South Korea and the United States are “completely aligned” on North Korea strategy, the chief American diplomat in South Korea said to a Stanford audience on Monday.

Mark Lippert, who assumed the role of U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea in 2014, delivered remarks at a public seminar, “Perspectives on the U.S.-Korea Alliance,” organized by the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Arriving from the Washington summit of President Obama and Korean President Park Geun-hye, Lippert spoke of the success of the state visit. The U.S.-Korea relationship is in “as good a shape as it’s ever been,” and that secure foundation is allowing the two countries to forge ahead on shared challenges, including North Korea, trade and global health.

Mark Lippert expressed optimism about the U.S.-ROK alliance at a Stanford talk on Oct. 19, 2015.

He said the United States and South Korea are invested in getting to a place where the North Koreans will “come back to the table” for discussions on ending their nuclear program, noting the continuing viability of the Six Party Talks mechanism which has been stalled for more than five years.

Lippert also cited U.S.-Korea strategic cooperation on sanctions against North Korea, and defense capabilities aimed to deter the threat of a North Korea with nuclear and long-range missile capacity.

Looking ahead, “The United States strongly supports calls for reunification of the Korean Peninsula,” he said. Human rights, a free economy and a democratically elected government in the North would be a priority in that pursuit.

Lippert said the United States is supportive of inter-Korean talks and reunions for families separated by the Korean War, both announced earlier this year. On Tuesday, hundreds of South Koreans crossed the border to meet with North Korean relatives, who have been separated for more than six decades.

Partnering on the economic level was another key aspect of the summit, Lippert said, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was among items discussed. The United States, as one of 12 TPP member nations, would welcome an application from South Korea should they choose to pursue it, he said.

Lippert acknowledged that South Korea already has bilateral trade agreements with 10 out of the 12 TPP member nations, including one with the United States. The U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) came into force in 2012 and is moving toward full implementation, he said. The United States’ sixth largest trading partner is South Korea.

Following his formal remarks, Lippert took questions from the audience.

Michael Armacost, a Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow, asked Lippert how Japan and China figured into the summit discussions following recent developments. In September, President Park attended a military parade in Beijing that marked the 70^th anniversary of the end of World War II. She was the only leader from a democratic country at the event.

Responding on China, Lippert said the United States is supportive of South Korea engaging with China. “We don’t view this as a zero-sum game,” he said, likening South Korea’s regional relationships to a situation where “all boats rise” together.

Dafna Zur, a professor of Korean culture and literature, asked Lippert to talk about how his education informed his career in public service.

Lippert attended Stanford and studied political science and international policy studies.

His education, he said, was invaluable in preparing him for the diverse situations and people that a diplomatic career brings.

Lippert encouraged students to savor conversation and debate in the classroom. Participating in that kind of forum not only “makes you a more informed person” but also “sharpens your analytic skills,” he said.

Prior to becoming ambassador, Lippert held senior positions in the Department of Defense and the White House and served in the U.S. Navy.

Following the event, Lippert met with faculty members of Shorenstein APARC and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies for a roundtable discussion, chaired by Kathleen Stephens, a distinguished fellow at Shorenstein APARC and former U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea (2008-11).

Embedded photo: Mark Lippert speaks at Stanford on Oct. 19, 2015. Photo credit: Heather Ahn.

Stanford students worked together to pitch marketing ideas to a major Japanese airline at an event last Tuesday. The event, called an “ideathon,” is part of a series of events seeking to strengthen the U.S.-Japan relationship through exchange of ideas.

The ideathon was the first of its kind at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, led by the Japan Program under the rubric of the Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project (SV-NJ). The project is supported in part by All Nippon Airways (ANA), the Japanese airline featured at the event.

Nineteen students participated, from both undergraduate and graduate levels and across disciplines – including students from the Graduate School of Business, and other majors including economics, mathematics, computer science, philosophy and East Asian studies.

Placed on a team with others they had just met, students were encouraged to assemble quickly and generate solutions to the challenge: how can ANA strengthen its brand awareness in the United States?

ANA is seeking to double in size in the next three years, yet it faces a few obstacles in this endeavor, including a customer base that is mostly in Japan and low brand visibility internationally, according to a senior employee that presented at the event.

“Who had heard of ANA before this event?” asked Hiroyuki Miyagawa, a marketing executive at ANA. Few hands raised in the audience.

Organized into four teams, each student team was joined by an ANA employee who listened in and offered guidance and a chance to learn from a longtime practitioner.

One and a half hours later, with Post-it notes and scribbled diagrams sprinkled across tables, each team emerged ready to present their 3-minute pitch to a panel of judges. The panel included executives from ANA, the World Innovation Lab (WiL), a venture capital firm in Palo Alto, and bTrax, a San Francisco based design firm.

Below are a few pictures from the event.

Image

Team Three acts out a skit.  |  They proposed that ANA establish lounges for the general public to gather in and purchase goods from Uniqlo and Muji, two Japanese lifestyle retailers. The lounges would offer a place to reinforce ANA's brand outside of the airport, they said.

Image

Team Four puts their heads together to generate ideas.  |  In their pitch, the team noted that baseball is a popular sport among Americans and Japanese. They recommended baseball be a focus of the marketing campaign, and said television and social media would best reach the target audience.

Image

Team Five explains their marketing approach.  |  Flying can lead to some unpleasant experiences, and a way ANA can set itself apart is to make those experiences manageable, and even enjoyable, they said. Their proposal was to bring new amenities to the in-flight experience such as a care package for people who sit in the middle seat.

Image

Team One poses for a picture after their presentation.  |  In their pitch, they recommended using ANA’s association with Japan to differentiate from other global airlines. Their approach included creating a film that features an American celebrity traveling on ANA.

The winning team was Team One whose concept was to use a celebrity figure – Ellen DeGeneres – in their advertising. They said that the target audience could relate to DeGeneres, and her already-established following would be an advantage.

The judges commended Team One for the creativity of their idea and its level of feasibility. Team One consisted of students Yaqian Fan, Michael Hong, Sam Ide, Lu Li and Adelbert Tan.

Kenji Kushida, a Stanford alumnus and project leader of SV-NJ, said:

“When I was a student, I craved for an opportunity to brainstorm solutions to real-world challenges and to do it in an environment that provided instant feedback,” he said, “We were able to make that happen here with the support of ANA and WiL, and are thrilled with the outcome."

In a new book, David Straub explains why massive anti-American protests erupted across South Korea in 2002 and considers whether it could happen again.

South Korea is often seen as a pro-American ally, a model country that went from a poor, postwar nation into a maturing democracy in just four short decades.

But despite a historic alliance between South Korea and the United States, anti-Americanism flared throughout the Asian nation between 1999-2002 when a series of events and longstanding tensions aligned, according to Stanford researcher David Straub.

“It was a sort of venting of steam,” said Straub, an associate director at Stanford’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

“Many Koreans at the time were grossly overinterpreting issues and incidents involving the United States. And this was because they were viewing the U.S.-Korea relationship through a lens of historic victimization by other nations, including the United States,” he added.

Straub, who held a thirty-year diplomatic career in the State Department, headed the political section of the American embassy in Seoul during those years and was deeply involved in managing problems in the bilateral relationship.

Boiling point

Since the end of the Korean War, the United States Forces Korea (USFK) has been stationed in Seoul – now about 28,500 uniformed personnel.

In June 2002, a USFK vehicle struck two Korean students in a tragic accident. In December of that same year, after a U.S. court martial found the drivers of the vehicle not guilty of wrongdoing, hundreds of thousands of people protested in Seoul and other major Korean cities. Not only did activists partake but ordinary citizens too, he said.

Straub said the South Korean public had been “unintentionally primed” for such a reaction to the USFK traffic accident; it was the “spark that lit the firestorm” after years of escalation. A series of events led-up to the mass protests, they included:

• A few months before the USFK traffic accident, a Korean athlete was disqualified at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City during a speed skating competition. American athlete Apolo Anton Ohno instead won gold after a disputed call.
• A non-governmental organization in May 2000 revealed that USFK personnel dumped formaldehyde into a drain that ran into the Han River in Seoul.
• In Sept. 1999, the Associated Press published its first investigative story examining the Nogun-ri incident of 1950, when hundreds of Korean refugees were killed in an alleged massacre by U.S. service members.

Asymmetry of attention

Straub said the shaping of Koreans’ views of Americans and fanning of tensions could be attributed in part to an “asymmetry of attention” on the part of the Korean and American publics to the U.S.-Korean relationship.

While the Korean public put tremendous focus on U.S.-Korean relations and the presence of U.S. military personnel in Korea, the American public was unaware of Korean attitudes and feelings, he said.

Similarly during the 1999-2002 period, Korean media reported hypercritical views of the United States and USFK, while the American media paid far less attention.

In negotiating with U.S. officials, South Korean officials would often allude to strong Korean public opinion and demand U.S. concessions. With no American public opinion on Korea issues to point to, U.S. officials were at a major disadvantage, Straub said.

U.S. officials would sometimes note opinions shared by members of Congress, he said, “however, for Korean officials, those claims weren’t as powerful as having a social movement literally on the front doorstep.”

In plain terms, the United States is much larger than South Korea. This very imbalance – which translates to military and economic power – added to Koreans’ assumption that they were “getting the worse end of the bargain,” he added.

“Most Koreans saw Korea as a victim of great powers,” Straub said. “It’s not just the media. It’s more than that, it was – and still is – a shared national narrative.”

Koreans’ sense of national vulnerability is magnified by their historic victimization to neighbors. South Koreans do not want to become a de facto tributary state of China or a colony of Japan again, he said.

Will anti-Americanism return?

USFK incidents were a main focus of Korean attention during the 1999-2002 period, and while there is always a possibility of problems arising, the intensity is gone now, Straub said.

“Some steam is under the lid again,” Straub said. “But I don’t think it’s nearly at the level like it was back then. I’m doubtful that we’d see an exact repeat.”

The media landscape in South Korea has improved and shifted away from its earlier position of “criticize the United States first and ask questions later,” Straub said.

Today, South Korea and the United States are in good standing at the government-level and among the people. President Obama and Korean President Park Geun-hye have an established rapport.   

What troubles Koreans now is North Korea, a Japan focused on collective defense, and the strategic rivalry between the United States and China and its possible implications for Korea, he said.

“South Korea being sandwiched between the United States and China – based on a perception that China is going to be the world’s dominant power – is a real worry for many Koreans,” Straub said, and a large number of Koreans – albeit still a minority – feel that their country must find a more equidistant ground between the two.

Most Koreans, however, still believe in the need for the continued presence of USFK personnel, at least for the time being, said Straub, and must be reassured of their strategic alliance with the United States.

Obama and Park are expected to meet in Washington in mid-October, and Straub said it will be used as an opportunity for both sides to reinforce the importance they attach to the alliance and to pressing North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and long-range missile programs.

Links to related articles

NK News: South Korean anti-Americanism dwindles, but roots remain: diplomat

NK News: South Korean anti-Americanism: a thing of the past?

Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea, July 2015

Asia Times: American faces Seoul court over infamous unsolved murder

The Christian Science Monitor: South Korea: 20 years later, Californian son faces trial for Seoul murder

JoongAng Ilbo: Is anti-Americanism dead?

JoongAng Ilbo (Korean): 한미동맹은 빈틈없이 튼실한가 전 미국 국무부 한국과장의 진단

In an NK News' series of interviews with a panel of U.S. experts on North Korea policy, David Straub, associate director of the Korea Program and former State Department Korea director, analyzes the U.S. approach toward Pyongyang. With NK News' permission, downloadable PDF versions of the interviews are available below.