Kathleen Stephens, a former U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea, will join Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as the William J. Perry Distinguished Fellow in the Korea Program.

Her fellowship, made possible through the generous support of Jeong and Cynthia Kim, is effective Sept. 1, 2015.

Ambassador Stephens will be housed at Shorenstein APARC, the center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies working on policy-relevant interdisciplinary research related to the Asia-Pacific.

“Kathy Stephens brings exceptional diplomatic experience on a global scale to Shorenstein APARC. Equally impressive, she has four decades of experience in Korean affairs, first as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Korea in the 1970s, and in ensuing decades as a diplomat and as U.S. ambassador in Seoul,” said Shorenstein APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin.

"She is often cited as one of the most popular American envoys ever to South Korea. Her ability to deal with tough issues like North Korea and the U.S.-South Korean free trade agreement -- and to connect with everyday Koreans -- speaks to her deep expertise.”

Stephens came to Stanford previously as the 2013-14 Koret Fellow after 35 years as a foreign service officer in the U.S. Department of State. At Stanford, she taught a course on U.S.-Korea relations and contributed extensively to center activities, including a Koret Workshop focused on inter-Korean relations and the biannual Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum. Her time at Stanford, though, was cut short when she was recalled to the diplomatic service to lead the U.S. mission in India as charge d'affaires during the first seven months of the new administration led by Narendra Modi.

Stephens' diplomatic career included serving as acting under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs in 2012; U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea from 2008 to 2011; principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2005 to 2007; and deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2003 to 2005.

She also served in numerous positions in Asia, Europe and Washington D.C., including as U.S. consul general in Belfast, Northern Ireland from 1995 to 1998, during the negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement, and as director for European affairs at the White House during the Clinton Administration.

“I am delighted and honored to return to Stanford,” Stephens said. “Shorenstein APARC is an incredibly stimulating place – an opportunity to be immersed in one of the world’s leading community of scholars working on U.S.-Asia-Pacific affairs.”

Stephens holds a bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies from Prescott College and a master’s of public administration from Harvard University, in addition to honorary degrees from Chungnam National University and the University of Maryland. As an undergraduate, she studied at the University of Hong Kong and was an Outward Bound instructor in Hong Kong. She was previously a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.

Stephens' awards include the Presidential Meritorious Service Award (2009), the Sejong Cultural Award, and Korea-America Friendship Association Award (2013). She is a trustee at The Asia Foundation, and on the boards of The Korea Society and Pacific Century Institute.

She tweets at @AmbStephens.

In a recent interview with Korea Daily, Gi-Wook Shin, director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, said that South Korea needs to be more strategic in its approach to its foreign policy agenda. The country’s leadership must aim to be more proactive in handling current diplomatic issues.

Shin suggested that South Korea should separate wartime history issues from other diplomatic priorities such as trade and security. This type of organization would allow each issue to receive the focused attention and expertise needed to understand and work toward resolution.

Recently, Japan provided a successful model for this, Shin said, referencing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s official state visit to the United States. Abe visited many major U.S. regions including Silicon Valley. He spoke mainly about the U.S.-Japan alliance and economic development as policy priorities for Japan. He did not address at length issues of the wartime past since the focus of his visit was U.S.-Japan relations and the economy.

Shin said he thinks it is important that South Korean President Park Geun-hye delivers a concrete foreign policy vision in her June visit to the United States. For the long-term, South Korea should find ways to boost its public diplomacy efforts to shore up support for that vision.

The full article is in Korean and available by clicking here.

Gi-Wook Shin, director of Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, presented the policy report Tailored Engagement at the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies in late March. The event in Seoul coincided with the public release of the report in Korean.

Shin delivered a keynote lecture on the study which offers steps that South Korea can take to establish sustainable dialogue with North Korea. The report is an outcome of a longstanding research project seeking to understand the future domestic and global implications of North Korea’s situation.

Shin’s lecture was followed by remarks from Korea Program Associate Director David Straub and a panel discussion among four other experts. The panelists shared their observations on the current political climate in and around the Korean Peninsula.

Video from the event is available below:

Gi-Wook Shin’s lecture (in Korean)

David Straub’s remarks (in English)

Panel discussion (in Korean)

More than 320 people attended the event including students, policymakers and academics. The event marked the second occasion in Seoul where the Stanford team presented the report. In late 2014, they briefed the Special Committee on Inter-Korean Relations, Exchange and Cooperation of the South Korean National Assembly. An article about the briefing can be accessed here.

Shin is a professor of sociology, director of Shorenstein APARC, and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Straub is the associate director of the Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC.

The attack on Mark Lippert, the American ambassador to South Korea, made headlines worldwide on Thursday. Since his arrival in Seoul last October, Lippert received high marks from the Korean people and the media for his accessibility to the public there. Lippert, a Stanford graduate, is a very close friend of President Obama, who has called him “brother,” and attended his ambassadorial swearing-in ceremony.

The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center asked David Straub to discuss the incident and its significance. The associate director of the Korea Program at Stanford, Straub served as a career diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Seoul from 1999 to 2002 and is the author of the forthcoming book about that period called Anti-Americanism in Democratizating South Korea.

What actually happened?

A South Korean extreme left-wing activist, Kim Ki-jong, slashed Ambassador Lippert with a kitchen knife Thursday morning at a public event in Seoul. Koreans at the event immediately wrestled the assailant to the floor, but not before he had inflicted several wounds on the ambassador: a long, deep gash on his cheek and cuts to his wrist and fingers. The ambassador was taken straightway to hospital, where surgeons repaired the damage in a three-hour operation. The prognosis is that he will regain the full use of his fingers in about six months, and that the scar on his face will be barely noticeable in one or two years. His doctors plan to remove the eighty stitches on his cheek on Monday, and, if all is well, release him from the hospital then. But it was a close call. Had the face wound extended only one inch farther down, it would have severed his carotid artery.

How is Ambassador Lippert doing?

He told his doctors on Friday that the facial wound was not bothering him particularly, but he did have some pain in his wrist and fingers. Doctors say he has some nerve damage there but the pain should ease soon. Ambassador Lippert’s response has been laudable. Consistent with the outstanding way he has comported himself in Korea since his arrival, he promptly tweeted on Thursday that he was “Doing well & in great spirits!” I am also aware that he was even responding to email wishes from some Stanford friends on Thursday.

Was Kim acting alone? How was it possible for him to perpetrate this attack?

Kim was the only person who attacked Ambassador Lippert, and he has stated that he acted alone.  Kim was a member of the organization that hosted Ambassador Lippert, but had not been invited to the function. The incident is still being investigated but Korean press reports say that the U.S. embassy declined South Korean police protection some time ago. Korea is considered a relatively safe country for American diplomats. This will all be sorted out in coming days and weeks, and U.S. and South Korean authorities will determine if other security arrangements are needed for Ambassador Lippert. In any event, it does not appear that this was an egregious security or intelligence failure on anyone’s part. Ambassadors are public figures and it’s not possible to provide them with perfect protection.

What was the assailant’s motivation?

Kim said that he wanted to emphasize that the United States is responsible for preventing improved inter-Korean relations because it does such things as participate in the ongoing combined military exercises with South Korean forces. North Korea cites the annual exercises as a pretext for not talking with the South, claiming each year that they are a prelude to an invasion. But Kim is a sad sack figure even within South Korea’s anti-American far left, which is a very small but vocal minority. Kim has been arrested many times in the past for outrageous and violent behavior, such as throwing pieces of concrete at the Japanese ambassador in 2010. He heads his own little NGO, but the Korean left has mostly avoided him because of his bizarre behavior. He even set himself on fire in 2007 near the Blue House to protest an alleged attack on an associate. Although I have never met him, it is my impression that Kim is clearly mentally and emotionally unstable.

How have the Korean government and people responded?

From the people who wrestled the assailant to the ground, to the surgeons and the thousands of people who are wishing Ambassador Lippert well, South Koreans have responded with an outpouring of support. Ambassador Lippert has already conveyed his deep gratitude for that on Twitter. President Park, who is currently on an official visit to the Middle East, telephoned Ambassador Lippert on Thursday; so did Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se. President Obama also called the ambassador to wish him a speedy recovery. Unfortunately, North Korea’s reaction has been very different: its official media applauded the attack as “deserved punishment” for “a warmongering United States.”

There are press reports that South Koreans are worried that this attack could hurt U.S.-Korean relations.

There is indeed considerable concern being expressed in South Korea at the moment that the incident could hurt bilateral relations, but there is no reason at all to believe that will be the case. Top U.S. officials have already stated that the incident will only strengthen U.S.-Korean relations. I recall the reaction in Seoul to the mass shooting by Seung-hui Cho at Virginia Tech in 2007. Cho had grown up in the United States but remained a Korean citizen. Many South Koreans were very fearful that the U.S. government would punish South Koreans, such as by not issuing visas, and that Americans would attack South Koreans on the streets in the United States. Of course, nothing like that happened. Americans understood the tragedy for what it was: not a “Korean” but a fellow human being with severe mental illness and access to guns.

You say that Kim appears to have a mental disability. But there are press reports that he lectured for the South Korean unification ministry’s education institute as well as at a major university in Seoul. How could such a person get those positions?

I am curious and concerned about those reports. For me, the bigger question about that is not Kim’s particular policy views but how someone with such obvious behavioral and apparently mental issues could receive such positions. But he held those jobs several years ago, so perhaps his behavior has become worse in the meantime.

I understand that Kim has already been charged with attempted murder and that Korean authorities are considering whether to charge him under the National Security Law owing to frequent travel to North Korea and possible other links with the North Korean government.

Unless Korean authorities find evidence that Kim was working for North Korea, which I doubt was the case (but which should of course be investigated due to his numerous trips to the country), it would be unfortunate for U.S.-South Korean relations to charge him under the controversial National Security Law. The U.S. government has criticized that law for decades for the McCarthyite way South Korean governments have sometimes implemented it to suppress alleged “pro-North Korean” thinking. Some South Korean leaders are calling the incident “pro-North Korean terrorism” and the work of “pro-North Korean forces.” That seems to me to be unwisely elevating the violent behavior of one deranged person and ascribing to it a significance it does not deserve.

Ambassador Lippert’s Twitter handle is @mwlippert.

The human rights situation in North Korea has gained considerable attention lately, due in part to an official report released by the United Nations last year. The landmark report condemned North Korea for systematic and widespread human rights violations.

Now for three weeks in March, the UN human rights council meets in Geneva for its regular session. North Korea’s human rights situation is a top agenda item, marked by a rare appearance by North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Young. In Dec. 2014, the UN General Assembly urged the Security Council to take up the situation of North Korea, including a possible referral of those responsible for prosecution in the International Criminal Court.

Looking beyond UN – U.S. – North Korea engagement, the European Union and its members have long-raised similar concerns. In a new policy brief “North Korean Human Rights: A Long Journey with Little Progress,” Mike Cowin details the human rights situation and institutions involved from a British perspective.

“The DPRK will need to make considerable efforts if it is to undermine more than a handful of the hundreds of testimonies of abuse that have been collected and brought to the world’s attention,” writes Cowin, a former deputy chief of mission at the British Embassy in Pyongyang.

Cowin is the Pantech Fellow in the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Before coming to Stanford, he also served in the embassies in Seoul from 2003 to 2007, and in Tokyo from 1992 to 1997.

The EU and North Korea have held seemingly incompatible positions for the past 11 years, and the March council meetings are unlikely to change that impasse. However, Cowin suggests that the EU should seek ways to have more impact.

“Perhaps the EU, which has often led the world on human rights, could find some way to talk with the DPRK, establishing a mutually acceptable way to restart engagement,” he writes.

Cowin says restarting engagement may take the form of quiet, long-term confidence building.

The Korea Program has published additional works focused on human rights in North Korea, including a paper that looks at living with disabilities in North Korea by Katharina Zellweger and an op-ed by Gi-Wook Shin calling for international consensus on the North Korea problem. Engaging North Korea is also a research focus of the Korea Program, which last year produced a policy paper on North-South Korean relations and the prospect for unification.