Culture
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Banner image of APARC May 24 Webinar, center text "How Can Women 'Shine' Brighter in Japan? Gains and Obstacles in Women's Advancement in Japanese Society", with photo of a Japanese woman thinking to the right

May 24, 5:00 p.m - 6:30 p.m. PT / May 25, 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. JT

The advancement of women in the workplace has been an elusive goal in Japan for decades. The shrinking and aging population call for a change in gender expectations that would enable Japan to tap women’s talents for economic growth, but many hurdles continue to block progress in gender equity in the workplace and at home. In this session, two experts who have led the efforts to increase women in leadership positions discuss the accomplishments and future challenges in enhancing gender diversity and inclusion in Japanese organizations. 


Panelists

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Square photo portrait of Mika Nabeshima
Mika Nabeshima has held several global assignments since joining Tokio Marine headquarters in 1991,
She established her career in claims, working with clients to resolve liability and property claims, provide risk management solutions, manage litigation, and fight fraudulent claims.
After seven years at Tokio Marine America, she became general manager of human resources at TMHD in 2019 and then added the role of Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, becoming the company’s first female C-suite officer, in April 2021.

Mika is responsible for Tokio Marine’s global HR strategy, from talent management and development to diversity & inclusion initiatives, governance of group companies, and ensuring the safety of expats around the world.
She graduated from Davidson College (North Carolina) with a B.A. in Political Science in 1991. 

 

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Square photo portrait of Naomi Koshi
Naomi Koshi is a lawyer, an entrepreneur, and former mayor of Otsu City. From 2002 to 2011, Naomi practiced corporate law at Nishimura & Asahi in Tokyo and Debevoise & Plimpton in New York. From 2010 to 2011, Naomi was a Visiting Fellow at Columbia Business School.  In 2012, Naomi was elected mayor of Otsu City and served a total of eight years. As the youngest female mayor, Naomi successfully expanded Otsu's childcare system, thus making it easier for many Japanese women to return to the workforce. Naomi is admitted to practice law in Japan, New York, and California and is now a partner at Miura & Partners. In 2021, Naomi Co-Founded OnBoard K.K., a company specializing in diversifying Japanese corporate boards. Naomi also serves as an outside director of V-Cube, Inc and SoftBank Corp. She holds multiple degrees from Hokkaido University and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School.


Moderator

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Square photo portrait of Kiyoteru Tsutsui
Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor, Professor of Sociology, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Deputy Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where he is also Director of the Japan Program. He is the author of Rights Make Might: Global Human Rights and Minority Social Movements in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2018), co-editor of Corporate Responsibility in a Globalizing World (Oxford University Press, 2016) and co-editor of The Courteous Power: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Indo-Pacific Era (University of Michigan Press, 2021). 

 

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Square image with Webinar title "How Can Women “Shine” Brighter in Japan?: Gains and Obstacles in Women’s Advancement in Japanese Society", with a photo of a Japanese Woman thinking
This event is part of the 2022 Spring webinar seriesNegotiating Women's Rights and Gender Equality in Asia, sponsored by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Kiyoteru Tsutsui
Kiyoteru Tsutsui

via Zoom Webinar

Naomi Koshi Partner, Miura & Partners, CEO, OnBoard K.K., Former Mayor of Otsu City
Mika Nabeshima Executive Office and General Manager of Human Resources Dept., Tokio Marine Holdings
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Melissa Morgan
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Every year, students in the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy (MIP) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies participate in the Policy Change Studio, a pioneering two-quarter program designed to provide our master's students with the know-how to bring about change in the world.

In 2020, many of the internships and outreach opportunities for our students were reduced or cancelled altogether because of the COVID-19 pandemic. By 2021, most of our students were able to participate in virtual programs with our policy partners. After two years of adapting, we're excited that the 2022 cohort of MIP students once again has the opportunity to work in-person with their partner organizations and meet changemakers on the ground to evaluate and fine-tune the impacts of their policy work.

Keep reading to see where our students have been working around the world.
 

Tunis, Tunisia

Emily Bauer, Soomin Jun and Kyle Thompson have been in Tunisia working with Wasabi, a communications company, working to understand the root causes of Tunisia’s large informal economy and find incentives for greater formal sector participation.

Pretoria, South Africa

Janani Mohan and Eli MacKinnon have been in South Africa with a local branch of the United Nations Development Programme to work on the longstanding problem of South Africa's highly skewed income distribution and vast disparities in employment access across different regions and social groups.

Jakarta, Indonesia

Sylvie Ashford, Calli Obern, Daniel Gajardo and Sarah Baran traveled to Indonesia to work with the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) local branch that is tackling policy barriers to decarbonizing industrial heat sources in the country.

Washington D.C., United States

Eyal Zilberman, Chaeri Park, Me Me Khant and Mikk Raud went from the West Coast to the East to the Washington D.C.-based Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA) to identify ways the U.S. government can reduce the prevalence of ransomware attacks against public and private entities.

India

Shirin Kashani, Madeleine Morlino and Amanda Leavell are working with SheThePeople, a female-first digital media website founded by Draper Hills alumna Shaili Chopra, that focuses on women-related journalism.

Tallinn, Estonia

Johannes Hui, Dave Sprague, Bradley Jackson and Arelena Shala partnered with the International Centre for Defense and Security (ICDS), a strategic policy think tank, to investigate the use of sub-threshold, grey-zone and hybrid military countermeasures to deter Russian provocations in the Baltic-Nordic region.

The Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy

Want to learn more? MIP holds admission events throughout the year, including graduate fairs and webinars, where you can meet our staff and ask questions about the program.

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Students from the 2022 cohort of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy participate in the Policy Change Studio.
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Where Our Master's Students are Making Policy Impacts in 2022

From women's health and reproductive rights in India to cybersecurity issues in Washington D.C., students from the 2022 cohort of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy are tackling big policy projects in the Policy Change Studio.
Where Our Master's Students are Making Policy Impacts in 2022
The Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy class of 2023
Blogs

Meet the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy Class of 2023

The 2023 class of the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy are finally here on campus and ready to dive into two years of learning, research and policy projects at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
Meet the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy Class of 2023
Protestors wave flags in front of San Francisco's Ferry Building against the military coup in Myanmar
Blogs

Working from Home While Worrying For Home

About the author: Me Me Khant ’22 was an FSI Global Policy Intern with the The Asia Foundation. She is currently a Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy student at Stanford University.
Working from Home While Worrying For Home
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The 2022 cohort of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy has been busy this quarter getting out of the classroom and into hands-on policymaking with partner organizations in Tunisia, Estonia, India and beyond.

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Gi-Wook Shin
Haley Gordon
Maleah Webster
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This commentary first appeared in The Diplomat magazine.

At the 2022 Grammy Awards on April 3, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered a pre-recorded speech, imploring musicians and the global community to speak out on the ongoing war in Ukraine. “Russia,” he said, “brings horrible silence with its bombs.” Zelenskyy urged the Grammy artists to “fill the silence with your music… Tell the truth about this war on your social networks, on TV.”

Many artists in the United States and worldwide have been doing just that, with singers ranging from Billie Eilish to Elton John donating and speaking out in support of the Ukrainian people. But one group has been conspicuously absent from this movement: South Korea’s K-pop singers. Despite their rising global stature, only a handful of K-pop idols have heeded Zelenskyy’s call.

Indeed, while outspokenness on hot-button societal issues has become ubiquitous among American celebrities – who voice their thoughts on causes ranging from the war in Ukraine to Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+ rights, and climate change – the social media accounts of Korean idols cultivate squeaky-clean images rather than broach subjects that could prove controversial. Only top stars like BTS have had leeway to speak out on pressing issues – and even then, this is rare. At most, others express their support quietly with subtle fashion items, or advocate on relatively uncontroversial causes, like air pollution or animal rights.

K-pop idols’ silence is particularly conspicuous in comparison to their global fanbase, which has proved to be a formidable source of human rights advocacy around the world. K-pop fans in Myanmar have played a crucial role in organizing anti-authoritarian protests in the country. In 2020, pro-democracy protesters in Thailand marched to the tune of the Girls’ Generation song “Into the New World” – a track that has a rich history of use in South Korea’s own protest movements. In the United States, during the major Black Lives Matter movements in 2020, K-pop fans drowned out racist voices by flooding anti-BLM Twitter hashtags with fancams of their favorite idols.


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K-pop stars do not need to become as politically hyperactive as their counterparts in the United States. However, now that they have a foothold in global markets, they should use their platform to speak out on human rights movements.

Korean celebrities’ avoidance of these contentious issues stems, understandably, from the goal of achieving widespread popularity. In trying to foster an expansive, loyal fanbase, K-pop agencies have instructed singers to avoid topics that could alienate fans instead of attracting them: K-pop stars are not allowed to date, let alone voice opinions on sensitive global causes.

Yet, if K-pop hopes to have global staying power, it is time to break this silence. To ensure that K-pop is taken seriously, the industry’s idols should begin to engage with serious issues that global audiences care about. This is especially true in light of a growing expectation that idols should do so. For example, fans seek accountability from an industry that benefits from the appropriation of Black culture or the support of LGBTQ+ communities, yet whose stars remain silent on the rights issues these groups face. Speaking out on such causes is a sure way for K-pop to garner widespread global respect and cement its place as a genre that is relevant, global-minded, and here to stay.

True, idols may alienate some fans by advancing certain positions, but this has done little to hurt K-pop’s overall march toward global domination. The genre’s popularity is so immense that in 2020, the Chinese Communist Party backed down from an attempt to stir nationalist frenzy against BTS. The mega-boy group emerged unscathed.

Even the Kim Jong Un regime, one of the most oppressive governments in the world, is no match for K-pop: The genre’s popularity among North Koreans persists despite the threat of execution for individuals caught listening. In fact, the issue of human rights in North Korea could be an important cause for K-pop celebrities to take up, especially given K-pop’s penetration into the reclusive nation. Who is better positioned than South Korean idols to speak up on behalf of their brethren to the north?

The problems within the K-pop industry itself may be another good place to start. Idols face notoriously grueling working conditions and immense mental and physical pressure. If idols are to begin voicing their opinions, agencies must better support their artists, rather than abandoning them when controversy arises.

K-pop stars do not need to become as politically hyperactive as their counterparts in the United States. However, now that they have a foothold in global markets, they should use their platform to speak out on human rights movements – not only because they are well-positioned to support these causes, but also because doing so will cement their global staying power. To remain globally relevant, K-pop must be the first mover, not a fast follower – or risk getting left behind.

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Bukchon Hanok village and text about Stanford's Korea Program 20th anniversary conference on May 19-20, 2022.
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Stanford University’s Korea Program Celebrates 20th Anniversary with Conference Spotlighting South Korean Wave, North Korean Geopolitics

The Korea Program at Stanford’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center will commemorate its 20-year anniversary with a two-day conference, convening eminent speakers from the K-pop industry, academia, and government, and unveiling two new documentary films.
Stanford University’s Korea Program Celebrates 20th Anniversary with Conference Spotlighting South Korean Wave, North Korean Geopolitics
South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk-Yeol
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On CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia," APARC Director Gi-wook Shin shares insights about the potential for democratic backsliding and further domestic tension after Yoon Suk-yeol’s victory in the contentious presidential election in South Korea.
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3D illustration of voter on a background of South Korea flag
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South Korea Votes, Beijing Watches

Anti-Chinese sentiment surges—especially among the young—in advance of the March 9 elections.
South Korea Votes, Beijing Watches
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With few exceptions, South Korea’s K-pop idols have been conspicuously silent on controversial subjects – including the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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The Korea Program at Stanford will mark its 20-year anniversary with a conference focused on North Korean issues and South Korea’s pop culture wave (Hallyu), two aspects of Korea that continue to intrigue the public, exploring how to translate this public attention into an increased academic interest in Korea.

This event is made possible by generous support from the Korea Foundation and other friends of the Korea Program.

Bukchon Hanok village and text about Stanford's Korea Program 20th anniversary conference on May 19-20, 2022.

Featuring a keynote address by
Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary-General of the United Nations

 

DAY 1: Thursday, May 19, 9:00 a.m. - 5:15 p.m.

9:00-9:15 a.m.
Opening and Welcome Remarks

Gi-Wook Shin, Director of Asia-Pacific Research Center and Korea Program, Stanford
Michael McFaul, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford
Gabriella Safran, Senior Associate Dean of Humanities and Arts, Stanford


9:15-10:45 a.m.
Panel on North Korea

Moderated by Yumi Moon, Associate Professor of History, Stanford

Siegfried Hecker, Professor Emeritus, Management Science and Engineering; Senior Fellow Emeritus, FSI, Stanford
Kim Sook, former ROK Ambassador to UN; Executive Director, Ban Ki-moon Foundation for a Better Future
Joohee Cho, Seoul Bureau Chief, ABC News


11:00-11:50 a.m. 
Korea Program at Stanford: Past, Present, and Future 

Moderated by Kelsi Caywood, Research Associate, Korea Program, APARC, Stanford

Paul Chang, Associate Professor of Sociology, Harvard University
Joon-woo Park, former ROK Ambassador to EU and Singapore; 2011-12 Koret Fellow
Jong Chun Woo, former president of Stanford APARC-Seoul Forum; Professor Emeritus, Seoul National University
Megan Faircloth, Senior in East Asian Languages and Cultures, Stanford


11:50 a.m.-12:30 p.m.        Lunch Break


12:30-1:30 p.m.
Keynote Address by Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary-General of the United Nations

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portrait of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

Introduction by H.R. McMaster, former National Security Advisor; Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford

Moderated by Gi-Wook Shin, Director of APARC and Korea Program, Stanford
 


2:00-3:30 p.m.
Panel on the Korean Wave

Moderated by Dafna Zur, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures; Director of Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford

SUHO, Leader of EXO
Angela Killoren, CEO of CJ ENM America, Inc.
Marci Kwon, Assistant Professor of Art and Art History, Stanford


3:45-5:15 p.m.
Documentaries on K-pop
 and North Korean Human Rights (teaser)*

Moderated by Haley Gordon, Research Associate, Korea Program, APARC, Stanford

Introduction of the films by Director Hark Joon Lee and Director of Photography Byeon Jaegil 

Vivian Zhu, Junior in International Relations and East Asian Studies, Stanford
Youlim Kim, Third-year PhD student in Microbiology & Immunology, Stanford
*The documentaries will not be shown on the livestream


Conference speakers Conference speakers include (from left to right) Ban Ki-moon, Kathryn Moler, SUHO, Soo-Man Lee, Marci Kwon, Michael McFaul, Siegfried Hecker, Kim Hyong-O, Dafna Zur, H.R. McMaster, Michelle Cho, Gabriella Safran.

Day 2: Friday, May 20, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.

9:00-10:30 a.m.
How to Translate Interest in North Korea and K-pop into Korean Studies

Moderated by Gi-Wook Shin, Director of Asia-Pacific Research Center and Korea Program

David Kang, Professor of International Relations and Business, USC
Yumi Moon, Associate Professor of History, Stanford
Michelle Cho, Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto
Dafna Zur, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures; Director of Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford


10:45 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Future Visions of K-pop

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Soo-Man Lee
Keynote speech by Soo-Man Lee, Founder and Chief Producer of SM Entertainment

Introduction by Gi-Wook Shin, Director of Asia-Pacific Research Center and Korea Program

Conversation with:
Dafna Zur, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures; Director of Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford
SUHO, Leader of EXO

Conferences
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Michael Breger
Callista Wells
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As reports of leveled mosques, detention camps, and destroyed cultural and religious sites in China's Xinjiang province emerged in the mid-to-late 2010s, the world took notice of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) flagrant oppression of Uighur Muslims and other minorities. Under the Xi Jinping administration, the Xinjiang region in northwestern China has experienced what is perhaps the greatest period of cultural assimilation since the Cultural Revolution. This massive state repression represents a primary research focus for Dr. James Millward, Professor of Inter-societal History at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, who joined both APARC's China Program and the Stanford History Department as a visiting scholar for winter quarter 2022.

Millward's specialties include the Qing empire, the silk road, and historical and contemporary Xinjiang. In addition to his numerous academic publications on these topics, he follows and comments on current issues regarding Xinjiang, the Uyghurs and other Xinjiang indigenous peoples, PRC ethnicity policy, and Chinese politics more generally. We caught up with Millward to discuss his work and experience at Stanford this past winter quarter. Listen to the conversation: 


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Aggressive Assimilating Thrust

Millward emphasizes the importance of documenting the scope and scale of the crisis in Xinjiang. "What's happened in the last four or five years in Xinjiang is of great global importance and interest to people," he says, and although it is still early to write the history of this period of repression, "it's important at least to try and get an organized draft of it down and to try to begin to interpret rather than just narrate the litany of things going on: the camps, the digital surveillance, forced labor, birth depressions, and try and put it all into some kind of framework where we can understand it." 

China’s crackdown on Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang is part of aggressive intolerance of cultural and political diversity that is emerging as a central feature of Xi Jinping’s tenure, explains Millward. The shift in the CCP's assimilationist policies constitutes a complete "reversal of what had been an earlier approach to diversity in China," which allowed for 56 different nationalities to have regional autonomy. His aim is to "point out a really aggressive assimilating thrust under the Xi Jinping regime [...] and then also to look more clearly at settler colonialism in Xinjiang."

To learn more about the historical context of current events in Xinjiang and how to understand them against contemporary Chinese politics, tune in to Millward's public lecture of February 2, 2022, “The Crisis in Xinjiang: What’s Happening Now and What Does It Mean?

In this talk, Millward explains how PRC assimilationist policies, if most extreme in Xinjiang, are related to the broader Zhonghua-izing campaign against religion and non-Mandarin language and perhaps even to intensified control over Hong Kong and efforts to intimidate Taiwan.

U.S.-China Cooperation Amid Strained Ties

The Xinjiang crisis has affected how the United States views China, bringing an unexpected unity to the usually-polarized American foreign policy arena. "The Xinjiang issue has contributed to the broad-spectrum feeling in the American political sphere that engagement with China has failed," notes Millward. The parallels between China's repression of minorities and some of the worst events in the 20th century in Europe "have brought together the political sides in America and rallied them around a much stronger anti-China stance," he says.

From Millward's perspective, however, it is not only possible but also necessary for the United States to act on Xinjiang and press China on its human rights record while cooperating with China on other issues. "This is the art of diplomacy, you have to compartmentalize and deal with different issues, particularly with two countries as large as the United States and China." In Millward's view, areas pertinent to U.S.-China collaboration are varied and transcend global challenges such as climate change or pandemics. Those are simplistic dichotomies," he says. "We have 300,000 Chinese students in our universities and we welcome them and learn a lot from them [...] We benefit from Chinese expertise in all sorts of ways."

Millward spent a productive winter quarter at APARC. Returning to Stanford as a visiting scholar provided him a unique opportunity to reconnect with his past on The Farm and survey all that has changed in the years since he completed his doctorate under the tutelage of the late Professor Harold Kahn. "The trailer park where I lived as a first-year graduate student is no more, and I couldn't even find the footprint of where it was."

Portrait of James Millward

James Millward

Visiting Scholar at APARC
Full Biography

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From top left, clockwise: Lauren Hansen Restrepo, James Millward, Darren Byler and Gardner Bovingdon speaking at a panel at APARC.
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The Human Rights Crisis in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

The Human Rights Crisis in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
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Bargaining Behind Closed Doors: Why China’s Local Government Debt Is Not a Local Problem

New research in 'The China Journal' by APARC’s Jean Oi and colleagues suggests that the roots of China’s massive local government debt problem lie in secretive financing institutions offered as quid pro quo to localities to sustain their incentive for local state-led growth after 1994
Bargaining Behind Closed Doors: Why China’s Local Government Debt Is Not a Local Problem
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APARC Visiting Scholar James Millward discusses PRC ethnicity policy, China's crackdown on Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang province, and the implications of the Xinjiang crisis for U.S. China strategy and China's international relations.

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This event is made possible by generous support from the Korea Foundation and other friends of the Korea Program.

South Korean popular culture has spread to all corners of the globe, including South Korea’s closed-off neighbor to the north. While North Korea’s Kim Jong Un regime has sought to eradicate the presence of K-pop and South Korean television dramas in his country — even threatening execution for those who consume these cultural products — their popularity endures in North Korea. This panel will address questions relating to the spread of the Korean Wave (Hallyu) in North Korea. How widespread is consumption of South Korean popular culture in the North? Are these cultural products contributing to social change in North Korea, and if so, to what extent? Does the Korean Wave have the potential to contribute to political unrest and change in North Korea?

Speakers:

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portrait of Sunny Yoon

Sunny Yoon is a professor of Media and Communication at Hanyang University in Seoul. Her research encompasses the globalization of Korean media, the interaction of religion and new media, cultural politics, youth culture, and fandom of Korean popular culture. She is the author of Communication Technology and Creative Industries and Global Media and Asian Identity: Cultural Hybridity or Cultural Resistance, and she has authored papers and a book chapter on the impact of mobile media and South Korean media on North Korean youth culture and social change. She has served as Section Head for Visual Culture in the International Association for Media and Communication Research, as well as the editor-in-chief of the journal of Asian Communication Research. She has been a visiting fellow at Yale University and University of Cambridge, as well as a visiting professor at Doshisha University in Japan, National Taiwan University, and King's College London. Professor of Media and Communication, Hanyang University, Korea

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portrait of Suk-Young Kim

Suk-Young Kim is a professor of Theater and Performance Studies at UCLA where she also directs Center for Performance Studies. She is the author of Illusive Utopia :Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea (Michigan, 2010), DMZ Crossing: Performing Emotional Citizenship Along the Korean Border (Columbia, 2014), and most recently, K-pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance (Stanford, 2018). Her scholarship has been recognized by the James Palais Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies, the Association for Theater in Higher Education Outstanding Book Award, and ACLS/SSRC/NEH International and Area Studies Fellowship. Currently She is working on a book titled Way Ahead of Squid Game (forthcoming in 2023), Millennial North Korea: Forbidden Media and Living Creatively with Surveillance (Stanford UP, under contract) and is editing Cambridge Companion to K-Pop. Her comments on Korean cultural politics have been featured in major media outlets, such as Billboard, CNN, NPR, and the New York Times.

Moderator: Haley Gordon, Research Associate in Korea Program at APARC, Stanford University

Via Zoom. Register at https://bit.ly/3JlGJDM

Panel Discussions
Authors
Gi-Wook Shin
Haley Gordon
Hannah June Kim
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This article first appeared in the online magazine American Purpose.  

On March 9, South Koreans head to the voting booths to elect their new president. Although conventional wisdom posits that foreign affairs have little effect on voting preferences, South Koreans have defied this prediction in the past—and now, they may once again. Indeed, the atmosphere in this year’s election recalls that of 2002, when anti-American sentiments swept the South Korean presidential election. This time, it may be anti-Chinese sentiments that make an impact.


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According to our survey of over one thousand South Koreans, conducted this past January, a large majority of respondents—78 percent—indicated that Republic of Korea (ROK)-China relations will be an important consideration when deciding which presidential candidate to vote for. Given that younger South Koreans are expected to be the deciding factor in this election, it is particularly significant that the figure rises to 82 percent for respondents in their twenties. Twenty years ago, anti-American sentiments tipped the vote in favor of Roh Moo-hyun, the liberal candidate, who pledged not to kowtow to the United States. This time, how will anti-Chinese sentiment play out in Seoul? Will it work in favor of the conservatives, who tend to be tougher on China and emphasize the U.S.-ROK alliance? And what does this mean for Washington?

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Young people protesting in South Korea
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South Koreans Are Rethinking What China Means to Their Nation

A new study illuminates the potential effects of anti-Chinese sentiment in Korea.
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What Does Korea’s 2022 Presidential Election Mean for Its Democracy?

The ongoing South Korean presidential race holds significant sociopolitical implications for the future of democracy as democratic backsliding has now become an undeniable reality in South Korea.
What Does Korea’s 2022 Presidential Election Mean for Its Democracy?
Members of the K-pop band BTS.
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“K-Pop Stars, Too, Should Speak Out on Human Rights Issues,” Says Stanford Sociologist Gi-Wook Shin

K-pop and North Korean human rights are the subjects of two documentaries to be released this spring to mark the 20th anniversary of Stanford University’s Korea Program, reveals Professor Gi-Wook Shin.
“K-Pop Stars, Too, Should Speak Out on Human Rights Issues,” Says Stanford Sociologist Gi-Wook Shin
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Anti-Chinese sentiment surges—especially among the young—in advance of the March 9 elections.

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Join the REDI Task Force for the next event in our "Critical Conversations: Race in Global Affairs" series as we examine policing and criminalization.

Activist calls to "defund the police" have catalyzed new conversations about the function and purpose of policing. Yet the realities of policing and criminalization, as a function of a state-apparatus that protect power and private property, are varied and complex. Beyond the day-to-day experiences of traffic violations or emergency calls, policing can be expanded to analyze institutions and communal experiences of criminalization - from the military to schooling to struggles for democracy. One broad area of agreement is the disproportionate harm that policing and criminalization has on marginalized and dispossessed populations, from Black schoolchildren to vigilantism in a post-apartheid state. This panel will travel the globe, describing specific cases in Africa, the U.S., and Latin America, articulating the connections between state violence, criminalization, and policing.

This online event is free and open to the public.

Speaker bios:

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Didi Kuo

Didi Kuo is the Associate Director for Research and Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. She is a scholar of comparative politics, with a focus on democratization, corruption and clientelism, political parties and institutions, and political reform. Her recent work examines changes to party organization, and the impact these changes have on the ability of governments to address challenges posed by global capitalism. She is the author of Clientelism, Capitalism, and Democracy: the rise of programmatic politics in the United States and Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which examines the role of business against clientelism and the development of modern political parties in the nineteenth-century. 

She has been at Stanford since 2013 as the manager of the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective, which examines problems such as polarization, inequality, and responsiveness, and recommends possibilities for reform. She also teaches in the Fisher Family Honors Program at CDDRL. She is a non-resident fellow in political reform at New America, where she was a 2018 Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow. She received a PhD in political science from Harvard University, an MSc in Economic and Social History from Oxford University, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar, and a BA from Emory University.
 

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Subini Annamma is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Her research critically examines the ways students are criminalized and resist that criminalization through the mutually constitutive nature of racism and ableism, how they interlock with other marginalizing oppressions, and how these intersections impact youth education trajectories in urban schools and youth prisons. Further, she positions students as knowledge generators, exploring how their narratives can inform teacher and special education. Dr. Annamma’s book, The Pedagogy of Pathologization (Routledge, 2018) focuses on the education trajectories of incarcerated disabled girls of color and has won the 2019 AESA Critic’s Choice Book Award & 2018 NWSA Alison Piepmeier Book Prize. Dr. Annamma is a past Ford Postdoctoral Fellow, AERA Division G Early Career Awardee, Critical Race Studies in Education Associate Emerging Scholar recipient, Western Social Science Association's Outstanding Emerging Scholar, and AERA Minority Dissertation Awardee. Dr. Annamma’s work has been published in scholarly journals such as Educational Researcher, Teachers College Record, Review of Research in Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, Theory Into Practice, Race Ethnicity and Education, Qualitative Inquiry, among others.

 

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Kanisha Bond is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Binghamton University (SUNY). Bond earned a PhD in Political Science from Penn State University, an MPP (International Development & Crime Policy) from Georgetown University, and a BA (International Relations & Spanish) from Bucknell University. Bond's work orbits one central research question: How do organization and identity influence dynamics of political challenge in polarized societies? She uses quantitative and qualitative methods to examine specifically mobilization and institution-building among radical socio-political groups around the world, and particularly in North America, Latin America, and Africa. Her written work has been published in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, International Negotiation, Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research, and the Newsletter of the Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. She has contributed book reviews to the American Journal of Sociology and Journal of Conflict Studies, and research-based public commentary to Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Adi Magazine.

She also co-convene the Advancing Research in Conflict (ARC) Consortium Summer Program, which provides methods and ethics training and support to researchers working in violence-affected contexts, and serve on a variety of editorial, review, and advisory boards for organizations that advocate for rigorous and accessible political science in the public interest. 

 

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Dorothy Kronick is an Assistant Professor of Political Science. She studies Latin American political economy, focusing on Venezuela and the politics of crime and policing. Dorothy completed her PhD at Stanford University. Prior to her doctoral studies at Stanford, Dorothy lived in Caracas as a Fulbright Scholar. Her research has appeared or is forthcoming in the American Political Science Review and the Journal of Conflict Resolution; her writing on Venezuelan politics has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight, The New Republic, and Caracas Chronicles, among other outlets.

 

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Nicholas Rush Smith is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York – City College and a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg. He is the author of Contradictions of Democracy: Vigilantism and Rights in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Oxford University Press, 2019) and, alongside Erica S. Simmons, co-editor of Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Inquiry (Cambridge University Press, 2021). His work has also been published in African Affairs, American Journal of Sociology, Comparative Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Polity, PS: Political Science and Politics, and Qualitative and Multi-Method Research, among other outlets.

 

 

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Encina Hall, C150
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Center Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Didi Kuo is a Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. She is a scholar of comparative politics with a focus on democratization, corruption and clientelism, political parties and institutions, and political reform. She is the author of The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don’t (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) and Clientelism, Capitalism, and Democracy: the rise of programmatic politics in the United States and Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

She has been at Stanford since 2013 as the manager of the Program on American Democracy in Comparative Perspective and is co-director of the Fisher Family Honors Program at CDDRL. She was an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America and is a non-resident fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She received a PhD in political science from Harvard University, an MSc in Economic and Social History from Oxford University, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar, and a BA from Emory University.

FSI Senior Research Scholar Moderator Stanford University
Subini Annamma Associate Professor of Education Panelist Stanford University
Kanisha Bond Assistant Professor of Political Science Panelist SUNY-Binghampton
Nicholas Rush Smith Associate Professor of Political Science Panelist CUNY - City College
Dorothy Kronick Assistant Professor of Political Science Panelist University of Pennsylvania
Panel Discussions
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Join the REDI Task Force for an invigorating keynote speech by Professor Tracey L. Meares, weaving together the past and present linkages between racial inequality and the law.

Safety and security are critical building blocks of community vitality, but too often the state’s response to safety — especially in race-class subjugated communities — is to assume that armed first responders are coincident with public safety. This response is wrong both normatively and empirically, but it does not mean that the state ought to retreat from its obligation to address safety deprivation.  This lecture will focus on the concept of “the police power,” which has a long history outside the policing service, and what it might mean to rethink it.
 

This online event is free and open to the public.

 

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Speaker bio:

Tracey L. Meares is the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor and a Founding Director of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School. Before joining the faculty at Yale, she was a professor at the University of Chicago Law School from 1995 to 2007, serving as Max Pam Professor and Director of the Center for Studies in Criminal Justice. She was the first African American woman to be granted tenure at both law schools.

Professor Meares is a nationally recognized expert on policing in urban communities. Her research focuses on understanding how members of the public think about their relationship(s) with legal authorities such as police, prosecutors and judges. She teaches courses on criminal procedure, criminal law, and policy and she has worked extensively with the federal government having served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Law and Justice, a National Research Council standing committee and the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs Science Advisory Board.

In April 2019, Professor Meares was elected as a member to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In December 2014, President Obama named her as a member of his Task Force on 21st Century Policing. She has a B.S. in general engineering from the University of Illinois and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.

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Tracey L. Meares Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law and Founding Director of The Justice Collaboratory Speaker Yale University
Lectures
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How can we understand the geopolitical rivalry between the U.S. and China without fueling anti-Asian hate?

Join REDI's student representatives, Maddy Morlino and Miku Yamada, for an open discussion on how we can avoid contributing to racial discrimination when engaging in academic dialogues on U.S.-China competition.

This in-person event will facilitate an open dialogue with participants and invited speakers, FSI Senior Fellow Thomas Fingar and Postdoctoral Fellow, Dongxian Jiang. Since seating is limited, registration is reserved for current Stanford faculty, students, and staff only with a Stanford.edu email.

Confirmed attendees will be notified by email on February 22.

Speaker bios:

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.

Dongxian Jiang is a political theorist and intellectual historian. His primary research interests lie in comparative political theory, the history of political thought, and pressing practical questions of democratic and international politics, including Western and non-Western perspectives on human rights, democracy, good governance, and political legitimacy. He is also interested in the transmission and traveling of political ideas across divergent intellectual traditions. He holds a B.A. in International Politics and Philosophy from Peking University, an M.A. in Political Science from Duke University, and a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University (as of September 2020). Dongxian Jiang is currently Civics Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science, Stanford University.

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Thomas Fingar FSI Senior Fellow Speaker Stanford University
Dongxian Jiang Political Science Postdoctoral Fellow Speaker Stanford University
Seminars
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