It has been another exciting year for the Sejong Korea Scholars Program (SKSP), an intensive online course on Korean history and culture and U.S.–Korea relations for U.S. high school students. Some of the highlights from this year include the all-star lineup of guest speakers, a revamped curriculum that added an introduction to Korean American history and experience, and a diverse cohort of 23 intellectually curious and hard-working students. 

Each year, scholars and experts join students in Virtual Classroom (VC) sessions to share their scholarly knowledge and expertise on given topics. This year, the lineup of speakers included Professor Danny Leipziger from George Washington University, Professors Kyeyoung Park and Namhee Lee from UCLA, and Ambassador Mark Lippert, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

Students learned in detail about South Korea’s rapid economic development after the Korean War from Professor Danny Leipziger, who worked as Senior Country Economist for South Korea in the 1980s during his tenure at the World Bank. With Professor Namhee Lee, students examined the complex and intricate relations among the countries involved in the Korean War; and with Ambassador Mark Lippert, they explored recent developments in U.S.–South Korea relations.

This year, students were introduced to Korean American history within the context of broader Asian American history. They also learned about race relations between Korean Americans and other ethnic communities in the United States from Professor Kyeyoung Park, the author of LA Rising: Korean Relations with Blacks and Latinos after Civil Unrest (2019).

Students expressed their excitement to engage with the scholars and experts in VCs. Likewise, all of the scholars and experts who joined as guest speakers mentioned how much they enjoyed meeting the students and how they were impressed by the insights with which students asked their questions.

Each year, students from across the United States apply to participate in the competitive SKSP, which offers undergraduate-level content and rigor. Not too surprisingly, this year’s cohort of students demonstrated a strong intellectual curiosity, active participation in sharing their diverse perspectives and synthesis of the readings and lectures, and an excellent work ethic shown in assignments and a research paper. Many students mentioned how much they enjoyed interacting with their peers in the course, particularly in discussions, where they engaged in vibrant conversations about the course content in a respectful and positive manner. Many students frequently shared relevant external resources that they had found, which contributed to the richness of the discussion.

Student Clara Boyd commented, “It has been so rewarding and fun for me to complete the readings/lectures … and then discuss ideas with classmates, and it was really cool to have the opportunity to meet with different scholars and experts during the VCs. I always looked forward to interacting with the guest speakers and my classmates on Wednesday evenings! This program has been so impactful and eye-opening, and my perspective of Korea and the world has changed a lot since I started SKSP.”

Many of the students, who are taking multiple AP courses and participating in various extracurricular activities, mentioned that they have never learned much about Korea in their history courses. They are often surprised when they learn about Korean history that involves the United States and the long history of relations between the United States and Korea.

Some of the aims of the SKSP are to provide students with various perspectives on history, encourage them to develop critical thinking skills in assessing historical documents and evidence, and challenge them to interrogate common historical narratives and understand the complexities of history written from different perspectives. The analytic tools that students are encouraged and trained to develop in the SKSP will be a valuable tool as they continue to grow and expand as students and future leaders.

SPICE also offers online courses to U.S. high school students on Japan (Reischauer Scholars Program) and China (China Scholars Program), as well as other student programs for students abroad.

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Last week, I had the chance to visit one of my uncles, George Mukai (92), who is a veteran of the Korean War. He recently moved into an assisted-living facility and had very few items delivered from his home to his new residence. One thing that he did have delivered was a curio cabinet that contains Korean War-related items including medals, a cap, a United Nations Command certificate, and a piece of wire from the DMZ.

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This month marks the 71st anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War on June 25, 1950. After my visit with George, I started to reflect on the work that my colleagues (past and present) at SPICE have done to promote the study of Korea in U.S. schools and directly to students in the United States. They are:

• Waka Brown
• Jonas Edman
• Andre Haag
• Joon Seok Hong
• HyoJung Jang
• Grace Kim
• Se-Woong Koo
• Stefanie Lamb
• Annie Lim
• Rennie Moon
• Rylan Sekiguchi
   

They have developed extensive curriculum on Korea. The offerings can be found on this webpage and includes offerings such as the following:

• Colonial Korea in Historical Perspective
• Divided Memories: Comparing History Textbooks
• Dynamics of the Korean American Experience
• Economic Development: The Case of South Korea
• Inter-Korean Relations: Rivalry, Reconciliation, and Reunification
• Traditional and Contemporary Korean Culture
• Uncovering North Korea
• U.S.–South Korean Relations
   

In addition, the Sejong Korea Scholars Program, an online course for high school students in the United States, has been offered by SPICE since 2013. The SKSP annually selects 20–25 exceptional high school students from throughout the United States and engages them in an intensive study of Korea and U.S.–Korea relations. Selected students participate in the online course on Korea from February to June of each year. The current instructor is Jang.

Lastly, SPICE offers annual summer institutes to middle school and high school teachers in partnership with the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, and also the East Asia Seminars for Teachers in Hawaii. These are facilitated respectively by Edman, Naomi Funahashi, and Sekiguchi. These programs focus in part on Korea and are funded by the Freeman Foundation.

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The Role of the Special Envoy

As the Biden administration begins to review policy towards North Korea in earnest, King’s book and perspectives are particularly timely. Drawing on over a decade of experience, King explains how the role of the special envoy provides a unique opportunity to influence the policy agenda on human rights. As a senior member within the U.S. State Department, the envoy is in a position to both elevate the importance of rights violations to policymakers in Washington and provide feedback on how policy decisions impact the situation on the ground.     

King outlines several avenues where U.S. policymakers can increase pressure on North Korea to address the ongoing human rights crisis in the country. Predominantly among them is the recommendation to support the work on human rights already done by the UN and UN agencies, such as the reporting of Special Rapporteur Tomás Quintana.

“North Korea is very sensitive about its international legitimacy,” King notes. “Working through the UN and with UN agencies gives greater validity and acceptability to the human rights issues and puts greater pressure on North Korea to follow international norms.”

King’s other recommendations center more directly on the people of North Korea. He urges ongoing support for initiatives and agreements that foster access to information and proper distribution of resources and aid for North Koreans within the country along with freedom of movement for those who are attempting to leave and face crossing hostile borders into China. 

Responsibilities in Seoul

Speaking as King’s counterpart and colleague in South Korea, Jung-Hoon Lee echoed the need for visibility and accountability — both globally and in South Korea — for the DPRK's human rights crisis. “In the public eye and the global context, the human rights condition in North Korea is not very familiar. Why? There’s no access. The North Korean society is completely cocooned. There are terrible human rights conditions in other parts of the world, but there is access in those cases to see what is going on. In North Korea, there are only testimonials. There are no pictures or documentaries of the gulags and atrocities. That’s why it is so important that we keep raising this issue.”

For Lee, this means working with and through many of the same channels that King points to, such as the UN, and recognizing as a global community the scale of the crimes against humanity being committed.

But it also means accepting responsibilities closer to home. Lee firmly rejects the opinion raised by the South Korean Foreign Minister that refocusing on North Korean human rights and reappointing an ambassador to fill Lee’s now-vacant position is “useless.” Such indifference towards human rights issues in North Korea is damaging, warns Lee, citing the scrutiny South Korea suffered during the recent Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission hearings before the U.S. Congress.

The Road Towards Accountability

Human rights are only one facet of U.S. policy toward North Korea, but we undermine the overall relationship with the North if the United States abandons human rights in pursuit of security or economic goals, writes King in his book. "Policy toward North Korea involves interrelated issues that we frequently separate for analytical purposes or because they are dealt with in different ways or by different means. But these issues are interconnected, and they are not really separable."

Ultimately, any meaningful action to address North Korea's human rights violations will require coordinated efforts from international organizations, national governments, and civic organizations. In the third and final part of the Korea Program’s spring 2021 series on human rights in North Korea, forthcoming on May 20, leaders from the private sector will discuss the challenges of bringing together independent actors and organizations to raise awareness and call for accountability in North Korea. Registration for the event is open to the public.  

The Instructor of the Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) is Naomi Funahashi.

When Tai Young Whang, an ambitious high school graduate from Pyongyang, stepped onto the dock in Tokyo in 1933 to attend Hitotsubashi University, he never could have imagined that his personal dream of building economic bridges between Korea and Japan would fuel his great-grandson’s desire to follow in his footsteps almost a century later.

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At the end of my first year of middle school, I chose to study the Japanese language for the first time. What started out as a curiosity of the language and some of Japan’s popular cultural exports (such as Pokémon games) gradually blossomed into a deeper passion for Japan’s culture and history. During my eighth-grade world history class, I turned my focus to researching the intricate sankin kōtai system and skilled political maneuverings underlying the Tokugawa shogunate’s iron grip on power during the 17th century. I even found myself at Eiheiji Temple in Fukui Prefecture that May meditating towards a blank wooden wall at four in the morning. Yet, I was not satisfied. These brief historical vignettes, like still frames in the film reel of humanity, remained fragments of a larger narrative that I was increasingly eager to discover.

As my school did not offer courses in East Asian or Japanese history, I was excited to apply during my sophomore year to Stanford’s Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP), an online program on Japan offered to high school students across the United States. By providing its students with the ability to comprehensively explore Japanese history, economics, society, and more, the program presents a unique opportunity to delve into these topics alongside similarly motivated peers. While the course taught me a lot about Japan proper, I also gained a much deeper understanding of the U.S.–Japanese relationship.

During the course of the 20-week program, we spent the first 14 weeks on a series of in-depth readings and comprehensive seminars led by government officials, business leaders, and scholars. As actual practitioners of the fields we were studying, these visiting experts brought their worldviews and inspiring insights to life. During one of the virtual seminars, for example, we had the opportunity to meet Rachel Brunette-Chen, the then-Principal Officer for the U.S. Consulate General in Sapporo, and learn about both the U.S.–Japan Security Alliance and her own foreign service experience bolstering the ties that connect the two countries. Hearing from an actual foreign service officer provided a tangible sense of the dedication and importance of those who work to link American and Japanese interests on the ground.

Starting from week one, we unpacked what we had learned from our readings and virtual classrooms through weekly discussion boards. These online forums continued throughout the week, often filled with thought-provoking perspectives, respectful rebuttals, and witty banter. We debated the efficiency of Abenomics, the impact of textbook revisions on Japanese history education, and the societal strains of modernization on early 20th century Japan, among other topics. Each new post became another thread weaving our different ideas together into a tapestry of cross-cultural connections that we all grew to treasure. Even today, many of us remain connected both online and by our shared experience.

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Brandon Cho’s great-grandparents, Tai Young Whang and Bong Soon Whang, Seoul; photo courtesy Brandon Cho