This podcast conversation with Gi-Wook Shin was originally produced by CSIS.

South Korea may seem to be a mature democracy from the outside, but Gi-Wook Shin, director of APARC and the Korea Program, warns that internally, democratic norms in the ROK are starting to weaken and crumble. He joins Victor Cha and Andrew Schwartz on The Impossible State, a podcast by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), to further discuss his recent Journal of Democracy article, "South Korea's Democratic Decay," and how democratic backsliding in the Moon administration is part of a broader trend of the global decline of democracy. Listen above to the full conversation.

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Applications opened last week for the China Scholars Program (CSP), Sejong Korea Scholars Program (SKSP), and Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP) on Japan—three intensive online courses offered by SPICE, Stanford University, to high school students across the United States. All three applications can now be viewed at https://spicestanford.smapply.io/. Interested students must submit their completed application (including an essay and letter of recommendation) by the deadlines listed below.

Spring 2021 Online Course Application Deadlines

China Scholars Program: October 16, 2020
Sejong Korea Scholars Program: October 16, 2020
Reischauer Scholars Program: October 16, 2020

All three online courses are currently accepting applications for the Spring 2021 term, which will begin in February and run through June. Designed as college-level introductions to East Asia, these academically rigorous courses present high school students the unique opportunity to engage in a guided study of China, Korea, or Japan directly with leading scholars, former diplomats, and other experts from Stanford and beyond. High school students with a strong interest in East Asia and/or international relations are especially encouraged to apply.

“U.S. relations with East Asia is prominently featured in the news daily,” says Naomi Funahashi, instructor of the Reischauer Scholars Program. “SPICE is incredibly fortunate to have Stanford faculty conducting cutting-edge research on Korea, Japan, and China who are willing to help our students interpret key historical events and understand contemporary topics related to security, trade, and politics.”

Rising high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors in the United States are eligible to apply to any of the three programs. Students who are interested in more than one program can apply to two or three and rank their preferences on their applications; those who are accepted into multiple programs will be invited to enroll in their highest-preference course.

For more information on a specific course, please refer to its individual webpage at chinascholars.org, sejongscholars.org, or reischauerscholars.org.

The RSP, SKSP, and CSP are SPICE’s online courses for high school students. In addition, we offer online courses for high school students in Japan (Stanford e-Japan) and China (Stanford e-China). To be notified when the next application period opens, join our email list or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Amidst the hectic year known as 2020, I started and finished SPICE’s Sejong Korea Scholars Program (SKSP), an online program offered through Stanford for high school students interested in Korea. The program was challenging but also rewarding; I honestly loved every moment of it.

My interest in Korea began when I was in elementary school. Growing up in Queens, New York, a New York City borough with a diverse population, Korean culture was introduced to me in the form of food. Although some may think all Asian food is the same, as a Chinese American, I know how vastly different Korean food can be from Chinese food. My Korean American classmates would bring in Korean foods for lunch—kimchi, gimbap, galbi—and because I had never seen it before, I’d always want to know how it tasted. Luckily for me, Queens had a sizable ethnic Korean population and with that came great Korean restaurants. I was a frequent visitor to these tasty restaurants. Through this, I became interested in learning more about Korea, but outside of food, a few videos I had watched, and some information from my classmates, I didn’t know much, if anything at all, about Korea.

Heading into the SKSP, I was worried I didn’t know as much as my classmates. When I started the SKSP, all of my worries subsided. You didn’t need a strong background on Korea or in Korean. I was told that the most important thing to have is a genuine interest or curiosity about the topic, which was something I did have. I also have to say that my classmates were some of the most motivated students I’ve ever met.

And during our biweekly meetings, we would attend lectures with experts on Korea and professionals who worked with Korea. Something interesting I learned from a lecture was that the “BBC Dad” Professor Robert Kelly is a political analyst on Korean affairs, which I don’t find to be a coincidence; instead, learning the fact that Professor Kelly is an expert on Korea shows how widespread and important the study of Korea today is.

We explored a bit of pre-nineteenth century Korean history and then explored more on religions in Korea, colonial Korea, the division of Korea and the Korean War, post-war Korea, the divergence of North and South Korea, and trends in South Korean culture including bits about chaebols and the Hallyu wave. I found a particular interest in the Korean diaspora in Japan, which I learned about when learning about Korea in its colonial period. And because the SKSP has a research component, I wrote my paper on that and enjoyed my time so much because it was a topic I genuinely wanted to learn more about. After completing my paper, I was led to Min Jin Lee’s novel Pachinko, a historical fiction about a Korean family in Japan, and found myself so invested because I had some background knowledge.

Starting the course before the pandemic and completing it during the pandemic was interesting, to say the least. When the coronavirus situation took a turn for the worse, my high school courses scrambled to finish the year, but the SKSP went on normally, and I was able to invest more time into learning about Korea. I have to give props to the course instructor, Dr. HyoJung Jang, and the program coordinator Jonas Edman for keeping the course running smoothly through a worldwide crisis and helping us students with any questions and issues we had.

I participated in the SKSP as a senior in high school, and having taken it right before college has been incredible. This course has helped develop my self-driven learning skills, which I believe will be unimaginably beneficial for me as I head off to begin my first year of college. The SKSP is a college-level course that teaches in the same way college courses are taught, and right now, I find that my experience with the SKSP has prepared me for my college classes that I have only recently started.

The SKSP has furthered my interest in international relations, which I hope to major in at the University of Pennsylvania where I am a freshman this fall. I am definitely looking forward to furthering my knowledge of Korea and hope I am able to visit one day after traveling is safe once again. For me, as someone who came into the SKSP with a curiosity and left with even more, I can’t wait to continue on my path of learning. For those interested in the SKSP, I say go for it. It has changed not only how much I know about the world, but also how I perceive it. I hope SPICE continues to offer this terrific opportunity and students take this opportunity, so they can make a difference in the world.

As schools across the U.S. began to close due to COVID-19 in mid-March, I was in the unique position of transitioning into online classes while already having had some experience taking fully online classes. The year before, I had completed SPICE’s Reischauer Scholars Program (RSP), an intensive online course focusing on Japanese culture, history, and U.S.–Japan relations; participating in the Sejong Korea Scholars Program (SKSP), an equivalent program, I thought, would be a similar experience.

Yet, being part of the SKSP in the midst of a pandemic framed the way I participated in and learned from the class. As the course went on, we began each Virtual Classroom with a brief discussion on COVID-19, talking amongst ourselves how we were personally doing, and how Korea was handling it as compared to the U.S. We were encouraged to read local news in Korea to learn about COVID-19, and we brought our learnings to each discussion with renewed vigor. There’s a strange and harrowing feeling you get when analyzing the course of a virus in your home country and across the Pacific—an implicit understanding that this isn’t just a research text to pore over, but an unprecedented moment in history we’re living through. 

But back to the beginning. After participating in the RSP, I realized how essential it is to analyze stories from all facets.

RSP first introduced me to the concept that “history is told from the winner’s perspective,” and SKSP gave me the opportunity to delve deeply into that. I became intrigued with how history is taught and wanted to understand the “other” sides of stories I learned about in my textbooks. Weeks later, when we learned about the Japanese exploitation of Korean comfort women during World War II, I knew that learning about these issues from one side would simply not be enough to fully comprehend parts of history such as these. The way I learn history directly impacts how I view society and the relationships between groups of people.

Hence, each of the modules helped me craft a multifaceted perspective of Korea and U.S.–Korea relations. The lessons and lectures allowed me to understand and re-interpret modern and historical issues in a global context. From Shamanism’s evolving role in Korean society, to Japanese colonial rule in Korea, to the social impacts of the Miracle on the Han River, to class and socioeconomic strata in Korean education systems, I dove into a plethora of topics through readings, lectures, and class discussions. As a high school student, I never believed I would have the honor of learning from distinguished scholars and experts, but SKSP introduced me to a variety of academics with clear passions for Korean history and culture. My learning extended beyond lectures: in discussion boards, I learned from my classmates, who shared their diverse perspectives and experiences and fostered an inclusive and challenging learning environment. We were given the chance to analyze material on our own through readings and assignments, but it was in these virtual interactions with my peers that I discovered the most. The open and constructive group that Dr. Jang and Mr. Edman facilitated was one where we could respectfully engage with one another on any topic while acknowledging at the end of the day the friendships and bonds we’d made. Thus, I paired my self-led education from SPICE with that of my public schooling and constructed a greater comprehensive understanding of the world.  

However, it was the Korean War and North Korea units that I believe played the greatest role in not only my intellectual development, but also my personal and political growth. These two units coalesced in my final research paper project, in which I wrote about the critical role of student activism in South Korean democratization. During my research and readings, I analyzed how the March First Movement set the stage for South Korean protest culture and democratization. I recognized that of the two factions of activists post March First, I might have been in the more radical faction, the one that ended up becoming North Korea. This realization, combined with the readings and lectures from the North Korea unit, completely changed my view of geopolitics in Korea. I learned about the U.S.’s role in the Korean War, and subsequently the Western portrayal of North Korea as a rogue, renegade state. I wondered, how much are we to speak about propaganda when students like me are taught lessons that shield Western imperialism with saviorism and American exceptionalism?

SKSP is not simply a fleeting online course with a broad overview of Korea, but an unparalleled opportunity to uncover Korea on an academic level few other high school students have. I hadn’t expected to undergo a personal and political reckoning within myself, but it is because of this growth that I am beyond grateful for SKSP, Dr. Jang and Mr. Edman’s instruction and advising, and all of my peers’ questions and discussions. Since then, I haven’t ceased to continue kindling my interest in Korean history and politics, questioning previously held beliefs, and broadening my worldview. And it is especially during a time like this—a global movement of Black Lives Matter, a local movement to change my high school’s Indigenous emblem, and everything in between, all within the context of a pandemic—that it is so crucial for me to critically analyze what I’ve been taught, and to keep learning as much as I can. In SKSP, I’ve developed the skills necessary to do so. It’s the “other sides” of stories, namely non-Western and non-white, that I am committed to studying, since understanding the nuances of the past can help guide us into a more equitable future.

Next fall, I begin at Stanford, hopefully on campus—it feels like coming full circle, having the privilege to attend college in an institution that first allowed me to foster a genuine love for learning. Now, while many of my friends begin their college careers, I have chosen to take a gap year with the U.S. Department of State’s National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y), a rigorous and competitive academic scholarship to study a critical language abroad. As of August, the in-country program has been pushed back to 2021 due to COVID-19, but I hope to find myself in Seoul in a few months. With everything ahead of me, I know SKSP is only the beginning, as I hope to continue bridging my education to the world.

Samsung is a veritable business empire. In 2017, it passed Apple as the most profitable tech company. But there is more to the company than flat screens and smartphones. In Korea, Samsung is ubiquitous not only as a leading electronics brand, but as a major shaper of culture and politics.

In the episode "The Republic of Samsung" from Business Insider's “Brought to You By . . .” podcast, APARC and Korea Program Director Gi-Wook Shin gives his perspectives on how Samsung transformed from a small family produce shop to become a core pillar of Korean identity. “Samsung really has become a very powerful group in Korea,” reflects Shin. “Their influence is everywhere, not only in business, but in politics, in education, and in culture.”

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This blurry intermingling of business interests, politics, and identity is both the key to Samsung’s success and the source of scandals over bribery, corruption, and nepotism that have rocked the company in recent years. For Shin, the longstanding Korean saying, “What is good for Samsung is good for South Korea,” has additional meaning in the present moment as both the company and the government of the ROK grapple with issues of systemic self-interest, erosion of accountability, and abuses of power that threaten the integrity and identity of each.

Under the leadership of Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong, the company is working to refurbish its image. But these efforts are mired in ongoing legal setbacks and new allegations. “Samsung can’t continue in the way that they have in the past. It’s a different era. Now, people demand more transparency, more fairness, more justice,” Dr. Shin emphasizes. As a predominant force for shaping business, politics, and identity in South Korean, this counsel to Samsung may prove a litmus test for the wellbeing of the Republic of Korea’s future as a whole.

Listen above to hear more of Dr. Shin’s insights and learn the rest of the story.

In recent months, tensions have once again flared between Pyongyang and Seoul, calling into question the state of inter-Korean and U.S.-Korea relations. As the future of denuclearization talks with North Korea remains uncertain and the United States looks towards the November 2020 presidential election, APARC gathered experts on Korea and international security to provide analysis of where we stand with the DPRK and what considerations future Korea policies should involve.

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Gi-Wook Shin, APARC’s director and the director of the Korea Program, moderates the APARC-led discussion hosted by the Freeman Spogli Institute. Robert Carlin, a longtime analyst of North Korea and frequent visitor to the DPRK, joins the panel from the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). Leading North Korea and international affairs expert Victor Cha provides insight into the public statements and apparent policy goals of North Korea's leadership, while fellow Georgetown scholar and imminent APARC center fellow Oriana Mastro offers commentary on the ongoing need for military stability in the area. Siegfried Hecker, an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security, adds his expertise in nuclear nonproliferation and arms control to the discussion.