Can anyone say that South Korean society and politics have become "transformed" since the 1987 democratic opening and transition? This statement is "admittedly ambitious" as a claim "because an endpoint of transformation can never be attained with certainty," the speaker argues.  After a successful democratic transition, South Korea’s next challenge lies in consolidating its democratic gains and building durable political institutions, requiring full compliance with democratic norms by all major political forces and interest groups in civil society. This on-going quest for liberal democracy, not easy for South Korea’s Sixth Republic, will be explored in Professor Kihl's presentation.

Young Whan Kihl is currently a visiting scholar in the Korean Studies Program at APARC. He is Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, at Iowa State University. Professor Kihl taught courses on International Relations, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Behavior, and Comparative Foreign Policy at Iowa State University, 1974-2006, and served as Chair of the Department of Political Science, Juniata College, 1963-1974.  He was editor-in-chief of The International Journal of Korean Studies from 2004 to 2008 and was on the editorial advisory board of International Studies Quarterly from 1998 to 2004.  He has written numerous books on Korean politics, both North and South. Included in the list of his recent books are: North Korea: the Politics of Regime Survival, 2006 (coeditor) and Transforming Korean Politics: Democracy, Reform, and Culture, 2005.

Professor Kihl received a BA in Political Science and Economics from Grinnell College and a Ph.D. in International Politics and Organizations, Comparative Politics (Asia), and Political Behavior from New York University.

The routine employment of torture on the popular television series 24 has given rise to the charge that the program lends verisimilitude to  the questionable premise that torture is a legitimate and effective means of interrogation. A growing body of evidence suggests the critics' charge is correct. Indeed, the Dean of the US Military Academy at West Point grew sufficiently concerned about the pernicious effects 24 was having on his cadets that he traveled to California to meet with the show's creators to ask them to tone down the use of torture on the program. The Intelligence Science Board has echoed the critics' concerns, arguing that similar reality-distorting attitudes towards torture can be seen in the public at large. But how and why can a wholly fictional program like 24 actually influence political reality? Is this case something of an exception, or more akin to the rule?  Unfortunately, evidence suggests that fiction and other socially constructed portrayals of political reality-including propaganda, false flag operations and conspiracy theories-have long exercised demonstrable effects on political reality, often in unforeseen and unintentional ways.

Through the lens of the invasion panic that gripped Great Britain in the late nineteenth century, Greenhill will explore how and why national security-related "social facts"-i.e., things that are deemed to be "true" simply because they are widely believed to be true-can become broadly adopted and disseminated and, by extension, thereby influence the development and conduct of national security policy. Greenhill will further explore what this historical case can tell us about the theoretical and policy implications such "social facts" may hold for the threats we face today, including terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Kelly M. Greenhill is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Tufts University and Research Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. She holds a Ph.D. and an S.M. from M.I.T., a C.S.S. from Harvard University, and a B.A. from UC Berkeley. Greenhill previously held pre- or post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard University's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and at CISAC.

Her work has appeared in a variety of venues, including the journals International Security, Security Studies, and International Migration as well as in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and in briefs prepared for the U.S. Supreme Court. Greenhill has two books shortly forthcoming with Cornell University Press: the first, Weapons of Mass Migration: Forced Displacement, Coercion and Foreign Policy, focuses on the use of large-scale population movements as instruments of state-level coercion; and the second, Sex, Drugs and Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict (co-edited with Peter Andreas), examines the politicization and manipulation of crime and conflict-related statistics. She is currently at work on a new book, a cross-national study that explores why, when, and under what conditions, fiction, so-called "social facts" and other non-factual sources of information-such as rumors, conspiracy theories and propaganda-materially influence the development and conduct of national security policies.

Lynn Eden is Associate Director for Research at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford. In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

Since the inception of reform and opening-up thirty years ago, China has established a record of astonishing economic achievements and is, or will soon be, surpassing Japan as the world's second largest economy, something few people would have imagined three decades ago.

The information and communications technologies (ICT) industry is the backbone of the Chinese export driven growth strategy, which many argue as the primary driver of China's economic growth. Recent ICT policy initiatives demonstrate China's shifting strategy in pursuing a different path for the next phase of economic growth.

Promoting indigenous innovation and strengthening information security may be considered the two major thrusts of Chinese ICT policy initiatives. Technical standards, IPR treatments, government procurement, and special industry incentives are some examples of the former domain; internet filtering, compulsory certification of information security product, and encryption control are examples of the latter.

Many of these initiatives are controversial in the international trade arena. However, the real challenges of these policy initiatives concern whether they work to achieve the Chinese government's goal of maintaining sustainable growth. This presentation will attempt to evaluate these challenges.

Dr. John C. Chiang was appointed as Director of Global Innovation Research Center at Peking University in June 2008. He joined PKU in February 2006 as Professor in the Department of Management of Technology at the School of Software and Microelectronics. Dr. Chiang is also President of USITO, the organization representing five major US IT industry trade associations and close to 50 individual U.S. IT companies in China, a role he has held since October 2008.

Dr. Chiang came to China in 2000, joining Motorola China as Deputy GM of the infrastructure business unit, spearheading its post-WTO strategy. He then moved to Motorola China HQ, serving as Senior Director of Strategy and Business Development. In 2003, he served as Director of Motorola China R&D Institute, and in 2004, he became the founding president of Motorola (China) Technologies, Limited.

From October 2006 to September 2008, Dr. Chiang was a Partner in DragonBridge Capital, a U.S.-based merchant bank with China as its primary serving market.

Dr. Chiang was born in Beijing, raised in Taiwan, and received the Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1975. He received the EMBA from Georgia State University in 1989.

After his academic career, Dr. Chiang joined Bell Laboratories in 1979, and later held progressive technical and managerial positions at Racal-Milgo, Hayes, and GTE. He was Senior Vice President of Operations at KG Telecom and led the launch of the first private mobile services in Taiwan, during 1997-2000.

Dr. Chiang currently also serves as the Vice Chair of the China Association of Standards and as an Investment Advisor to the Beijing Municipal Government.

In this panel discussion, three leading scholars in the field of China and Taiwan studies will examine recent developments and future prospects for Taiwan's participation in international organizations, from the World Health Assembly to a range of other UN-affiliated and other international organizations (including new and less formal groupings such as the Community of Democracies).  More broadly, this panel discussion will examine how Taiwan is now trying to, and might in the near future, engage the international community and international organizations, in an era when relations across the strait are thawing but Beijing is still actively limiting Taiwan's international space.

Dan Blumenthal is a resident fellow at American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. He is a current commissioner and former vice chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, where he directs efforts to monitor, investigate, and provide recommendations on the national security implications of the economic relationship between the two countries. Previously, he was senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia in the Secretary of Defense's Office of International Security Affairs and practiced law in New York prior to his government service. At AEI, in addition to his work on the national security implications of U.S.-Sino relations, he coordinates the Tocqueville on China project, which examines the underlying civic culture of post-Mao China. Mr. Blumenthal also contributes to AEI's Asian Outlook series.

Kao-cheng Wang received his Ph.D. in Political Science from University of Pennsylvania. He is Professor and former Director of Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies, Tamkang University, Taipei.

Suisheng Zhao is Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies and Executive Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation, University of Denver. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the US Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary China.