Applications opened last week for the China Scholars Program (CSP), Sejong Korea Scholars Program (SKSP), and Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) on Japan—three intensive online courses offered by SPICE, Stanford University, to high school students across the United States. All three applications can now be viewed at https://spicestanford.smapply.io/. Interested students must submit their completed application (including an essay and letter of recommendation) by the deadlines listed below.

Spring 2021 Online Course Application Deadlines

China Scholars Program: October 16, 2020
Sejong Korea Scholars Program: October 16, 2020
Reischauer Scholars Program: October 16, 2020

All three online courses are currently accepting applications for the Spring 2021 term, which will begin in February and run through June. Designed as college-level introductions to East Asia, these academically rigorous courses present high school students the unique opportunity to engage in a guided study of China, Korea, or Japan directly with leading scholars, former diplomats, and other experts from Stanford and beyond. High school students with a strong interest in East Asia and/or international relations are especially encouraged to apply.

“U.S. relations with East Asia is prominently featured in the news daily,” says Naomi Funahashi, instructor of the Reischauer Scholars Program. “SPICE is incredibly fortunate to have Stanford faculty conducting cutting-edge research on Korea, Japan, and China who are willing to help our students interpret key historical events and understand contemporary topics related to security, trade, and politics.”

Rising high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors in the United States are eligible to apply to any of the three programs. Students who are interested in more than one program can apply to two or three and rank their preferences on their applications; those who are accepted into multiple programs will be invited to enroll in their highest-preference course.

For more information on a specific course, please refer to its individual webpage at chinascholars.org, sejongscholars.org, or reischauerscholars.org.

The RSP, SKSP, and CSP are SPICE’s online courses for high school students. In addition, we offer online courses for high school students in Japan (Stanford e-Japan) and China (Stanford e-China). To be notified when the next application period opens, join our email list or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Amidst the hectic year known as 2020, I started and finished SPICE’s Sejong Korea Scholars Program (SKSP), an online program offered through Stanford for high school students interested in Korea. The program was challenging but also rewarding; I honestly loved every moment of it.

My interest in Korea began when I was in elementary school. Growing up in Queens, New York, a New York City borough with a diverse population, Korean culture was introduced to me in the form of food. Although some may think all Asian food is the same, as a Chinese American, I know how vastly different Korean food can be from Chinese food. My Korean American classmates would bring in Korean foods for lunch—kimchi, gimbap, galbi—and because I had never seen it before, I’d always want to know how it tasted. Luckily for me, Queens had a sizable ethnic Korean population and with that came great Korean restaurants. I was a frequent visitor to these tasty restaurants. Through this, I became interested in learning more about Korea, but outside of food, a few videos I had watched, and some information from my classmates, I didn’t know much, if anything at all, about Korea.

Heading into the SKSP, I was worried I didn’t know as much as my classmates. When I started the SKSP, all of my worries subsided. You didn’t need a strong background on Korea or in Korean. I was told that the most important thing to have is a genuine interest or curiosity about the topic, which was something I did have. I also have to say that my classmates were some of the most motivated students I’ve ever met.

And during our biweekly meetings, we would attend lectures with experts on Korea and professionals who worked with Korea. Something interesting I learned from a lecture was that the “BBC Dad” Professor Robert Kelly is a political analyst on Korean affairs, which I don’t find to be a coincidence; instead, learning the fact that Professor Kelly is an expert on Korea shows how widespread and important the study of Korea today is.

We explored a bit of pre-nineteenth century Korean history and then explored more on religions in Korea, colonial Korea, the division of Korea and the Korean War, post-war Korea, the divergence of North and South Korea, and trends in South Korean culture including bits about chaebols and the Hallyu wave. I found a particular interest in the Korean diaspora in Japan, which I learned about when learning about Korea in its colonial period. And because the SKSP has a research component, I wrote my paper on that and enjoyed my time so much because it was a topic I genuinely wanted to learn more about. After completing my paper, I was led to Min Jin Lee’s novel Pachinko, a historical fiction about a Korean family in Japan, and found myself so invested because I had some background knowledge.

Starting the course before the pandemic and completing it during the pandemic was interesting, to say the least. When the coronavirus situation took a turn for the worse, my high school courses scrambled to finish the year, but the SKSP went on normally, and I was able to invest more time into learning about Korea. I have to give props to the course instructor, Dr. HyoJung Jang, and the program coordinator Jonas Edman for keeping the course running smoothly through a worldwide crisis and helping us students with any questions and issues we had.

I participated in the SKSP as a senior in high school, and having taken it right before college has been incredible. This course has helped develop my self-driven learning skills, which I believe will be unimaginably beneficial for me as I head off to begin my first year of college. The SKSP is a college-level course that teaches in the same way college courses are taught, and right now, I find that my experience with the SKSP has prepared me for my college classes that I have only recently started.

The SKSP has furthered my interest in international relations, which I hope to major in at the University of Pennsylvania where I am a freshman this fall. I am definitely looking forward to furthering my knowledge of Korea and hope I am able to visit one day after traveling is safe once again. For me, as someone who came into the SKSP with a curiosity and left with even more, I can’t wait to continue on my path of learning. For those interested in the SKSP, I say go for it. It has changed not only how much I know about the world, but also how I perceive it. I hope SPICE continues to offer this terrific opportunity and students take this opportunity, so they can make a difference in the world.

This interview was originally conducted and published by Melissa De Witte on behalf of the Stanford News Service.

September 2, 1945, is recognized in many American history books as the day World War II formally ended in Asia. But according to Stanford sociologist Gi-Wook Shin, the conflict was never fully resolved in the region, leading to strains in diplomatic relations today.

On the 75th anniversary of this historic milestone, Shin discusses the legacy of World War II in the Asia-Pacific, specifically the failure among nations to fully address past wrongdoings and reach a mutual understanding of the conflict.

As a result, there is a “mismatch” in how Koreans, Chinese, Japanese and also Americans memorialize the war: China celebrates its victory against Japan while Korea commemorates its liberation from Japanese oppression. Meanwhile, Japan honors the victims of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – an atrocity many Americans still feel uncomfortable talking about today, Shin points out.

Here, Shin discusses how these diverging perspectives of World War II have led to misgivings today and how, some 75 years later, relations can still be improved in the region.

Shin is a professor of sociology in the School of Humanities and Sciences, the director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea, director of the Korea Program and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has led a decade-long study on historical memory in wartime period in Asia called 'Divided Memories and Reconciliation.'

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As the world remembers 75 years of the war ending in Asia, what legacies from this period persist today?

War has not really ended in Asia. Even before war settlements were signed, another war broke out on the Korean peninsula and technically never ended. Furthermore, “history wars” that began in the 1980s have intensified in recent years, as Japan and its neighbors continue to fight over the unfortunate past and dispute over territories. Despite increased economic, cultural, and educational exchanges and interactions, war legacies persist to strain regional relations.

Is there anything in this history that you think has been largely forgotten, overlooked or misunderstood?

While U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur formally accepted Japan’s surrender to allied forces aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay some 75 years ago, legacies from the war have persisted, straining regional relations to this very day, according to Shin. (Image credit: United States Navy/Wikimedia Commons)

America celebrates World War II victory in Europe (Victory in Europe Day) but remains relatively quiet on its victory in the Asia-Pacific war. In contrast to the moral clarity and nobility of purpose associated with the war in Europe and the defeat of Nazi Germany, the path to war with Japan and its conclusion is far less clear and many Americans still feel uncomfortable talking about the use of atomic weapons – even if it was militarily necessary but morally questionable. Also, it was during the war that about 120,000 people in the U.S. of Japanese ancestry (62 percent being U.S. citizens) were incarcerated in concentration camps.

Compared to Europe, U.S.-led post-war settlements in Asia such as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal and San Francisco Peace Treaty were insufficient in addressing atrocities committed by Japan during wartime and the colonial period, sowing the seeds of current disputes and tensions between Japan and its neighbors. The Tokyo tribunal focused on Japanese actions that had most directly affected Western allies (the attack on Pearl Harbor and the mistreatment of Allied prisoners of war) and thus failed to address the massive suffering of the Chinese and the Koreans. The 1951 Peace Treaty expunged Japan’s obligations to pay reparations for its wartime acts but neither the Republic of Korea nor the People’s Republic of China was party to the treaty.

You have written extensively about the repeated failure among Koreans, Chinese and Japanese to produce a shared, historical view of World War II. Can you briefly describe what are these conflicting, historical memories? 

For Koreans and Chinese, Japanese atrocities such as the Nanjing massacre, sexual slavery and forced labor are key events that shape their historical memories. For Japanese, on the other hand, actions related to the U.S. such as the Japanese attack on the Pearl Harbor and American bombings (fire and atomic) on Japanese cities are most important to the formation of their memories of war, which led to a widely held view that they were also victims of American aggression and that post-war settlements were “victor’s justice.” These divergent memories are reflected in the ways that they commemorate the end of the war. China celebrates its victory against Japan in the war, while Korea commemorates its liberation from Japanese oppression. Japan holds its annual ceremony to honor victims of atomic bombings.

According to your scholarship, what explains these divergent perspectives?

The divergence comes from the different weight each country places on historical events in their respective memory formation. Japanese actions figure prominently for Chinese and Korean, but China and Korea are not as significant to Japanese war memories as much as the U.S. is. This mismatch creates perception gaps and misgivings, hindering historical reconciliation.

How has this tension affected relations in the region? Do you think, some 75 years later, these tensions persist today?

Yes, they are very much alive. Look at the current Japanese-South Korean relations. They are two leading economies with liberal democracies in Asia and also key U.S. allies. They are important trade partners and are facing the same demographic crisis. They share strategic interests in the face of a rising China and North Korean aggression. Nonetheless, the resurfacing of the unresolved historical issues has continued to strain the bilateral relationship. For example, the relationship deteriorated since late 2018 when the South Korea supreme court ruled that Japanese companies should compensate Koreans who were conscripted as forced laborers during the war. In response to the ruling, the Japanese government removed Korea from a list of favored trade partners and the Korean government followed suit. These governmental actions are now fueled by populist nationalism (the rightist in Japan and the leftist in Korea), which has proven to be very effective in the politics of both nations.

Can the U.S. play any role to help achieve historical reconciliation?

The U.S. can take a more proactive role in encouraging Japan to work toward achieving regional reconciliation. As noted above, Japan does not seem to be taking its Asian neighbors as seriously as it should be when it comes to historical matters, but is rather predominantly focused on reconciling with the U.S. For example, Japan had been calling for the U.S. president to visit the sites of atomic bombings as a way of “removing a historical thorn” in the relationship and President Obama did make a historic visit to Hiroshima in 2016. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe followed suit soon after by visiting Pearl Harbor to pay respects to the victims of the 1941 attack. But the reconciliation efforts stopped there and did not expand to other victim countries of the war.

When you teach this history of World War II, what do you remind students about this period? How might the past shape students’ understanding of Northeast Asia or the U.S. in the present day?

To avoid repeating the unfortunate past (colonialism and war), I ask, what and how we can learn from history? For example, was the war with Japan necessary, or was it the result of a series of accidents and miscalculations or lack of political leadership? How does the war help us to understand the current tensions between the U.S. and China? What can we learn from the experience of the Japanese internment during the war? Even though President Reagan made an official apology of the internment in 1988, why do we still see similar racialist politics in American society? Addressing these questions requires a critical reflection of the history.

<< The original interview is available via Stanford News >>