Congressman Weldon represents the Seventh Congressional District of Pennsylvania. He is in his tenth term and is the most senior Republican in the Pennsylvania delegation. He is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and a leading House supporter of a national missile defense program. The Congressman has worked to strengthen the dialogue between the US and North Korea for the past three years. He has worked closely with Ambassador Han of North Korea as well as former Secretary Powell and Ambassador Pritchard to urge both sides to continue their participation in the six-party talks.

General Cha achieved the rank of Lieutenant General in the Army of the Republic of Korea. He has had a distinguished career, serving both in the public and the private sector, including as policy advisor to the Ministry of Unification, director general of the Policy Planning Bureau and deputy minster for Policy, and as an assistant professor in international relations. He has a B.A. in political science from Seoul National University, a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the Korea Military Academy, and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Paris. He is the author of several books and articles on Korean security issues, published in both Korean and English.

Alina Mungiu Pippidi holds a PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Iasi, Romania. She is a Professor of Political Communication at the Romanian National School of Government and Administration, a consultant for the World Bank and UNDP in Romania, and the Director of Romanian Academic Society. She is a former Shorenstein Fellow of Harvard University and Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. She has authored many books and articles on the Romanian transition, post-Communist political culture and nationalism.

The Korean Studies Program at the Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) in the Stanford Institute for International Studies will host summer workshop on Korea 2005 from June 27-July 1, 2005.

This workshop will focus on the genesis and evolution of globalized mass culture in Korea. Of particular interest will be the conflict engendered in Korea as state authority and conservative elites attempted to control hybrid cultural forms linked to global flows of mass culture.

Participants

Yoon S. Choi, University of California, Irvine

Rachael Joo, Stanford University

Jong-young Kim, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Ki-young Shin, University of Washington

Kyoim Yun, Indiana University

Since the 1980s, simultaneous trends in Taiwan toward globalization and localization have contributed to people's construction of a past promoting local solidarity. Such rewriting of Taiwanese consciousness has relied heavily on a "rediscovery" of cultural traditions corresponding to Pingpu identity. (Pingpu identity is debated as an indigenous or a mestizo identity and used to claim that Taiwan is not Chinese.) Professor Pans examination of the development of Pingpu identity over the past ten years focuses on the 1996 event "We are All Pingpu" and uses both ethnographic and historical materials to analyze the role of Pingpu identity in rewriting Taiwanese conscious-ness.

Dr. Pan's research addresses the following questions: Who are the Pingpu? Why do some Taiwanese choose to be identified as Pingu while others do not? What is the significance of Pingpu identity for present-day Taiwanese consciousness? How has Pingpu identity been constructed? How and why do people rewrite the past when an identity is being created?

This is the final seminar in the Taiwan Seminar Series hosted by Shorenstein APARC.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has long been based on the principle of national sovereignty, including a norm against interference by one member state in another's domestic affairs. But some members would like to set aside the prohibition in cases such as Myanmar, whose military junta continues to repress Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy to the detriment of ASEAN's image in the West. Opposed to this view are the group's newest, poorer, more continental, and politically more closed members: Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and of course Myanmar itself. They want ASEAN to uphold national sovereignty and reaffirm non-interference. The prospect of Myanmar assuming the chair of ASEAN in 2006-2007 makes this controversery even more acute. Is ASEAN splitting up? Will a compromise be reached? And with what implications for the nature and future of ASEAN and its conservative faction?

Carlyle A. Thayer is the 2004-2005 C. V. Starr Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC. He has written and lectured widely on Southeast Asian affairs. He has held positions at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (in Hawaii) and the Australian Defence College. His degrees are from the Australian National University (PhD), Yale University (MA), and Brown University (BA).

This is the 10th seminar of the 2004-2005 academic year hosted by the Southeast Asia Forum.

Part of the Taiwan Seminar Series hosted by Shorenstein APARC.

The Conference on the Health, Demographics and Economic Development will take place on May 20-21, 2005 at the Center on Development, Democracy and the Rule of Law, Stanford Institute for International Studies. This conference is organized by Peter Lorentzen and Romain Wacziarg.

The conference is organized around three themes:

1. The Demographic Transition and the Industrial Revolution

2. Health, Fertility, and Human Capital

3. The Effects of Health on Income and Growth: Micro and Macro Evidence.

Participants include: Manuel Amador (Stanford University), Javier Birchenall (UC Santa Barbara), Hoyt Bleakley (UC San Diego), David Bloom (Harvard University), Michele Boldrin (University of Minnesota), David Canning (Harvard University), Shankha Chakraborty (University of Oregon), Matthias Doepke (UCLA), Miriam Golden (UCLA), Larry Jones (University of Minnesota), Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan (University of Houston), Pete Klenow (Stanford University), Peter Lorentzen (Stanford University), Aprajit Mahajan (Stanford University), John McMillan (Stanford University), Rodrigo Soares (University of Maryland), Uwe Sunde (IZA Bonn), Michele Tertilt (Stanford University), Romain Wacziarg (Stanford University), and David Weil (Brown University).