Half a century since the adoption of democracy in South Korea, the Korean people's high hopes for popular governance have not been met. There is widespread skepticism about what Korea's implementation of democracy has brought to the nation and whether it will be able to respond effectively in the future to the demands of an evolving society and world. What accounts for the conservative complacency of Korea's democratic system? Why do democratic administrations in Korea seem so incompetent? Do political parties in Korea legitimately represent the voice of civil society in legislating and policymaking on issues with a direct impact on the freedom and welfare of the people?

Taking an issue-oriented approach, renowned Korean political scientist Jang-Jip Choi endeavors to answer such questions as he examines the origins, structures, and conflicts of conservative democracy in South Korea as well as democratization's impact on the state, economy, and civil society.

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

More than two decades after the cold war ended elsewhere, it continues undiminished on the Korean Peninsula. The division of the Korean nation into competing North and South Korean states and the destructive war that followed constitute one of the great, and still unresolved, tragedies of the twentieth century. Peacemaker is the memoir of Lim Dong-won, former South Korean unification minister and architect of Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae-jung's Sunshine policy toward North Korea.

As both witness and participant, Lim traces the process of twenty years of diplomatic negotiations with North Korea, from the earliest rounds of inter-Korean talks through the historic inter-Korean summit of June 2000 and beyond. Peacemaker offers a fascinating inside look into the recent history of North-South Korea relations and provides important lessons for policymakers and citizens who seek to understand and resolve the tragic--and increasingly dangerous--situation on the Korean Peninsula.

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

Why should Americans worry about South Korean security? The answer is clear: North Korea, and beyond. Most international attention to the North Korea problem has focused on U.S. policy, but South Korea's longterm role may in fact be more important. South Korea's security is vital to peace and stability, not only in Northeast Asia but also the wider world.

Written by eminent scholars, practitioners, and policymakers with extensive on-the-ground experience, Beyond North Korea assesses the varied contexts—regional and global, traditional and nontraditional—that underpin South Korea's varied security challenges. What are South Korea's military requirements? How do relations with its neighbors enhance or undermine its position? What economic, environmental, and demographic factors come into play? This book reveals that South Korea's national security rests as much on sound domestic policy choices as on successful interstate relations. 

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

Beyond North Korea is the first in a new series of policy-related studies on contemporary South Korea sponsored by the Koret Foundation of San Francisco.

In the past fifty years, two factors have led to global population aging: a decline in fertility to levels close to—or even below—replacement and a decline in mortality that has increased world average life expectancy by nearly 67 percent. As the population skews toward fewer young people and more elderly who live longer postretirement lives, demographic changes—labor force participation, savings, economic growth, living arrangements, marriage markets, and social policy—are transforming society in fundamental, irreversible ways.

Nowhere are these effects of aging and demographic change more acute—nor their long-term effects more potentially significant—than in the Asia-Pacific region. How will these developments impact the economies and social protection systems of Japan, South Korea, China, and, by extension, the United States?

To assess this question, Aging Asia showcases cutting-edge, policy-relevant research. The first section focuses on demographic trends and their economic implications; the second section approaches select topics from a global comparative perspective, including social insurance financing, medical costs, and long-term care.

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

Few regions rival the Korean Peninsula in strategic importance to U.S. foreign policy. For half a century, America has stationed tens of thousands of troops in South Korea to defend its ally from the threat of North Korean aggression. South Korea, in turn, is critical to the defense of Japan, another ally and the linchpin of American interests in East Asia. The rise of a nuclear-armed North has upped the ante.

Yet despite the stakes, the two Koreas have registered only episodically on the radar of the United States. The troubling gap between American perceptions of the peninsula and its strategic importance remained an unexplored phenomenon until now. First Drafts of Korea breaks new ground in examining how the American mass media shape U.S. perceptions of both Koreas and, as a result, influence U.S. foreign policy.

Beginning with a detailed analysis of American newspaper coverage of Korea between 1992 and 2003, the book features essays by Western journalists and senior U.S. officials with firsthand experience on the peninsula over the past two decades. These include frank accounts of the unique frustrations of covering Kim Jong-il's North Korea, undoubtedly the most closed and media-unfriendly nation on earth.

Addressing topics ranging from the democratization of South Korea in the 1980s to today's deteriorating nuclear crisis, the book's distinguished contributors offer unique insights into American media coverage of the peninsula and its impact on policymaking in Washington. What emerges is a complex, shifting portrait of two rival nations sharing one peninsula whose future remains inextricably linked to the global security interests of the United States.

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

Pharmaceutical policies are interlinked globally and at the same time deeply rooted in local culture. Prescribing Cultures examines how pharmaceuticals and their regulation play an important and often contentious role in the health systems of the Asia-Pacific.

The first section of this timely book analyzes pharmaceutical policy in China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Australia, and India. The second section focuses on two cross-cutting themes: differences in "prescribing cultures" and physician dispensing; and the challenge of balancing access to drugs with incentives for innovation.

The book's contributors discuss important issues for U.S. policy. These include such hot-button topics as drug imports from Asia, regulation of global supply chains to assure drug safety and quality, new legislation to encourage development of drugs for neglected diseases, and the impact that decisions about pricing, regulation, and bilateral trade agreements have on access to medicines at home and abroad. In Prescribing Cultures, pharmaceutical policy reveals the economic trade-offs, political compromises, and historical trajectories that shape health systems.

Prescribing Cultures also illustrates how cultural legacies shape and are shaped by the forces of globalization, and thus will be of interest to students and scholars well beyond the confines of health policy.

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

Northeast Asia stands at a turning point in its history. The key economies of China, Japan, and South Korea are growing increasingly interdependent, and the movement toward regionalism is gaining momentum. Yet interdependency, often set in a global context, also spurs nationalism in all three countries, and beyond in East Asia. The essays in this volume assess current interactions -- or cross currents -- between national and regional forces in Northeast Asia, and suggest their future direction.

Cross Currents features provocative, plain-spoken contributions from a range of eminent international scholars and practitioners. They address key questions facing the region today: What competing visions of regional integration are being considered in Northeast Asia? Will they be realized? How do national pressures, especially the renewed China-Japan rivalry, stunt the movement toward regionalism? What role can Korea play to mitigate tensions between the two archrivals? How does the United States figure in Northeast Asian regionalism? Do America's Cold War alliances still have currency?

By addressing these questions from both Asian and U.S. perspectives, Cross Currents sheds new light on the interplay of national and regional forces in this strategic part of the world. Reformulating these interactions constructively is one of Northeast Asia's most pressing contemporary challenges.

Downloads: List of contributors | Introduction by Gi-Wook Shin | The United States and Northeast Asia, by Daniel Sneider

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

Ten years ago, in the summer of 1995, it was fashionable in Washington and Seoul to predict the imminent collapse of North Korea's political and economic systems, and even the state itself. While clearly an errant forecast, it is easy to see why pundits and analysts thought as they did. Kim Il-Sung had died. Kim's son and successor, Kim Jong-Il, was failing to lead just as the country suffered a massive agricultural failure. A nuclear-weapons dispute with the United States had forced a costly full-scale mobilization of the country's million-man army. It was likewise clear that North Korea's industry had shut down; night imagery of the peninsula showed, quite literally, that the lights were out in North Korea.

Ten years on, this volume aims to rectify misconceptions and increase collective understanding about North Korea. It is intended to present a snapshot of what is happening in North Korea now -- economically, politically, and socially. To be sure, much of the country remains in shadow, and there is much we still do not know. Moreover, issues of North Korean nonproliferation are so often binary that compromise becomes difficult, if not impossible.

The distinguished contributors -- specialists in politics, economics, human rights, and security -- advocate a subtler, more multidimensional approach to the North Korea problem. Offering cautionary perspective on this poorly understood place, they highlight recent positive developments and suggest solutions to seemingly intractable problems. Most attest that economics, commerce, and integration -- all arenas in which slow progress is being made -- may be the most powerful forces for change on the Korean peninsula. This timely book encourages thoughtful, pragmatic discussion about North Korea and seeks to light the road ahead, for the Korean Peninsula and beyond.

(This book is now out of print. You may download the full text here.)