Lee Jong-Seok served as vice-secretary of South Korea’s National Security Council and as its unification minister under the Roh Moo-Hyun administration (2003–08). After Roh’s tragic death in 2009, Lee resolved to present a record of the so-called participatory government’s achievements and failures in the realm of unification, foreign affairs, and national security.

Peace on a Knife’s Edge is the translation of Lee’s 2014 account of Roh’s efforts to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula in the face of opposition at home from conservative forces and abroad from the Bush administration’s hard stances of “tailored containment” and its declaration of the North as part of the “axis of evil.” Lee’s narrative will give American readers rare insights into critical moments of Roh’s incumbency, including the tumultuous Six-Party Talks; the delicate process of negotiating the relocation and reduction of United States Forces Korea; Roh’s pursuit of South Korea’s “autonomous defense”; conflicts with Japan over history issues; and the North’s first nuclear weapons test.

Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

Student mobility in Asia has reached unprecedented levels. Inbound and outbound student mobility creates opportunities for Asian societies but also challenges, such as growing diversity and brain drain. This book examines these and other related, timely issues for the case of South Korea, a major player in the internationalization of higher education in Asia, and draws on the comparative experiences of other key players in the Asia-Pacific region—Japan, China, Singapore, and the United States. By doing so, it offers critical perspectives on the internationalization of Korean higher education as well as innovative, policy-relevant solutions for Asian countries undergoing similar challenges.  It will be a valuable addition to the growing literature on comparative and international education in Asia and can aid university administrators and policymakers striving to internationalize their higher education systems to meet new challenges.

Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

Americans think of South Korea as one of the most pro-American of countries, but in fact many Koreans hold harsh and conspiratorial views of the United States. If not, why did a single U.S. military traffic accident in 2002 cause hundreds of thousands of Koreans to take to the streets for weeks, shredding and burning American flags, cursing the United States, and harassing Americans? Why, too, the death threats against American athlete Apolo Ohno and massive cyberattacks against the United States for a sports call made at the Utah Winter Olympics by an Australian referee? 

These are just two of the incidents detailed in David Straub’s book, the story of an explosion of anti-Americanism in South Korea from 1999 to 2002. Straub, a Korean-speaking senior American diplomat in Seoul at the time, reviews the complicated history of the United States’ relationship with Korea and offers case studies of Korean anti-American incidents during the period that make clear why the outburst occurred, how close it came to undermining the United States’ alliance with Korea, and whether it could happen again.   

Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea is recommended reading for officials, military personnel, scholars, students, and business people interested in anti-Americanism, U.S.-Korean relations, and U.S. foreign policy and military alliances.

David Straub has been associate director of the Korea Program at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center since 2008, following a thirty-year diplomatic career focused on U.S. relations with Korea and Japan.

Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

From 2007 to 2011 South Korean filmmaker and newspaper reporter Hark Joon Lee lived among North Korean defectors in China, filming an award-winning documentary on their struggles. Crossing Heaven’s Border is the firsthand account of his experiences there, where he witnessed human trafficking, the smuggling of illicit drugs by North Korean soldiers, and a rare successful escape from North Korea by sea.

Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

South Korea and Vietnam established diplomatic relations only twenty years ago. Today these former adversaries enjoy unexpectedly cordial and rapidly expanding bilateral ties. Leaders of the two nations—perceiving broadly shared interests and no fundamental conflicts—seek to leverage their subregional influence on behalf of common or complementary policy goals. Today they often profess a “middle power” identity as they explain their foreign policy in terms of such classical middle power goals as regional peace, integration, and common goods.

Broadly similar in many respects, South Korea and Vietnam are nonetheless sufficiently different that a comparison can yield interesting insights—yet there is a dearth of systematic comparative work on the two. While holding a range of views on the contentious concepts of middle power and national identity, the contributors to Asia’s Middle Powers? help readers, both academic and policy practitioners, to gain an enhanced appreciation of South Korea and Vietnam’s regional behavior and international strategies

The publication of Asia's Middle Powers was made possible by the generosity of the Koret Foundation of San Francisco, CA.

Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

Kim Jong-il once declared he would transform North Korea into a "great and powerful country" by 2012, apparently believing that nuclear weapons would compel the international community to engage on his terms. With no such prospect in sight, North Korea faces a multitude of intractable problems. Will North Koreans accept his son as their leader, and will he embrace new thinking to solve the country's problems? Why do North Korean leaders resist reform of an economic system that impoverishes the people? Can a country so dependent on outside help continue to defy the international community?

In Troubled Transition, leading international experts examine these dilemmas, offering new insights into how a troubled North Korea may evolve in light of the ways other command economies and totalitarian states--from the Soviet Union and East Germany to Vietnam and China--have transitioned.

The publication of Troubled Transition was made possible by the generosity of the Koret Foundation of San Francisco, CA.

Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

Japan’s first decade of the twenty-first century was both disappointing and bewildering, producing wildly contrasting evaluations. Many have come to call this period the “second lost decade,” characterized by policy paralysis and overall lackluster economic growth.

For those studying Japan more closely, however, the same decades reveal nothing short of a broad transformation in numerous core tenets of Japan’s postwar political economy. How can we best capture this transformation?

Each chapter in this volume examines a different aspect of Japan’s political economy within a longer historical trajectory, from multiple angles, to depict a flexible but resilient system. We characterize Japan’s process of change as syncretism—practices foreign, domestic, old and new were selectively adopted, mixed and matched, along the way creating a new and unique hybrid system.

Examination copies: Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press. 

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) came to power in 2009 with a commanding majority, ending fifty years of almost uninterrupted Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rule. Then, in 2012, just over three years later, the DPJ lost power in an equally stunning landslide loss to the LDP. This volume examines the DPJ’s remarkable ascendance, its policies once in power, and its dramatic fall.

What explains the DPJ’s rapid rise to power? Why was policy change under the DPJ limited, despite high expectations and promises of bold reform? Why has the party been paralyzed by internecine conflict?

Chapters in the volume cover: DPJ candidate recruitment; the influence of media coverage; nationalization of elections; electoral system constraints on policy change; the role of third parties; municipal mergers; the role of women; transportation policy; fiscal decentralization; information technology; response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster; security strategy; and foreign policy. Japan under the DPJ makes important contributions to the study of Japanese politics, while drawing upon and advancing scholarship on a wider range of issues of interest to political scientists.

Examination copies: Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

South Korea remains a puzzle for political economists. The country has experienced phenomenal economic growth since the 1960s, but its upward trajectory has been repeatedly diverted by serious systemic crises, followed by spectacular recoveries. The recoveries are often the result of vigorous structural reforms that nonetheless retain many of South Korea's traditional economic institutions. How, then, can South Korea suffer from persistent systemic instability and yet prove so resilient? What remains the same and what changes?

The contributors to this volume consider the South Korean economy in its larger political context. Moving beyond the easy dichotomies—equilibrium vs. disequilibrium and stability vs. instability—they describe a complex and surprisingly robust economic and political system. Further, they argue that neither systemic challenges nor political pressures alone determine South Korea's stability and capacity for change. Instead, it is distinct patterns of interaction that shape this system's characteristics, development, and evolution.

Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.

Coverage of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) all too often focuses solely on nuclear proliferation, military parades, and the personality cult around its leaders. As the British ambassador to North Korea, John Everard had the rare experience of living there from 2006, when the DPRK conducted its first nuclear test, to 2008, just before Kim Jong Il’s stroke. While stationed in Pyongyang, Everard’s travels around the DPRK provided him with numerous opportunities to meet and converse with North Koreans.

Only Beautiful, Please goes beyond official North Korea to unveil the human dimension of life in that hermetic nation. Everard recounts his impressions of the country and its people, his interactions with them, and his observations on their way of life. He provides a picture as well of the life of foreigners in this closed society, considers how the DPRK evolved to its current state, and discusses the failure of current approaches to tackle the challenges that it throws up. The book is illustrated with striking and never-before-seen photographs taken by Everard during his stay in North Korea.

Desk, examination, or review copies can be requested through Stanford University Press.