The 11th Annual Koret Workshop

A dramatic opening created by the unique strategic outlooks and personalities of Moon Jae-in, Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump instigated a series of highly symbolic summits in the early months of 2018. The process kicked off by those summits has bogged down, however, as the necessary compromises for an agreement between the United States and North Korea have proved elusive. This year's Koret Workshop will therefore invite experts from a variety of areas in order to reflect on what the stumbling blocks have been as well as prospects for overcoming them. Conference participants will work towards better understanding and supporting potential emerging solutions to the persistent conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

The workshop will consist of three sessions:

Session I: Assessments of Summit Diplomacy

Session II: Challenges and Opportunities in Media Coverage

Session III: Prospects and Pitfalls in the Near-Term

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The stories of North Korea and Myanmar (Burma) are two of Asia’s most difficult. For decades they were infamous as the region’s most militarized and repressed, self-isolated and under sanctions by the international community while, from Singapore to Japan, the rest of Asia saw historic wealth creation. Andray Abrahamian, author of the recent book North Korea and Myanmar: Divergent Paths (McFarland, 2018), examines and compares the recent histories of North Korea and Myanmar, asking how both became pariahs and why Myanmar has been able to find a path out of isolation while North Korea has not. 

Abrahamian finds that both countries were faced with severe security threats following decolonization. Myanmar was able to largely take care of its main threats in the 1990s and 2000s, allowing it the space to address the reasons for its pariah status. North Korea's response to its security threat has been to develop nuclear weapons, which in turn perpetuates and exacerbates its isolation and pariah status. In addition, Pyongyang has developed a state ideology and a coercive apparatus unmatched by Myanmar, insulating its decision makers from political pressures and issues of legitimacy to a greater degree.

Dr. Andray Abrahamian is currently the 2018-19 Koret Fellow in Korea Program at Stanford. He is a member of the US National Committee on North Korea and an Adjunct Fellow at Pacific Forum and at Griffith University. Working for a non-profit, Choson Exchange, has taken him to the DPRK nearly 30 times; he has also lived in Myanmar.

Abstract: My research focuses on the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and on the release of radioactive contamination throughout Japan. Based on 14 months of fieldwork in Japan, the research examines the crisis of expertise that ensued when many citizens became wary of state institutional experts, especially in their capacities to explain and manage the problems engendered by residual radioactivity.In this context of public skepticism, I ask the following: how does the Japanese state attempt to govern the hazards of radioactive contamination, and ultimately, the reconstruction of normality in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster? I argue that the management of radiation hazard after Fukushima includes an important reorganization of state expertise, which now moves beyond traditional forms of risk communication and institutional experts.My research advances policyand public-relevant understandings of repliesto radioactive contamination by highlighting the needs of appropriate educational infrastructure around radiation risk, while emphasizing democratic opportunity for citizen-government collaboration. Within post-Fukushima Japan, anthropological investigations of the governance of radiation hazards are essential for understanding the configurations of cultural schemas, social relationships, and technological interplays that led individuals to “accept” life amidst toxicity and other to refuse it.

Speaker's Biography: Maxime Polleri is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at York University. His current research focuses on the 2011 Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear disaster and on the crisis of expertise that ensued, in which many citizens have become wary of state institutional experts, especially in their capacities to manage the problems engendered by residual radioactivity. In such a context, his dissertation is concerned with how the Fukushima crisis has participated in the formations of new forms of expertise and consequently, new means of governing toxicity. It asks: How is radioactive hazard being governed in the wake of a crisis of legitimacy against state institutional expert? Based on 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork throughout Japan, the dissertation argues that averting the crisis of expertise and managing the reconstruction of what “normality” involves in a post-Fukushima Japan include a fundamental reorganization of state governance, where the dissemination of radiation hazards cannot simply rest on dry, clinical manner in which government-packaged expertise about radiation was initially promulgated to a former lay public. In particular, these shift in the governance of radioactive risk are increasingly being enacted by promoting a state-sponsored affective embodiment toward nuclear matter, as well as by encouraging the endeavor of citizen science, where former lay citizens now track and monitor residual radioactivity in their environment. His fieldwork was funded by the Japan Foundation and the Canada Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. His work has been published in Anthropology Now, Anthropology Today, and Medical Anthropology Quarterly Second Spear.

Abstract: The American Lab, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2018, tells the story of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (the Lab) from the events leading to its founding in 1952 through its transfer to private status in 2008 (after 66 years of sole University of California management). It highlights the important episodes in that journey beginning with the invention of Polaris, the first submarine launched ballistic missile, continuing through the Lab’s controversial role in the Star Wars program, and helping lead the development of the stockpile stewardship program after the cessation of nuclear testing. It describes the intense focus on-laboratory-scale thermonuclear fusion with early work in magnetic fusion to the world’s largest effort on laser fusion that ultimately resulted in the construction of the National Ignition Facility. It includes a number of smaller projects ranging from its participation in founding the Human Genome Project (and its subsequent effort in biodefense) to its array of activities on global climate and basic research. Throughout, the book emphasizes the national security environment in which the Lab existed and the increasing role of politics in “big science”.

Bio: C. Bruce Tarter is a theoretical physicist with a BS from MIT and a PhD from Cornell. He began as a researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1967 and eventually served as its Director from 1994-2002. Since that time as Director Emeritus he has served on a number of Boards and Task Forces including the National Academy study of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.