is more interaction with our faculty and other scholars, which produces better research. The core research goal remains constant, but the changing composition of each group—more female fellows, varied professional backgrounds, new countries joining the mix—keeps the program exciting and unique.

What is the biggest challenge that visiting fellows face when they enter the program?

Definitely deciding which events to attend! In addition to the classes they audit, and the calendar of seminars and site visits arranged specifically for the visiting fellows, there are numerous events within the Center, at our parent institute FSI, all around the Stanford campus, and into Silicon Valley and the greater San Francisco Bay Area. The fellows’ schedules are busy and filled with great opportunities to learn new things and to network; the biggest decision is how to prioritize. What the visiting fellows put into the program is what they get out of it.

How do the visiting fellows integrate into the Center and the University?

I strongly encourage all the visiting fellows to get out and meet people, in Shorenstein APARC and beyond, and to ask lots of questions. Whether this is done in the classroom, at a seminar or conference, or in front of the coffee pot, meeting people and having conversations are valuable parts of their experience. You never know who you might meet, what you might learn, or where it might lead.

In what ways do the visiting fellows contribute to the Center’s research mission?

Research is a continuous process and one that requires feedback and exchange. Our visiting fellows have the opportunity to interact with and learn from our distinguished faculty. At the same time, the knowledge and practical experience that they bring to the Center provide insight and international perspective.

How do the visiting fellows benefit?

In April 2008, we met with affiliate organizations in Japan so we could better understand their objectives. We learned that the affiliate organizations recognize that the program’s value lies in allowing the visiting fellows to take advantage of Stanford’s resources, to develop their professional skills, to expand their international network, and, crucially, to have their way of thinking completely changed. The visiting fellows return home with a fresh perspective on and renewed enthusiasm for their work.

What happens after the program ends each year?

While they are at Stanford, the visiting fellows develop strong relationships with other members of their class. We want this to continue after they return home. Many of our alumni are now in prominent positions within their organizations.

I am focused on growing the network of alumni by maintaining and improving a comprehensive database, which will make it easy for former fellows to stay in touch with one another and with the Center.

Masumoto returned to Japan this autumn to visit with affiliate organizations, and to reconnect with alumni during a reception that was held in Tokyo on September 10.

Indonesia’s rainforests are among the world’s most extensive and biologically diverse environments. They are also among the most threatened. An increasing population and growing economy have led to rapid development. Logging, mining, colonization, and subsistence activities have all contributed to deforestation.

But the recent and booming expansion of palm oil plantations could cause the most harm to the rainforests, and is generating considerable concern and debate among industry leaders, environmental campaigners and scholars.

Joanne Gaskell in Sumatra, Indonesia.

Joanne Gaskell has dedicated her graduate studies to better understanding the tradeoffs and demand side of this dilemma. The doctoral candidate and researcher for the Center on Food Security and the Environment recently defended her thesis before an audience of advisers, friends, and fellow students from Stanford’s Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER).

“You need to understand the economics and politics of palm oil demand if you want to understand the regional dynamics of oil production and associated environmental impacts,” Gaskell said. “From a conservation perspective, this is as important as understanding supply since demand patterns affect the incentives facing producers.”

In the past 25 years, palm oil has become the world’s leading source of vegetable oil. Indonesia is currently the world’s top palm oil producer. Since the 1980s total land area planted to palm oil has increased by over 2,100 percent growing to 4.6 million hectares – the equivalent of six Yosemite National Parks. Plantation growth has predominately occurred on deforested native rainforest with major implications for global carbon emissions and biodiversity.

And Gaskell projects the demand for palm oil for food will double by 2035, requiring more than 8 million new hectares for production. Plantation expansion has already begun in Kalimantan and Papua, and Indonesian companies are now looking beyond Indonesia for new investment opportunities. Just as palm oil production spread from Malaysia to Indonesia to escape rising land and labor costs, palm oil production is now spreading to parts of Africa, where the crop is native, and Latin America.

Demand for palm oil is quickly rising in Asian markets – notably India and China – where it is used for cooking and industrial processes. Indonesia has the highest level of per capita palm oil consumption, resulting not just from population and income growth, but also from government policies that promoted the use of palm oil instead of coconut cooking oil.

“Taste preferences and investment more than international prices have driven palm oil demand in Indonesia,” Gaskell said.

Biodiesel production and speculation have also contributed to the rapid expansion of palm oil plantations, but to a lesser extent. Gaskell said the success of palm-based biodiesel hinges on remaining cheaper than petroleum diesel and whether governments subsidize the industry, as the United States has done with corn and soybean farmers.

Interest in palm oil as a cleaner burning fuel is already waning in Europe and the United States. The short-term carbon costs of deforesting and preparing land, fertilizing and managing the crops, then processing and transporting them outweigh the benefits. This is particularly true when palm oil plantations are grown on peat soils that release potent methane gas when drained for growing palm oil.

Palm oil seedlings ready for planting. Photo credit: Wakx/flikr

Growing plantations on ‘degraded land’, land that had been previously converted for other purposes, such as logging, is a much more favorable option over forest expansion. In theory, there is an abundance of degraded areas that can be profitably converted into palm oil plantations. But there are hurdles: The areas are not necessarily contiguous, making it difficult to organize a plantation, and ownership rights in these areas are often contested.

Palm oil’s considerable productivity and profitability offers wealth and development where help is most needed. Half of Indonesia’s population lives on less than $2 a day. But along with the negative ecological impacts, palm oil production increases competition for land and could exacerbate inequalities between the rich and the poor.

Gaskell believes sustainable expansion strategies are possible, and says smaller mills and different processing technologies are needed so production is affordable in scaled-down, more distributed systems.

Palm oil plantation in Cigudeg, Indonesia. Photo credit:  Achmad Rabin Taim/flickr

Her work is feeding an international conversation about palm oil production. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), an international organization of producers, distributors, conservationists and other stakeholders, has promoted better ways of managing palm oil production and encouraging transparency and dialogue among corporate players, governments, and NGOs.

“We need to protect the most ecologically valuable landscapes from agricultural production and we need to make sure that, in areas where palm oil agriculture occurs, there are ecological management strategies in place such as riparian buffers, wildlife corridors, and treatment systems for mill effluent,” she said. “From a food security perspective, small palm oil producers, who might be giving up rice production or the production of other food staples, need strategies to minimize the economic risk associated with fluctuating global palm oil prices.” 

KEDO’s profile on the North Korean landscape was unmistakable, its impact on Pyongyang profound. Yet real knowledge and understanding about the organization in public and official circles in South Korea, Japan, and the United States was terribly thin at the beginning, and remains so to this day. As a result, the lessons learned from KEDO's decade-long experience working with the North Koreans have been largely misunderstood.

Former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry joins the head of the U.S-China Energy Forum at a recent SPRIE conference to explain why shale gas “has the potential to change everything.”

In a relatively short time, U.S. shale gas production has lowered the price of natural gas in the United States to a quarter of the price in Europe and prompted some utilities to scrap plans to build coal-fired electricity plants. Meanwhile China is gearing up to apply the technology known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to its shale deposits in hopes that its growing energy demand can be met with gas instead of dirtier coal-fired plants.

The energy source was the hot topic at a recent conference on Innovations for Smart Green City: What’s Working, What’s Not and What’s Next, sponsored by the Stanford Graduate School of Business’ Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Energy technology and policy experts from Taiwan and the United States said they had not even discussed shale gas at a similar conference held last year, but now found themselves discussing how it could shake up the energy industry and world politics.

Here are edited excerpts from comments made by Dennis Bracy, CEO of the U.S.-China Clean Energy Forum and the Washington State China Relations Council, and Stanford Professor William Perry, the 19th U.S. Secretary of Defense.

Dennis Bracy

Let me give you a little bit of an overview, not because the U.S. and China are everything, but the math is pretty simple. The U.S. and China together consume half the energy on Earth, nearly half the energy and nearly half the greenhouse gases. In coal, we, combined, consume 62% of the coal on Earth. And coal, by the way, represents 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions, so it's something we have to focus on.

Our energy pie in the U.S. is growing at about 1% per year. China's demand is growing at 1% per month. If you heard that China is doing everything possible in renewables, absolutely true. But they're also building a lot of new coal plants and hydro. We work together on these things that are perhaps not as sexy, but really, really important to the whole scheme of things.

This new national gas phenomenon seems to be changing everything. I hope it works out. I hope fracking is everything the industry says and nothing that the opponents say. But it has changed the balance of power in the industry where coal plants are now shifting to natural gas.

China is wildly seeking this, because they don't have any natural gas to speak of. They’ve got pipelines coming into China. But it affects not only our two countries' energy policy, but also worldwide geopolitics. China clearly has a plan. You can see it all over the world, lining up resources, lining up strategic relationships. If gas turns out to be the magic elixir in this, then that will drive a whole set of decisions.

William Perry

If we continue to pursue efficiencies, we should be able to offset increased energy demand with increased efficiency [in the United States]. So I see this as a break-even state. But how can we do better than that so we can actually decrease our use of coal plants? Solar and wind are still too expensive. I think it will take at least 5 years to get the cost down to grid parity. And even with grid parity, it will be 10 to 20 years to increase the contribution of renewables from 1% to 10% of grid electricity. So in sum, alternative fuels are potentially important, but their contribution is still small, and it will take a long time for them to play a significant role.

Shale gas is truly a game changer. It is a huge resource in the United States. Some have called us the Saudi Arabia of gas with more than a century of supply. The technology is mature. It was developed in the United States more than 10 years ago, and its success has already greatly exceeded anyone’s expectations. It’s already at scale—it went from 10% to 20% of the total U.S. [electricity] production in a 10-year period, and we have gone from an importer of natural gas to an exporter. Most interestingly it has been demonstrated to be cost effective. It has already resulted in lower prices for gas, which has had a ripple effect on other sources of energy.

Q: As you mentioned, shale gas could be a game changer for the next 100 years. Do you have any comment on the influence of shale gas on renewable energy development and on carbon dioxide emissions for the next several decades?

Perry: I can’t answer the question fully but here are a couple comments about it: Shale gas is twice as good as coal but it still has emissions, so it is not a panacea. Solar and wind is the more desirable option, but I find it hard to be optimistic soon. Grid parity [for solar and wind] is going to be harder and harder to reach as the cost of natural gas goes down.
Natural gas has three negatives associated with it. It does have carbon dioxide emissions. Secondly, it’s the enemy of alternative energy sources—it makes it harder and slower for them to reach grid parity, and it’s also the enemy of nuclear power because nuclear power used to be the cheap source of electricity.

Q: Could you comment about water pollution potential with fracking?

Perry: I can comment, but not authoritatively. I’ve read on both sides of the argument. One side says it is causing water pollution. This is particularly [true] in Western Pennsylvania where people are saying it is getting into their water supply, and the drilling companies say that can’t happen, we have this pipe totally encased so the water can’t get out. I don’t know what the truth is. I suspect the truth is that if drilling is done properly the water can’t get out. If, indeed, fracking is going to damage the water supply, that is a huge barrier to moving forward. Everything I’ve been able to read from engineers says that does not have to be the case.

There are other environmental issues that are almost fundamental, such as people who live in the area being annoyed by all the trucks and activity that comes with the operation. That’s a fact of life. But I think the water issue can be dealt with.

Q: With the development of shale gas, will the U.S. become more supportive of international targets on greenhouse emissions reduction set for 2025?

Perry: I would like to see us become more supportive of that in any case, but any such international agreement meets automatic resistance in some circles. It’s part of the political deadlock we have right now. International agreements are right up there with carbon tax as an issue that is politically volatile. I’m not optimistic about our ability to make political decisions, but I do think technically our ability to achieve those goals could be much enhanced by shale gas. But again, shale gas is only a halfway house in terms of the environment. It has about half the carbon emissions of coal but it still has emissions, and in the strategy that I have laid out, I started with a fallback position until zero or low carbon emissions can become a reality. It’s here and now, and we can move very quickly to replace coal-fired plants with gas-fired plants, and we should do that. 

Kavita N. Ramdas, executive director of the Ripples to Waves Program on Social Entrepreneurship at the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, has been appointed as the Ford Foundation representative to New Delhi serving India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. In this capacity, Ramdas will be leading the foundation's grant-making efforts to support democracy and social justice in South Asia.

In August 2012, Ramdas will step down as executive director of the Program to assume leadership of the Global Practitioner Council to provide strategic direction and guidance to the program's development and selection of the Social Entrepreneurs-in-Residence at Stanford (SEERS). Deborah Rhode, the Ernest McFarland Professor of Law and director of the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford Law School who has served as the program’s faculty primary investigator since its launch last year, will assume leadership of the program. The Program on Social Entrepreneurship congratulates Ramdas on her new position and looks forward to welcoming Rhode in her new role as the program’s faculty director.

Scarborough Shoal, a small lagoon in the South China Sea, remains the center of a months-long standoff between China and the Philippines. Donald K. Emmerson discusses Indonesia's role in leading ASEAN, after a week of silence, to announce a consensus that avoids the issue.