To promote a deeper understanding of Korean culture, history, and contemporary issues, we recommend the following diverse set of teaching resources and curriculum tools to bring Korea to life in K–12 classrooms. In addition, SPICE offers a national distance-learning course for high school students called the Sejong Korean Scholars Program.
William J. Perry was only 18 when he found himself surrounded by death, a young U.S. Army mapping specialist in Japan during the Army of Occupation. The atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and World War II had just come to an end.
“The vast ruins that once had been the great city of Tokyo – nothing, nothing had prepared me for such utter devastation that was wrought by massive waves of firebombing rained down by American bomber attacks,” said Perry, who was then shipped off to the island of Okinawa in the aftermath of the last great battle of WWII.
More than 200,000 soldiers and civilians had been killed in that closing battle of 1945, codenamed Operation Iceberg.
“Not a single building was left standing; the island was a moonscape denuded of trees and vegetation,” Perry told a rapt audience during a recent speech. “The smell of death was still lingering.”
The young man quickly understood the staggering magnitude of difference in the destruction caused by traditional firepower and these new atomic bombs.
“It had taken multiple strikes by thousands of bombers and tens of thousands of high explosive bombs to lay waste to Tokyo,” he recalls. “The same had been done to Hiroshima and then to Nagasaki with just one plane – and just one bomb. Just one bomb.
“The unleashing of this colossal force indelibly shaped my life in ways that I have now come to see more clearly,” said Perry, who would go on to become the 19th secretary of defense. “It was a transforming experience. In many ways – I grew up from it.”
William J. Perry in 1945 in his U.S. Army Air Corps uniform.
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William J. Perry in 1945 in his U.S. Army Air Corps uniform. |
Now, nearly seven decades later, the 86-year-old Perry has come full circle. His new winter course will take students back to his fateful days in Japan after the United States became the first – and last – nation to use atomic weapons. He’ll go through the Cold War, the arms race and expanding nuclear arsenals, and today’s potential threats of nuclear terrorism and regional wars provoked by North Korea, Iran or South Asia.
Living at the Nuclear Brink: Yesterday & Today (IPS 249) – to serve as the backdrop for an online course at Stanford next year – concludes with the declaration Perry made in 2007: The world must rid itself entirely of nuclear weapons. And students will get a primer on how to get involved in organizations that are working on just that.
“They did not live through the Cold War, so they were never exposed to the dangers and therefore it doesn’t exist to them; it’s just not in their world,” Perry said of millennial and younger students. “I want to make them aware of what the dangers were and how those dangers have evolved.”
Perry and former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, both Democrats, joined former Republican Secretaries of State George P. Shultz and Henry A. Kissinger in launching a series of OpEds in The Wall Street Journal (the first in 2007) that went viral. Together they outlined how nations could work together toward a world without nuclear weapons.
“I think I have some responsibility since I helped build those weapons – and I think that time is running out,” Perry said in an interview.
Perry helped shore up the U.S. nuclear arsenal as undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, procuring nuclear weapons delivery systems for the Carter administration. Later, as secretary of defense for President Bill Clinton, his priority became the dismantling of nuclear weapons around the world.
Today, he works on the Nuclear Security Project along with Shultz, Kissinger and Nunn. Former New York Times correspondent Philip Taubman documents their bipartisan alliance in the book, “The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb.” That fifth cold warrior is Sidney Drell, the renowned Stanford physicist and co-founder of CISAC.
Taubman, a consulting professor at CISAC, will guest lecturer in Perry’s class, along with CISAC’s Siegfried Hecker, David Holloway, Martha Crenshaw and Scott Sagan. Other speakers are expected to include Shultz, a distinguished fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution; Andrei Kokoshin, deputy of the Russian State Duma; Ashton B. Carter, who just stepped down as deputy secretary of defense; Joseph Martz of the Los Alamos National Laboratory; and Joeseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund.
The world is far from banning the bomb. According to the Ploughshares Fund, an estimated 17,300 nuclear weapons remain in the global stockpile, the majority of which are in Russia and the United States.
President Barack Obama declared shortly after taking office in his first foreign policy speech in Prague that because the United States was the only country to have used nuclear weapons, Washington “has a moral responsibility to act.”
“So today, I state clearly and with conviction, America’s commitment to seek the peace
and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” Obama said back in May 2009.
Perry – a senior fellow at CISAC who received his BS and MS from Stanford and a PhD from Pennsylvania State University, all in mathematics – laments the regression of the movement to dismantle the nuclear legacy of the Cold War.
Obama has so far not acted on his pledge in his contentious second term, as China and Russia expand their stockpiles. North Korea and Iran are attempting to build nuclear weapons and India and Pakistan are building more fissile material. The U.S. Senate still has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the U.S. and Russia have not moved forward on a follow-up to the New START Treaty.
Perry recognizes that the issue is slipping from the public conscience, particularly among young people. So he’s putting his name and experience behind a Stanford Online course slated to go live next year. It will correspond with the release of his memoir, “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink” and will take a more documentary approach, weaving together key moments in Perry’s career with lectures, archival footage and interviews and conversations between Perry and his colleagues and counterparts.
"Bill Perry has had a remarkable career and this project draws on his unparalleled experience over a pivotal period in history," said John Mitchell, vice provost for online learning. "We hope his brilliant reflections will be useful to everyone with an interest in the topic, and to teachers and students everywhere."
At the heart of his winter course, online class and memoir are what Perry calls the five great lessons he learned in the nuclear age. The first four are grim remnants of what he witnessed over the years: the destructive nature of the atomic bombs on Japan; his mathematical calculations about the number of deaths from nuclear warfare; his work for the CIA during the Cuban Missile Crisis; and one pre-dawn call in 1978 from the North American Aerospace Defense Command saying there were 200 missiles headed toward the United States from the Soviet Union. That turned out to be a false, but terrifying alarm.
His fifth final lesson is hopeful, if not cautionary. It goes like this:
As secretary of defense from 1994 to 1997, Perry oversaw the dismantling of 8,000 nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union and the United States and helped the former Soviet states of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus to go entirely non-nuclear. In that mission, he often visited Pervomaysk in the Ukraine, which was once the Soviet Union’s largest ICBM site, with 700 nuclear warheads all aimed at targets in the United States.
On his final trip to Pervomaysk in 1996, he joined the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministers to plant sunflowers where those missiles had once stood.
“So reducing the danger of nuclear weapons is not a fantasy; it has been done,” Perry said. “I will not accept that it cannot be done. I shall do everything I can to ensure nuclear weapons will never again be used – because I believe time is not on our side.”
The extraordinary removal and subsequent execution of Jang Song-thaek, the uncle and assumed mentor of North Korean President Kim Jong Un, are developments that have surprised analysts worldwide. The unprecedented announcement of Jang’s execution was unusual news from a country that is normally shrouded in secrecy. For the first time in nearly decades, North Korean leadership has overtly admitted to an attempt to overthrow its leadership.
Broadcast on Dec. 12 via the state-run Korean Central News Agency, North Korean leadership denounced Jang as a “traitor” who sought to undermine the regime. Among the long list of alleged crimes, Jang was accused of engineering the disastrous 2009 attempt to overhaul the national currency system and of profiteering from his sponsorship of economic policies similar to China’s. Jang, 67 years of age, was convicted of treason in a special military court and executed on Thursday.
The complete details of Jang’s execution remain unknown, and the U.S. State Department has not been able to independently verify the news. However, the style and scope of the announcement itself suggest that the Kim regime is engaged in a widespread purge, attempting to consolidate the power of the young leader. Differing viewpoints exist as to what these recent events signal, whether it is a portent of increasing instability and tension in the region. Specialists at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) have offered their analysis to a variety of media outlets.
Shorenstein APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin, Associate Director for Research Daniel C. Sneider, Korean Studies Program Associate Director David Straub, and 2013-14 Pantech Fellow in Korean Studies Sunny Seong-Hyon Lee, who have extensive experience with Korea and are often cited as commentators on regional political leadership, have been cited in national and international news reports.
Former Shorenstein APARC Korean Studies Fellow (2010-11) Sang-Hun Choe has written the lead story for the New York Times. Sneider was quoted in the newspaper report in USA Today World. Straub and Lee weigh in on the matter with two other experts in an article in NK News, a news agency at the forefront of North Korean news coverage. In a recent Financial Times Chinese edition, Lee examined why North Korea still looked "normal" after the death of Jang and analyed whether such a facade can be sustainable. On Dec. 12, Shin was interviewed in MK News on Jang’s removal from power, the article is available in Korean only.
Shorenstein APARC will continue to monitor the situation and will provide updated analysis as additional details unfold.
On Dec. 9, President of the Republic of Korea Park Geun-hye and senior South Korean foreign affairs leadership hosted experts from the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) at the Blue House for dialogue on peace and security issues in the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia.
President Park sought the expertise of Shorenstein APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin and numerous other Center experts, including Korean Studies Program Associate Director David Straub and 2013-14 Visiting Koret Fellow in Korean Studies Ambassador Kathleen Stephens, who are often cited for their research on contemporary U.S.-Korea relations. The meeting was reported in South Korea’s Joong Ang Daily, also recognizing Park’s visit to Stanford in 2009. The press briefing is available at the Blue House website.
Following this meeting, on Dec. 10, Shorenstein APARC co-hosted The Eleventh Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum with the Korean National Diplomatic Academy in Seoul. The Forum focused on North Korea policy, the U.S.-ROK alliance, and the current dynamics in Northeast Asia.
Started in 2006, the Forum brings together distinguished South Korean and American scholars, experts, and former and civilian officials to workshop on issues of national interest to both countries. The Forum is now convened semi-annually and the location shifts between the two locations – Seoul and Stanford. To encourage candid conversation, the Forum follows the Chatham House Rule which respects the confidentiality of individual contributions during dialogue.
A report summarizing the objectives and outcomes of the Eleventh Annual Korea-United States West Coast Strategic Forum is forthcoming.
In this eleventh session of the Strategic Forum, former senior American and South Korean government officials and other leading experts will discuss current developments in the Korean Peninsula and North Korea policy, the future of the U.S.-South Korean alliance, and a strategic vision for Northeast Asia. The session is hosted by the Korean Studies Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, in association with Korea National Diplomatic Academy, a top South Korean think tank.
PARTICIPANTS
United States:
Michael Armacost, Distinguished Fellow, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University
Karl Eikenberry, Distinguished Fellow, Shorenstein APARC
Siegfried Hecker, Professor, Management Science and Engineering; former co-director, CISAC, Stanford University
Thomas Fingar, Distinghished Fellow, Shorenstein APARC
T.J. Pempel, Professor, Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
Gi-Wook Shin, Professor, Sociology; Director, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University
Daniel Sneinder, Associate Director for Research, Shorenstein APARC
David Straub, Associate Director, Korean Studies Program, Shorentein APARC
Kathleen Stephens, 2013–14 Koret Fellow, Korean Studies Program, Shorenstein APARC
Seoul, Korea
Reports of the detention and eventual release by North Korean authorities of an 85-year-old Palo Alto retiree, Merrill Newman, spurred a wave of media interest. Newman, a Korean War veteran, had decided to go on a tour of North Korea, apparently in part to revisit the place where he had served more than 60 years ago.
He was accompanied by a fellow retiree, Bob Hamrdla, also a Palo Alto resident. According to accounts provided by Hamrdla, Newman was taken off the plane as he was leaving the country after a nine-day tour. During his detention, Newman was videotaped reading an apology, in which he accepted responsibility for “hostile acts” and requested forgiveness.
After 42 days in custody, Newman was released and arrived back in the United States on Dec. 7. Newman was greeted by his family and spoke briefly to reporters, recognizing the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang for securing his release, before heading home. The full details that led to Newman’s detention still remain unclear.
Both local and national media rushed to understand these events, first reported in detail by the San Jose Mercury News (Nov. 20). Reporters sought out expertise at Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, speaking to Associate Director for Research Daniel Sneider and to Korean Studies Program Associate Director David Straub, who both have long experience with Korea and have been frequently cited as experts.
Sneider was cited in newspaper reports in the San Jose Mercury News (Nov. 20) and the Los Angeles Times; was interviewed on local radio, and also interviewed for broadcast on the evening news programs of the CBS, ABC and NBC networks local affiliates. Straub was quoted by NK News, a leading agency specializing in coverage of North Korea, also cited by the Washington Post. Most recently, Sneider was cited in the San Jose Mercury News (Dec. 7) upon the confirmation of Newman’s release.
The sixth annual Koret Workshop will convene to examine the obstacles to and opportunies for increased North-South Korean cooperation.
In light of changing circumstances on the Korean Peninsula, including the inauguration of new leaderships in both Seoul and Pyongyang, the workshop will take a fresh look at previous, existing, and proposed or possible joint North-South cooperative projects.
This event is made possible through the generous support of the Koret Foundation.
Bechtel Conference Center
Pyongyang is moving ahead on all nuclear fronts: It announced in an April 2 statement that it will adjust and alter the use of existing nuclear facilities to simultaneously stimulate the economy and build up nuclear armed forces, implying that it will promote both commercial and military nuclear programs. It is expanding its missile launch facilities. It has at least one new nuclear test tunnel prepared for another test. It has restarted its plutonium production reactor and continues on the construction of the experimental light water reactor, likely to begin operation in late 2014 or early 2015. It appears to have doubled the size of the modern centrifuge facility in Yongbyon. These developments have set back progress toward restarting the six-party talks. Dr. Siegfried Hecker, drawing on his experiences in North Korea and technical analysis, will review the status of North Korea's nuclear program and suggest a path to resolving the nuclear crisis.
Siegfried Hecker served as co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) from 2007 to 2012. He directed the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986-1997 and served as senior fellow until 2005.
Stanford Center at Peking University
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C220
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor emeritus (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security.
Dr. Hecker’s current research interests include nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy, and plutonium science. At the end of the Cold War, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. In June 2016, the Los Alamos Historical Society published two volumes edited by Dr. Hecker. The works, titled Doomed to Cooperate, document the history of Russian-U.S. laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation since 1992.
Dr. Hecker’s research projects at CISAC focus on cooperation with young and senior nuclear professionals in Russia and China to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism worldwide, to avoid a return to a nuclear arms race, and to promote the safe and secure global expansion of nuclear power. He also continues to assess the technical and political challenges of nuclear North Korea and the nuclear aspirations of Iran.
Dr. Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.
Among his professional distinctions, Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the 2020 Building Bridges Award from the Pacific Century Institute, the 2018 National Engineering Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies, the 2017 American Nuclear Society Eisenhower Medal, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.
Gi-Wook Shin, director of the Asia-Pacific Research Center, says that Korea-China and Korea-U.S. relations are important in dealing with North Korea issues, at a recent lecture organized by the San Francisco Chapter of the National Unification Advisory Council.
The U.S. Ambassador to China, Gary Locke, was surrounded by attendees at the China 2.0 conference.
Martin Lau, President of Tencent, opened the conference with a keynote discussing Tencent's business model, international partnership strategies, and the social impact of internet on Chinese society.
In the second keynote address by Gary Locke, the U.S. Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, he shared his insights into China's recent advances in the technology sector, the Chinese government’s approach to managing the internet, and the risks and opportunities U.S. companies should consider before entering the Chinese market.
Charles Chao, CEO and Chairman of the Board of SINA, closed the conference with a keynote on how Weibo, one of SINA's most popular services, has made an unprecedented impact on Chinese society.
Growth and Innovation in Firms
Tencent started out in 1998 when China had four million internet users. Since then the market has grown 150 times to today’s 600 million users. Tencent’s equity market capitalization recently surpassed the $100 billion mark, and the company generates significantly more revenues than its higher-valued peer Facebook. In his speech, Lau modestly described the company’s “secret sauce number one” as “luck.”
We support the companies to make them successful, and in that process, we try to benefit from the know-how, we try to benefit from the growth, and we also contribute our know-how to these companies.
Martin Lau
President, Tencent
Lau also elaborated how Tencent has created a supportive environment for startups to grow and develop. “…[O]ur approach is actually to back the founders, to say the founders will be the driving force of the company, so unlike Jack [Ma], who said ‘Yahoo is in my pocket,’ we don’t put any company in our pocket. We support the companies to make them successful, and in that process, we try to benefit from the know-how, we try to benefit from the growth, and we also contribute our know-how to these companies.”
In partnership with Innovation Works, Tencent invested another $1 million in August 2013 in a San Francisco startup Kamcord, which allows users to record and share mobile gameplays. While Tencent has been investing in startups in Silicon Valley, Chao gave an example of SINA Weibo’s recent experimental collaboration with a local home appliance manufacturer in China, Hisense. Weibo users can link their accounts to the Hisense air-conditioner, which can then be switched on and off remotely.
Charles Chao, CEO of SINA, talked to participants at the China 2.0 conference.
Charles predicted that internet companies will continue to disrupt other areas, including finance (with micro-loans) and commerce. SINA’s valuation was boosted earlier in 2013 by Alibaba’s acquisition of an 18% stake in SINA Weibo. Today SINA is valued at over $6 billion.
Social Impact of Internet
It [Weibo] basically serves as a check and balance in society and makes Chinese society much better.
Charles Chao
CEO, SINA
SINA Weibo, launched in 2009, has over 500 million registered users, and over 56 million unique daily active users. It continues to dominate the market as China’s leading micro-blogging platform. It would be no exaggeration to say that Weibo has transformed social interaction in China by bringing the public square to everyone’s smartphone. “[Weibo] allows every user in China to report, to publish, to share the content, the information directly, and also not only create content but also distribute content themselves through social relations and through the follower relationship… It basically serves as a check and balance in society and makes Chinese society much better,” Chao argued.
The message was echoed by Lau in his keynote. “...[A]ll these internet companies, a lot of them are making an impact on society in an incredible way, bringing people closer together, changing businesses, and also making society more transparent… I think together we are really making a lot of changes and impact on Chinese society and I think we are ready to make more,” Lau said.
Ambassador Locke also emphasized the importance of a free and open internet to China’s economy and society in his address. “Attempts to unleash the economic power of the internet while controlling the political and cultural content are ultimately counterproductive, and indeed at odds with each other,” commented Locke. “Restrictions on communications that limit the free flow of ideas, whether political, economic, or personal, will only serve to prevent countries from moving forward. Frankly speaking, the United States and China’s government have different views on these issues but we are constantly, consistently, and candidly discussing them.”
Sino-U.S. Links
During a recent meeting between U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the White House, Biden said that he believed China’s development was not only in the interest of the United States, but for the rest of the world as well.
Ambassador Locke also highlighted the importance of how the two countries handle global issues. “Whether it’s finding a cure to some of the most dreaded diseases of the world, or ending the proliferation of nuclear weapons, whether in North Korea or Iran and elsewhere, China and the United States have to be involved together. Indeed, the world is looking for leadership from both the United States and China to solve some of the toughest challenges and problems facing the universe.”
Expecting the Chinese system to work on American terms is a recipe for failure.
Gary Locke
U.S. Ambassador to China
Despite finding agreement on some issues, China and United States still hold many differing views. The intellectual property (IP) challenge is one of them. "Expecting the Chinese system to work on American terms is a recipe for failure.” Locke added that some companies conclude that “the best way to avoid being ripped off in China it is to stay out of China—but besides missing a tremendous opportunity, companies that never set foot in China are not immune from having their IP infringed upon in China, and may later find infringing products making their way back to the United States or to third-world markets.”
Martin Lau, President of Tencent, and Marguerite Gong Hancock, director of China 2.0 at the China 2.0 conference.
The annual China 2.0 conference, now in its fourth year, attracted over 600 Stanford students and faculty along with current and rising leaders from China and Silicon Valley's tech, entrepreneur, and investor communities.
The panel and interactive discussions were focused on topics including Big Data, venture capital’s outlook on internet and digital media, China’s role in the global innovation network, cross-border venture finance, and Chinese mobile firms going global. These sessions brought together 20 founders, senior executives and leaders from: Asia Society, Baidu, Bertelsmann, DCM, Foursquare, Foxconn Interconnect Technology, FunPlus Game, GGV Capital, GSR Ventures, LinkedIn, Queen's Road Capital, Riverwood Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and WestSummit Capital.