Two decades ago, South Korea appeared on the path to greatly increased security. The Cold War was ending, fundamentally improving South Korea’s regional security environment. While retaining an alliance with the United States, South Korea was able to normalize relations with all of its neighbors except North Korea. It outpaced North Korea economically, technologically, politically, diplomatically, and militarily. Enjoying a dynamic democracy and firmly committed to the free market, South Korea seemed destined to grow only stronger vis-à-vis North Korea as the leading Korean state and to be well-positioned to preserve its security and integrity against much larger neighbors.
Today, however, South Korea unexpectedly faces a new constellation of significant threats to its security from both traditional and non-traditional sources.
This closed workshop will examine the above issues from the viewpoint of enhancing South Korea’s security in coming decades.
This workshop is supported by the generous grant from Koret Foundation.
Bechtel Conference Center
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
General (retired) Byung Kwan Kim is the inaugural Koret Fellow for 2008-09 academic year. He was the Deputy Commander of ROK-US Combined Forces Command and the Commander of Ground Component Command.
Koret Fellowship was established by the generous support from Koret Foundation to bring leading professionals in Asia and the United States to Stanford to study United States-Korea relations. The fellows will conduct their own research on the bilateral relationship, with an emphasis on contemporary relations with the broad aim of fostering greater understanding and closer ties between the two countries.
Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in the Department of Sociology, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the founding director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) since 2001, all at Stanford University. In May 2024, Shin also launched the Taiwan Program at APARC. He served as director of APARC for two decades (2005-2025). As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, democracy, migration, and international relations.
In Summer 2023, Shin launched the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), which is a new research initiative committed to addressing emergent social, cultural, economic, and political challenges in Asia. Across four research themes– “Talent Flows and Development,” “Nationalism and Racism,” “U.S.-Asia Relations,” and “Democratic Crisis and Reform”–the lab brings scholars and students to produce interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, policy-relevant, and comparative studies and publications. Shin’s latest book, The Four Talent Giants, a comparative study of talent strategies of Japan, Australia, China, and India to be published by Stanford University Press in the summer of 2025, is an outcome of SNAPL.
Shin is also the author/editor of twenty-seven books and numerous articles. His books include The Four Talent Giants: National Strategies for Human Resource Development Across Japan, Australia, China, and India (2025); Korean Democracy in Crisis: The Threat of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization (2022); The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security (2021); Superficial Korea (2017); Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War (2016); Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015); Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010); Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (2007); and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (2006). Due to the wide popularity of his publications, many have been translated and distributed to Korean audiences. His articles have appeared in academic and policy journals, including American Journal of Sociology, World Development, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Political Science Quarterly, Journal of Asian Studies, Comparative Education, International Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, Journal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs.
Shin is not only the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, but also continues to actively raise funds for Korean/Asian studies at Stanford. He gives frequent lectures and seminars on topics ranging from Korean nationalism and politics to Korea's foreign relations, historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia, and talent strategies. He serves on councils and advisory boards in the United States and South Korea and promotes policy dialogue between the two allies. He regularly writes op-eds and gives interviews to the media in both Korean and English.
Before joining Stanford in 2001, Shin taught at the University of Iowa (1991-94) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1994-2001). After receiving his BA from Yonsei University in Korea, he was awarded his MA and PhD from the University of Washington in 1991.
No longer in residence.
David Straub was named associate director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) on July 1, 2008. Prior to that he was a 2007–08 Pantech Fellow at the Center. Straub is the author of the book, Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea, published in 2015.
An educator and commentator on current Northeast Asian affairs, Straub retired in 2006 from his role as a U.S. Department of State senior foreign service officer after a 30-year career focused on Northeast Asian affairs. He worked over 12 years on Korean affairs, first arriving in Seoul in 1979.
Straub served as head of the political section at the U.S. embassy in Seoul from 1999 to 2002 during popular protests against the United States, and he played a key working-level role in the Six-Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear program as the State Department's Korea country desk director from 2002 to 2004. He also served eight years at the U.S. embassy in Japan. His final assignment was as the State Department's Japan country desk director from 2004 to 2006, when he was co-leader of the U.S. delegation to talks with Japan on the realignment of the U.S.-Japan alliance and of U.S. military bases in Japan.
After leaving the Department of State, Straub taught U.S.-Korean relations at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in the fall of 2006 and at the Graduate School of International Studies of Seoul National University in spring 2007. He has published a number of papers on U.S.-Korean relations. His foreign languages are Korean, Japanese, and German.
Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Ben Self is the inaugural Takahashi Fellow in Japanese Studies at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Prior to joining the Center in September 2008, Self was at the Henry L. Stimson Center as a Senior Associate working on Japanese security policy beginning in 1998. While at the Stimson Center, he directed projects on Japan-China relations, fostering security cooperation between the U.S.-Japan Alliance and the PRC, Japan’s Nuclear Option, and Confidence-Building Measures. Self has also carried out research and writing in areas such as nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, ballistic missile defense, Taiwan’s security, Northeast Asian security dynamics, the domestic politics of Japanese defense policy, and Japan’s global security role.
From 2003 until 2008, Ben was living in Africa—in Malawi and Tanzania—and is now studying the role of Japan in Africa, including in humanitarian relief, economic development, conflict prevention, and resource extraction.
Self earned his undergraduate degree in Political Science at Stanford in 1988, and an M.A. in Japan Studies and International Economics from Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. While there, he was a Reischauer Center Summer Intern at the Research Institute for Peace and Security (RIPS) in Tokyo. He later worked in the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and was a Visiting Research Fellow at Keio University on a Fulbright grant from 1996 until 1998.
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Donald W. Keyser retired from the U.S. Department of State in September 2004 after a 32-year career. He had been a member of the Senior Foreign Service since 1990, and held Washington-based ambassadorial-level assignments 1998-2004. Throughout his career he focused on U.S. policy toward East Asia, particularly China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and the Korean Peninsula. Fluent in Chinese and professionally conversant in Japanese, Russian and French, he served three tours at the American Embassy in Beijing, two tours at the American Embassy in Tokyo, and almost a dozen years in relevant domestic assignments. In the course of his career, Keyser logged extensive domestic and foreign experience in senior management operations, conflict resolution, intelligence operations and analysis, and law enforcement programs and operations. A Russian language major in college and a Soviet/Russian area studies specialist through M.A. work, Keyser served 1998-99 as Special Negotiator and Ambassador for Regional Conflicts in the Former USSR. He sought to develop policy initiatives and strategies to resolve three principal conflicts, leading the U.S. delegation in negotiations with four national leaders and three separatist leaders in the Caucasus region.
Keyser earned his B.A. degree, Summa Cum Laude, with a dual major in Political Science and Russian Area Studies, from the University of Maryland. He pursued graduate studies at The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., from 1965-67 (Russian area and language focus) and 1970-72 (Chinese area and language focus). He attended the National War College, Fort McNair, Washington (1988-89), earning a certificate equivalent to an M.S., Military Science; and the National Defense University Capstone Program (summer 1995) for flag-rank military officers and civilians.
Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Dr. Jong Seok Lee was the Minister of Unification, and the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Security Council in Korea. He is currently a Senior Fellow at Sejong Institute in Korea. He has published books on North Korea-China relations, contemporary North Korea, and Korea unification.
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Daniel C. Sneider is a lecturer in international policy at Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy and a lecturer in East Asian Studies at Stanford. His own research is focused on current U.S. foreign and national security policy in Asia and on the foreign policy of Japan and Korea. Since 2017, he has been based partly in Tokyo as a Visiting Researcher at the Canon Institute for Global Studies, where he is working on a diplomatic history of the creation and management of the U.S. security alliances with Japan and South Korea during the Cold War. Sneider contributes regularly to the leading Japanese publication Toyo Keizai as well as to the Nelson Report on Asia policy issues.
Sneider is the former Associate Director for Research at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford. At Shorenstein APARC, Sneider directed the center’s Divided Memories and Reconciliation project, a comparative study of the formation of wartime historical memory in East Asia. He is the co-author of a book on wartime memory and elite opinion, Divergent Memories, from Stanford University Press. He is the co-editor, with Dr. Gi-Wook Shin, of Divided Memories: History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia, from Routledge and of Confronting Memories of World War II: European and Asian Legacies, from University of Washington Press.
Sneider was named a National Asia Research Fellow by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the National Bureau of Asian Research in 2010. He is the co-editor of Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia, Shorenstein APARC, distributed by Brookings Institution Press, 2007; of First Drafts of Korea: The U.S. Media and Perceptions of the Last Cold War Frontier, 2009; as well as of Does South Asia Exist?: Prospects for Regional Integration, 2010. Sneider’s path-breaking study “The New Asianism: Japanese Foreign Policy under the Democratic Party of Japan” appeared in the July 2011 issue of Asia Policy. He has also contributed to other volumes, including “Strategic Abandonment: Alliance Relations in Northeast Asia in the Post-Iraq Era” in Towards Sustainable Economic and Security Relations in East Asia: U.S. and ROK Policy Options, Korea Economic Institute, 2008; “The History and Meaning of Denuclearization,” in William H. Overholt, editor, North Korea: Peace? Nuclear War?, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, 2019; and “Evolution or new Doctrine? Japanese security policy in the era of collective self-defense,” in James D.J. Brown and Jeff Kingston, eds, Japan’s Foreign Relations in Asia, Routledge, December 2017.
Sneider’s writings have appeared in many publications, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Slate, Foreign Policy, the New Republic, National Review, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Oriental Economist, Newsweek, Time, the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times, and Yale Global. He is frequently cited in such publications.
Prior to coming to Stanford, Sneider was a long-time foreign correspondent. His twice-weekly column for the San Jose Mercury News looking at international issues and national security from a West Coast perspective was syndicated nationally on the Knight Ridder Tribune wire service. Previously, Sneider served as national/foreign editor of the Mercury News. From 1990 to 1994, he was the Moscow bureau chief of the Christian Science Monitor, covering the end of Soviet Communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union. From 1985 to 1990, he was Tokyo correspondent for the Monitor, covering Japan and Korea. Prior to that he was a correspondent in India, covering South and Southeast Asia. He also wrote widely on defense issues, including as a contributor and correspondent for Defense News, the national defense weekly.
Sneider has a BA in East Asian history from Columbia University and an MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C-327
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow from 2010 through 2015 and the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 2009.
From 2005 through 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Fingar served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-01 and 2004-05), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001-03), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994-2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-94), and chief of the China Division (1986-89). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.
Fingar is a graduate of Cornell University (A.B. in Government and History, 1968), and Stanford University (M.A., 1969 and Ph.D., 1977 both in political science). His most recent books are From Mandate to Blueprint: Lessons from Intelligence Reform (Stanford University Press, 2021), Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford University Press, 2011), The New Great Game: China and South and Central Asia in the Era of Reform, editor (Stanford University Press, 2016), Uneasy Partnerships: China and Japan, the Koreas, and Russia in the Era of Reform (Stanford, 2017), and Fateful Decisions: Choices that will Shape China’s Future, co-edited with Jean Oi (Stanford, 2020). His most recent article is, "The Role of Intelligence in Countering Illicit Nuclear-Related Procurement,” in Matthew Bunn, Martin B. Malin, William C. Potter, and Leonard S Spector, eds., Preventing Black Market Trade in Nuclear Technology (Cambridge, 2018)."
In 2006, public reports began to circulate that North Korea was constructing a large new rocket testing and launching center in a rural North-western coastal valley. A Jane's article by Bermudez nicknamed the complex Pongdong-ni and reported on some of the individual facilities. Coming in the aftermath of the 2006 Taepo-dong II launch failure from the existing Musadun-ri launch center on North Korea's East coast, there has been world-wide speculation and ‘expert' analysis, much of it based on Google Earth images which have not been updated since 2003 (Musadun-ri) and 2006 (Pongdong-ni). A recent government report that a rocket engine test occured during the summer of 2008 ratcheted up the media rhetoric: meanwhile little has been admitted by North Korea. In our presentation, we will examine the growth of the DPRK's rocket programs using commercial tools and satellite visible and multispectral data previously available only the government intelligence and military analysts. In our presentation:
Lew Franklin is a long-time CISAC Affiliate, joining CISAC in 1992 as a Visiting Scholar after retiring as a TRW vice president, and previously vice president and co-founder of ESL, a defense intelligence company. Upon retirement he was awarded the CIA's Gold Medal for career-long contributions to foreign weapons assessment and national technical means capabilities. At CISAC his work focused on technical intelligence related problems, including wmd proliferation, export controls, defense conversion, and especially conversion of retired ICBMs for low-cost space launches. In 1993, he headed the launch campaign that mated the Stanford Quakesat satellite onto a retired Russian SS-19 Rokot launcher for a successful launch to orbit. His current research into Open Source Technical Intelligence is in support of the upcoming visit to North Korea led by Lewis and Hecker.
Nick Hansen graduated with a BA in Geography from Syracuse University in 1964. His career in national intelligence spans 43 years first as an Army imagery analyst, and then in industry with GTE-EDL, ESL/TRW, Tera Research as a cofounder Vice Pres. and then again at ESL (now TRW/Northrop-Grumman) as a Director. Currently he is in an SES position at the Navy's NIOC-Suitland, MD, as an image technology expert associated with Pennsylvania State University. He has been twice nominated for the NRO's Pioneer award for innovative imagery uses and techniques development and is an expert in foreign weapons systems and test ranges. Currently Nick is supporting John Lewis' North Korea project.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
North Korea is widely regarded internationally as a long-term threat to regional peace and stability and to the international nuclear nonproliferation regime. Conservatives support the use of sanctions and other pressures to counter these threats, while liberals hope that reasonable efforts at accommodation will persuade the Pyongyang regime to change course. Professor Lankov maintains that neither approach will work. He urges a new approach, based on engagement but with the long-term goal of inducing regime change from within North Korea.
Andrei Lankov, a historian of Korea and one of the world's top experts on North Korea, is an associate professor at Kookmin University in Seoul. He received undergraduate and graduate degrees at Leningrad State University and attended Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang, North Korea. He has also taught at Leningrad State University and Australian National University. Lankov is the author of many books in English, Korean, and Russian, including From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea, 1945-1960; Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956; North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea; and The Dawn of Modern Korea. Among his most recent articles is "Staying Alive: Why North Korea Will Not Change," which appeared in the March/April 2008 edition of Foreign Affairs. He is also a columnist for the Chosun Ilbo and Korea Times in South Korea.
This special seminar is supported by a generous grant from Koret Foundation.
Philippines Conference Room
North Korea has often been considered an aberration in the post-Cold War international system, a relic of a Stalinist past. In fact, a close examination of North Korean foreign relations during the Cold War period reveals that Pyongyang's behavior never fit neatly into the paradigm of a bipolar international order, and that the Cold War itself had a distinctive dynamic in the Korean context. This dynamic helps to explain the continued existence of a divided Korea to this day, long after the bipolar international system has ended. Based largely on formerly secret materials from North Korea's Cold War allies in Eastern Europe, this paper suggests that Pyongyang's "aberrent" behavior long pre-dates the 1990s. It argues that North Korea has exhibited more continuity than change in the way it has dealt with the outside world over the last several decades, focusing on three areas of foreign policy: economic extraction, political non-alignment, and the development of an independent nuclear weapons capability.
Charles K. Armstrong is The Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Korean Studies in the Social Sciences in the Department of History and the Director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University. In the fall semester of 2008 he was a Visiting Professor in the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University.
A specialist in the modern history of Korea and East Asia, Professor Armstrong is the author or editor of several books, including The Koreas (Routledge, 2007), The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 (Cornell, 2003), Korea at the Center: Dynamics of Regionalism in Northeast Asia (M.E. Sharpe, 2006), and Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy, and the State (Routledge, second edition 2006), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. His current book projects include a study of North Korean foreign relations in the Cold War era and a history of modern East Asia.
Professor Armstrong holds a B.A. in Chinese Studies from Yale University, an M.A. in International Relations from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago. He has been a member of the Columbia faculty since 1996.
Philippines Conference Room
President Obama’s inauguration one week from today invites us to consider the
immediate agenda and outlook for U.S.-ROK relations. That agenda might usefully
address the following items:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s apparent stroke in mid-August raises the possibility of near-term political succession in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea). This has prompted U.S. and Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) planners—concerned with command and control of North Korea’s fissile material under conditions of regime disarray, internecine conflict, or collapse—to examine afresh the alliance’s assumptions, contingency plans, and political strategies.
The Korean Peninsula occupies a central place in the Chinese national security calculus. Chinese policy above all aims to avert military conflict on the Peninsula and regime collapse in the North. Conflict and collapse scenarios could embroil China in unwanted military action, imperil its long-term economic development program, jeopardize its crucial ties with the United States and South Korea, open the floodgates to North Korean refugees, and alter the Northeast Asian strategic landscape to China’s disadvantage.
For these and other reasons, China has emphasized the need for a peaceful, negotiated resolution of the problem posed by North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. It has encouraged North Korea to emulate, to the extent feasible, China’s own post-1978 economic reforms. At the same time, China has deepened political and commercial ties with South Korea, and sustained the North Korean regime through generous economic and military assistance.
China’s core interests—plus its special ties with North Korea’s military, party, security, and economic elite—have persuaded many outside observers that Beijing possesses not only unique insights into the Pyongyang regime’s internal dynamics but also potential leverage. Further, many assume that China, having both the need and ability to influence North Korea’s political succession, will do precisely that—shape, or if necessary impose, a North Korean succession that accords with China’s policy interests.
China has consistently denied having superior knowledge and usable leverage, and has adamantly rebuffed speculation regarding its national ambitions and potential actions.
Such disclaimers notwithstanding, some in the ROK and the United States postulate that national and alliance interests might best be served by “coordinating” with China on North Korean regime change/collapse scenarios. A few even argue that the alliance should “subcontract” this issue to China, thereby tacitly acquiescing in its intervention to ensure a peaceful, stable transition.
Despite the high stakes, crucial U.S.-ROK contingency planning seemingly has been approached in an environment that is rich in conjecture and hope, and poor in hard intelligence and agreed assessments.
Yet it is possible—indeed imperative—to do better than this. With respect to one small part of the complex whole—China’s interests, potential leverage, and likely actions—a starting point for rigorous
analysis might include the following issues and questions:
Knowledge : Does China in fact enjoy superior knowledge of internal DPRK decision-making? What are the sources of and limits upon such knowledge? How have the North Koreans approachedspecial bilateral ties with the Chinese in the realms of party-to-party affairs and military cooperation?
Are there reasons to believe that China contributed to North Korea’s nuclear program? If not, are there reasons to believe that North Korea shared any knowledge whatsoever of its activities with China? Has China sought to cultivate North Korean officials and, if so, when, and how successfully? How has North Korea reacted to any such Chinese activities?
Leverage: How much leverage does China enjoy over North Korean political, military, and economic decisions? What are the sources of such leverage? What are the constraints? How should one assess North Korea’s likely response to Chinese pressure? What options does North Korea enjoy in deflecting such pressure?
A Proactive Approach by China to North Korean Political Succession : What posture is China likely to adopt toward political succession in North Korea? What are its policy options? What assets does it hold? How does the issue of North Korean succession—including the possibility of regime chaos or collapse—fit into China’s broad strategic posture? What external considerations (especially those involving the ROK, the United States, Japan, and Russia) must China take into account?
ROK and U.S. Policy Considerations Regarding China’s Potential Involvement in a North Korean • Political Succession: What essential posture should the ROK and the United States adopt? On the one hand, should they enlist China’s cooperation in “managing” political succession in North Korea, or endeavor to minimize that involvement, instead addressing North Korean succession scenarios as primarily a task for the U.S.-ROK alliance? On the other hand, should they accept (and even tacitly encourage) China’s superior ability to effect a stable succession that preserves peace and stability? Should they broaden the scope of the current six-party talks to include formal discussion among “the five” (excepting North Korea)? Or should some other approach be adopted?
On one level, U.S. and ROK planners must urgently address these issues in order to have confidence that the two allies can deal smoothly with any North Korean political succession scenario. On a deeper level, a rigorous bilateral analysis of this type can serve to strengthen the U.S.-ROK alliance itself by fully illuminating a broader set of underlying national attitudes, interests, and priorities.
