Talks

“U.S.-Korea Relations in the 21st Century; Challenges and Prospects” (talk)

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“U.S.-Korea Relations in the 21st Century; Challenges and Prospects”

October 8, 2006

George Washington University

International Council on Korean Studies (ICKS) & Korean-American Professors Association (KAUFA).

A Fractured and Roiled Identity: the Ideological Challenges for Korea in the 21st Century

Introduction

Most analysis of the KoreanPeninsulatreats military and security issues, and occasionally economic issues, as the determining factors for the future of that nation. Although I certainly recognize the importance of those vital aspects of human society, I feel that there is amble evidence, that issues of identity and ideology in the Republicof Korea, and the DPRK as well, will be also significant issues. Today’s ideological fragmentation and radically divergent interpretations of history and society may cause considerable instability within Korean society in the years to come.

In making this claim, I am not suggesting thatKoreais necessarily unique in its ideological fragmentation. We can find indications of radically different epistemologies and historical filiations throughoutEast Asia, and across the globe. Globalization, technology, the expansion of trade and the alienation within society caused by rapid modernization has left its traces across the globe. The fluidity we find in the ideological realm today recalls much of the uncertainty in the world in the 1920s and 1930s.

ICKS oct. 2006 PASTREICH ROK Identity

 

“DMZs Seen and Unseen” (Talk)

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Emanuel Pastreich

April, 2003

Program in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

DMZs Seen and Unseen;

The Real Challenges of Security and Culture in the 21st Century

We often think of North Korea, or Taiwan, as the last remaining traces of a cold war order that stand on the edge of collapse. We imagine that both problems may be resolved in the next decade, or perhaps even sooner, as economic forces overwhelm military and ideological conventions. Yet I would posit that we are perhaps being misled by our own preconceptions. How can it be that as tensions increase in the United States media and more spending for the military is approved in the Blue House that those on the street in Seoul seem to feel quite at ease with the current process of economic integration between North and South Korea, and an unprecedented group of South Koreans civilians have taken off for a ceremony in Pyongyang? How do we reconcile these divergent events? How can tensions mount between Japanand North Korea(or even South Koreaand Japan) at the same time that economic integration between North Koreaand China, Japanand South Koreacontinues unabated?  Part of the situation derives from misunderstandings. Part of the situation derives from the unique challenge of a   cultural and technological nature posed by the 21st century.

Pastreich on North Korea ACDIS 2003

“The Korean Peninsula and the Struggle between World Powers” (talk)

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ICAS Winter Symposium

Humanity, Peace and Security

Dirksen Building SD-226  B

Washington D.C.

12:30-4:30 pm

February 24, 2005

The Korean Peninsula and the Struggle between World Powers

100 Years after the Taft-Katsura Agreement and the Portsmouth Treaty

Opening Remarks

Any serious attempt to achieve a lasting and effective resolution to the economic and security issues of the Korean peninsula must perforce address the perceptions and beliefs of the Korean people themselves. Unfortunately, we Americans find ourselves making decisions regarding the future of the Korean peninsula without any sense of the historical context surrounding the present standoff with North Korea. Nor do we grasp the historical events long before the present day that have determined Korean attitudes towards the United States. This paper does not focus on the negotiations with North Korea that have gone on since 1994. Rather it considers the decisive first encounters between the United States and Korea in the nineteenth and early twentieth century and goes on to present a comparison between the geo-political issues critical in the present day and those critical one hundred years ago in the hope that some larger issues normally not treated in an analysis of security issues may be broached.

 

Pastreich ICAS Talk Feb. 17, 2005

“Impending Changes on the Korean Peninsula and the Future of U.S.-Korean Relations” (Talk)

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Joint Annual Conference 2007

ICKS-KAUPA

 

“Impending Changes on the Korean Peninsula and the Future of U.S.-Korean Relations

 

East-West Center

Joint Annual Conference 2007 of ICKS-KAUPA

June 28, 2007

Emanuel Pastreich

 

“The Change in Paradigm for US-Asia Relations:

A Socio-cultural Perspective”

 

The New Challenges we face today in East Asia

For all the talk of the nuclear programs of North Korea and the threat of terrorism we have been severely distracted from the equally serious threats that we face in East Asia which are growing daily and may well eclipse all other concerns in the years to come. The need to rethink our paradigm for security in East Asia is a pressing issue for all of us. Nevertheless, the well-established models and assumptions about what the very term “East Asia” means, based on a familiar nation-state paradigm, obscure more than they illuminate. We must put forth a new model for how individuals, organizations, societies and economies function today that takes into account the impact of economic and technological linkage, the results of a run-away consumer society, and the threat of environmental and atmospheric degradation.

We need to give serious thought to the shifts within the basic relations between individuals, corporations, states and non-government players. That does not mean that nation states have disappeared, but rather that the relationship between the elements of which they consist has been fundamentally altered. Moreover, those alterations are so profound as to be essentially invisible to most observers. If we were to create a map based upon where exactly where products are manufactured, how they are distributed and where they are consumed, it would be an accurate description of how the global economy works, but would be entirely alien to almost all observers. By the same token, the patterns by which pollution spreads through the oceans and the atmosphere, the consequences of over-fishing, the impact of climate change on agriculture and the pressures of population growth are equally as obscure as they are critical.

 

New Security Concerns in Asia Pastreich East West Center 2007