From the outset, the transatlantic relationship has been more than a mere marriage of convenience. It encompasses a community of states, which are committed to common values, ideals and interests. Europe and North America can look back on a common cultural and intellectual history and they are bound together by a cultural affinity.

Transatlantic relations have benefited from the conscious decision made by the US not to withdraw from Europe in 1945, as it had done after the end of the First World War but, rather, to maintain a long-term presence. This injected an element of stability into Western Europe, which made it possible to tackle the European integration project.

Naturally, there are also conflicts of interests and areas of friction within this community of values. The transatlantic community has never been a perfect community of interests. We are each other's cousins, not identical twins.

Current contentious issues are not limited to the military action by the United States against the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Europe and the U.S. also have divergent viewpoints on issues such as climate protection, the death penalty or relations with international organizations. However, leading politicians on both sides of the Atlantic know that it is in everyone's interest to deal responsibly with such differences.

The visit by President Bush to Brussels and to Germany at the start to his second term as American president has helped to refocus the transatlantic relationship.

Korea, where ancient East Asian civilization and modern Western civilization interact and conflicting political ideologies, economic systems, and social practices collide, presents a particularly interesting case of the phenomenology of the consequences of cultural conflict involving the problems of detraditionalization, cultural hybridization, and the discontinuous nature of globalization. How do traditional religious beliefs and practices survive in modern Korean society and how do they interact with modern values and lifestyles derived from the West,particularly the United States?

What happens to a society when a cultural tradition that has valued the Confucian virtues of frugality, temperance, service to the family and local community, and natural, segmented human relations regulated by a communal sense of propriety and order transforms into one in which individualism, hedonism, utilitarian egotism, and the unbridled pursuit of material achievements predominate? What should replace or supplement eroding traditional values? Attempting to answer these questions requires us to seriously reflect on the relation of traditional moral culture to the contemporary situation in Korea.

Dr. Chung has taught at a number of institutions,including Boston University's College of General Studies and in the Department of Sociology and the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul.

He has published widely in both Korean and English,on social and ethical problems arising from East Asia's modern transformation. Dr. Chung has incorporated into his teaching and research the religious and social ethical problems involving globalization and encounters between civilizations with particular attention to Korea, East Asian religious traditions,and Christianity.

Buffet lunch will be provided to those who RSVP to Jasmin Ha at jaha@stanford.edu by Tuesday, May 10.

The panelists will discuss the history and future of India-Pakistan relations, focusing on the most persistent conflict between the two neighboring countries, Kashmir. Since 1947 both countries have defied numerous international attempts at resolution and in 1998 entered its most dangerous phase when both India and Pakistan became nuclear powers.

Rafiq Dossani, senior research scholar at Shorenstein APARC, is responsible for developing and directing the South Asia Initiative. Dossani earlier worked for the Robert Fleming Investment Banking group, first as CEO of its India operations and later as head of its San Francisco operations. He has also been the Chairman and CEO of a stockbroking firm on the OTCEI exchange in India, the Deputy Editor of Business India Weekly, and a professor of finance at Pennsylvania State University. His most recent book is Telecommunications Reform in India, published in spring 2002 by Greenwood Press.

Dossani holds a B.A. in economics from St. Stephen's College, New Delhi, India; an M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India; and a Ph.D. in finance from Northwestern University. He is currently undertaking projects on business process outsourcing (with the support of the Sloan Foundation), innovation and entrepreneurship in information technology in India, the institutional phasing-in of power-sector reform in Andhra Pradesh, and security in the Indian subcontinent.

Henry S. Rowen, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, is Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and Management at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and a member of Stanford's Asia/Pacific Research Center. He was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the U.S. Department of Defense from 1989 to 1991. He was also Chairman of the National Intelligence Council from 1981 to 1983. Rowen served as President of the RAND Corporation from 1967 to 1972 and was assistant director, U.S. Bureau of the Budget, from 1965 to 1966. He is a member of the Defense Department's Policy Board.

Rowen is an expert on international security, economic development, Asian economics and politics, as well as U.S. institutions and economic performance. His current research focuses on economic growth prospects for the developing world, political and economic change in East Asia, and the tenets of federalism.

This is the first lecture in ICC's CURRENT AFFAIRS series presented in collaboration with Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.