Q. What is the history of the Journal of Korean Studies?

A. The Journal of Korean Studies was begun, I believe, in 1979 at the University of Washington by Professor James Palais, a preeminent Korean historian. The Journal of Japanese Studies appeared at the same time and both journals made tremendous contributions to their respective fields. The Journal of Korean Studies was unquestionably the top journal in the field of Korean studies. In fact, one of my first publications appeared in the Journal of Korean Studies. However, unlike the Journal of Japanese Studies, which has been published without interruption since its founding, publication of the Journal of Korean Studies was suspended in 1992 due to financial and administrative problems. So now we're reviving it at long last.

Q. Why did you feel it was important to revive the journal of korean studies and bring it to APARC?

A. First of all, there isn't really any top journal in the field at present, and Korean studies has grown enormously in the last ten years. As a result, there has been considerable demand for a good journal, especially among young scholars who want to publish their work. For Korean studies to continue to grow in the United States, it's vital for scholars to have a place to publish their research outcomes.

With respect to APARC serving as the home for the Journal of Korean Studies, we are still building up Korean studies at the Center, and at Stanford as a whole. I believe that having a premier journal in the program will more quickly place the program itself on the national map. It's also a great service to Korean studies in general. Many people-including very senior leaders in the field-really appreciate that we have put in the effort to bring back this important publication after such a long hiatus. And I'm so grateful to APARC for its financial, editorial, and administrative support in making the issue a reality. Chiho Sawada, postdoctoral research fellow in Korean studies at APARC, assisted me as associate editor and Victoria Tomkinson has done a wonderful job of editing the articles. We will celebrate the revival of the Journal of Korean Studies at the upcoming national meetings of the Association for Asian Studies.

Q. Where does the journal of korean studies fit into stanford's korean studies program?

A. Stanford's program began relatively late. This isn't to say that we haven't grown hugely, because the program has really taken off in the past three years. Yet there are other programs that have been up and running much longer, and therefore are more established. When I left the University of California, Los Angeles, which has the most well-established program in the nation, I wanted to create a unique Korean studies program at Stanford.

My vision for the Stanford Korean Studies Program can be summarized in two terms: social science and research. The research mission includes student training through research projects. Many students-both undergraduate and graduate-are involved in various research projects within the Korean Studies Program. Most other institutional programs focus on humanities and I don't intend to repeat what others elsewhere in the country and the world have already done. As I want to focus on social science, and research and publication, the Journal of Korean Studies will be a key component of that mission.

Q. Does the journal of korean studies have a particular focus within the field of korean studies?

A. Until now, the Journal of Korean Studies has predominantly published articles on history, literature, and culture, reflecting a general trend in the current field of Korean studies. Going forward, I'd like to publish more papers on social science. The revival issue doesn't reflect that goal and given the current concentration on humanities in the field, it won't be easy. Yet it's my hope that we'll tip the balance toward social sciences in subsequent issues and this is another way of making a contribution to the field as a whole.

Q. Publishing a major academic journal is a big job. What's the editorial procedure? What, for you as the co-editor [with john duncan, at the University of California, Los Angeles], is the most challenging part of putting the journal of korean studies together each year?

A. The number one challenge is getting good manuscripts. Last year, we received over twenty articles, but we accepted only one (and asked a few authors to revise and resubmit). Now that the journal is out, we expect more submissions in the months to come. My top priority is to control the quality of what we publish.

The second big challenge is finding good reviewers. The Journal of Korean Studies is, of course, a refereed journal. Usually we send each submitted manuscript to two people to read and evaluate, but the field of Korean studies is pretty small, and we can't go back to the same people all the time. Finding good readers will continue to be a vital but time-consuming part of the editorial process.

Q. What topics do you plan to cover in future issues?

A. My plan is to publish one general issue per year that covers a broad spectrum of topics in Korean studies, much like our revival issue. And, beginning this summer, I'm going to hold an annual one-week summer workshop, a small gathering here at Stanford. I'll pick a specific topic or theme and then through open competition select five or six scholars who have a draft paper on the topic. I will bring them to Stanford for one week and work with a senior scholar to lead the workshop. I plan to publish the papers that come out of that workshop as a special issue of the Journal of Korean Studies. The workshop we are organizing for summer 2005 will address the globalization of Korea. Professor Michael Robinson of Indiana University (who previously collaborated with me on Colonial Modernity in Korea) will lead the workshop. Thus, starting in 2006, the Journal of Korean Studies will publish one general and one special issue each year.

Q. Any highlights from this inaugural issue?

A. All of the articles in this inaugural issue have been carefully selected and are very strong in their quality. I'm particularly pleased that the articles range across so many subjects, from Michael Kim's piece on vernacular fiction and popular reading, to Robert Buswell's study of the significance of Sugi's collation notes on the Korean Buddhist canon, to Jin-Kyung Lee's article about feminist literature in 1950s South Korea. In addition to these, there are two other research articles, and a number of reviews of recent books in the field.

Q. How can people get copies of the journal of korean studies?

A. Subscriptions to the Journal of Korean Studies are being handled by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, located in Maryland. They, too, have been wonderfully supportive and involved in getting the Journal of Korean Studies off the ground. Those wishing to subscribe to the Journal can find more information on the .

For nearly two decades, most major developing countries have struggled to introduce market forces in their electric power systems. In every case, that effort has proceeded more slowly than reformers hoped and the outcomes have been hybrids that are far from the efficiency and organization of the "ideal" textbook model for a marketbased power system.

At the same time, growing concern about global climate change has put the spotlight on the need to build an international regulatory regime that includes strong incentives for key developing countries to control their emissions of greenhouse gases. In most of these countries, the power sector is a large source of emissions that, with effort, could be controlled.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol included mechanisms that would reward developing nations that cut emissions, but so far the performance of these mechanisms has fallen far short of their potential.

Beginning in 2002, the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) at the Stanford Institute for International Studies (SIIS) and the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad (IIMA) have conducted a set of studies to examine the intersection of these two crucial challenges for the organization of energy infrastructures in the developing world. This research, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, examined power-market reforms and greenhouse-gas emissions in two key states in India. At the same time PESD was conducting a comprehensive study of electricity-market reforms in five developing countries (Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa) as well as detailed analyses of the greenhouse-gas emissions from three provinces in China in conjunction with other research partners.

PESD and IIMA presented their findings at a workshop on January 27-28, 2005, at Stanford University. The workshop brought together scholars studying the organization of the electric-power sector and other infrastructures in developing countries with energy policy makers, technologists, and those studying the effectiveness of international legal regimes, with the aim of not only focusing on new theories that are emerging to explain the organization of the power sector and the design of meaningful international institutions, but also identifying practical implications for investors, regulators, and policymakers.

The workshop offered diagnoses of what has gone wrong and what opportunities have nonetheless emerged. It focused on practical solutions and a look at the prospects for different technologies to meet the growing demand for power while minimizing the ecological footprint of power generation.

One of the key conclusions of the research and the workshop, as discussed by David Victor, director of PESD, is that electricity markets in the developing world have not progressed inexorably and consistently from a state-owned model to an open market-based model. Rather, much as the experience of the past ten years in the United States has demonstrated, reform of electric-power systems has proceeded differentially between parts of the industry and between jurisdictional units, with some segments of the power generation, transmission, and distribution systems still dominated by the state and some segments now fully responsive to signals from the market.

This hybrid condition-with portions of the electricity enterprise deregulated and other portions still fully regulated-has proven to be virtually universal and quite durable as well. For the most part, it also has proven beneficial to the overall operation of the system as well as to climate mitigation due to the fact that introduction of market forces to parts of the system tends to have a spillover effect, helping to improve efficiency in parts of the system that remain under state control.

Tom Heller, SIIS senior fellow, noted that the negotiations leading up to the

development of the Kyoto Protocol and subsequent discussions and experience have

demonstrated that the burden-sharing metaphor-expecting developing nations to

make a proportional investment and effort in reducing greenhouse-gas emissions-

will not be successful. Rather, as gross and per capita energy consumption increases in developing nations, which is occurring especially rapidly in China and India, policies and mechanisms that facilitate investment in efficient and clean energy production, transmission, and end-use infrastructures will need to be developed and rolled out.

The Kyoto Protocol provided a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to encourage such investment. However, the conclusion reached by practitioners developing such projects in China is that CDM is an inefficient and insufficient mechanism for fostering the magnitude of development projects that will be required to help mitigate the environmental effects of energy growth in the developing nations.

Two problems with CDM were raised at the workshop. First, the bureaucratic hurdles facing developers of CDM projects are daunting. To date no such project has received certification. Second, the Kyoto Protocol's current round of reductions targets expires in 2012, and uncertainty regarding the likely direction and form of future U.S. and European initiatives provides a disincentive to investment in CDM projects.

Alberto Chiappa, managing director of Energy Systems International, noted the good news is that in spite of these difficulties, investors are finding opportunities to develop projects to provide cleaner sources of energy and improve end-use energy efficiency. Professor P.R. Shukla of IIMA pointed out that there is a great need to align development and climate concerns if future mechanisms for climate mitigation in the developing world are to be successful.

Douglas Ogden, program officer at the Energy Foundation, noted that China has made a firm commitment to greatly increase the market share of electricity from renewable sources to 5 percent by 2010 and 20 percent by 2020 and in 2008 will adopt an automobile fuel-economy standard 20 percent more efficient than U.S. CAFE standards. Also, both China and India are engaged in developing natural gas markets in sectors traditionally dominated by coal.

Mario Pereira, director of Power Systems Research, discussed Brazil's current efforts to develop economical and efficient electricity supply through biomass-specifically ethanol derived from sugarcane bagasse. The ethanol industry was originally developed as a reaction to the oil shocks of the 1970s. Although the majority of electricity in Brazil is provided by hydroelectric projects, sugarcane ethanol has some important advantages. First, the sugarcane fields are geographically close to major centers of demand, and second, sugarcane thrives during drier periods of the year when hydroelectric production declines. The experience in Brazil thus demonstrates that renewables can provide an economically attractive source of energy for developing nations.

Looking toward the future, PESD has several projects under way pertaining to the

intersection of electricity-market reforms and global climate change. The program is expanding its research on power-market reforms through a set of case studies on independent power producer projects in ten developing nations and is also initiating a set of studies examining the introduction of natural gas to regions in India and China.

Much work remains to be done before the interface between electricity-market reform and global climate change is well understood. As energy markets in the developing world expand, addressing this question will become more and more important if we are to stabilize atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases.

China has a large and growing elderly population, but to be old in China-particularly in the countryside-is to be vulnerable. In the country's rural areas there are few clinics and hospitals, and health insurance is virtually nonexistent. Compared with elderly Chinese living in urban areas, those in rural areas have a shorter life expectancy and a poorer quality of life.

Further, little academic research has focused on the health needs and health status of China's elderly. It is with the goal of addressing this deficit that Pengqian Fang, a trainee with CHP/PCOR's China-U.S. Health and Aging Research Fellowship, recently returned to China from Stanford. Fang is seeking to document the health disparities between China's rural and urban elderly population, and to use his findings to propose healthcare assistance programs for the elderly in rural areas of China.

Fang spent a year at Stanford studying health-services research concepts and methods and developing his research project.

In the project, which Fang refined with guidance from CHP/PCOR faculty, Fang will conduct a detailed survey of the health status, health needs, and healthcare utilization of elderly people in rural and urban areas of China, through in-home interviews in three Chinese provinces with different geographic and socioeconomic characteristics: Guizhou (in southwest China), Hubei (in central China), and Guangdong (in the southeast).

He will conduct the project in collaboration with the health departments of the

three provinces, and with support from Tongji Medical College in Wuhan, where he

is director and associate professor of healthcare management.

Fang's study will be among the first of its kind in China. Such research is needed, Fang explained, because China's elderly population (of whom 70 percent reside in rural areas) is growing steadily, and in the coming years its members will require medical services at increasing rates. According to the country's 2000 census, China has 132 million people over age 65, making up more than 10 percent of the population; the over-80 population, which numbers 10 million people, is increasing by 5.4 percent a year; and about 20 percent of all elderly people in the world live in China.

The elderly in China's rural areas face particular challenges in getting high-quality, affordable healthcare services, Fang explained. There are few clinics and hospitals in rural areas, and there is no government-sponsored health coverage for the elderly (like the United States' Medicare program) anywhere in China. All of these factors put China's rural elderly in a vulnerable position, especially those with disabilities or serious illnesses.

"This research will show the disparities that exist, and it will encourage a dialogue about policies to help rural elderly people in China," Fang said.

Fang plans to conduct his survey in the first half of 2005, analyze the data in the summer and fall, and return to Stanford in November 2005 to present the results. In each of the three provinces studied, the research team will recruit 500 households and will conduct interviews with all individuals age 65 and over who reside there, for an estimated final sample of 2,500 people.

The respondents will be asked for a variety of information, including their income and education, insurance status, health status, daily activities, social activity, mental health, utilization of healthcare services, and accessibility and affordability of medical care. The researchers will also interview community healthcare workers-including physicians, nurses, and administrative staff-to seek information on the health needs of the elderly and the barriers they and their healthcare providers face.

The China-U.S. Health and Aging Research Fellowship, administered jointly by

CHP/PCOR and the China Health Economics Institute (Beijing), aims to improve

healthcare quality and efficiency in China through an exchange program in which

selected Chinese health services researchers come to Stanford to study for six months to a year, and then return to China to conduct an original research project. The fellowship is funded by the National Institutes of Health's Fogarty International Center.

"I have learned very much from Stanford and this program," Fang said. "The classes I attended have given me very useful ideas." He noted that since health services research is still a young field in China-about ten years old-"we learn a lot from the United States, like how to ask the research question, how to get a grant, how to design a study."

One aspect of Stanford that particularly impressed Fang was its emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration.

"This is a very good feature-the close relationship between different fields," he said. "In my country we are more focused on one narrow field."

Fang said he is interested in establishing research collaborations between Stanford and Tongji Medical College-an idea that he and CHP/PCOR's leadership will be exploring in the coming months.

There is much to admire about the U.S. healthcare system's emphasis on innovation and technology, Fang said. Still, he said, "I don't hope for China to follow the U.S. health system," with its heavy reliance on free-market principles. For one thing, "medicine here is very costly." He cited a personal example of how he fractured his arm in a minor bicycle accident, and how his emergency room visit for the injury, along with a follow-up physician appointment, cost more than $1,000. "I was surprised it cost so much," he said.

A review of the fellowship program conducted by officials at the China Health Economics Institute last fall concluded that it has been successful and valuable. Leaders at the institute said the trainees' Stanford experience has enhanced their intellectual abilities, their knowledge of research methodology, their leadership capacity, and their ability to collaborate internationally.

As the conflict in Iraq reminds us, nation building confounds its architects' designs with almost predictable regularity. Investments of time, resources, and specialized knowledge have not enabled large-scale political engineering. Instead, would-be nation builders have been frustrated by a proliferation of unintended consequences and their inability to elicit societal participation in their projects. Results depend more upon initial conditions prior to an intervention than the nation builder's exertions upon arrival.

Hence, the U.S. has performed most poorly when its mission required the most work (e.g., Somalia, Haiti, Iraq). Conversely, it has done best where it did less (Germany, Japan), deferring to old-regime civil servants and upgrading already functional institutions. Given the humbling record of Western powers at navigating the perils of macro-level political planning, the "how" of nation-building should be considered, in the formulation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a known unknown.

More likely, it is a known unknowable. The extent of unintended consequences and contingency in largescale political engineering makes disappointment certain and disaster likely.

Twentieth-century experiences belie the notion that nation-building successes will solve the problem of state failures. Forces trying to impose regime change and raise new state structures immediately grapple with societal inertia and their own deficit in understanding local politics.

This dilemma pushes would-be nation builders down one of two undesirable paths. Either they recognize their inability to restructure indigenous political arrangements or they attempt to do so in vain. Despite plans of change at the outset of nation building, those executing the project soon embrace a change of plans.

Thus, even the most committed states have been hampered by an inability to develop political capacity on the ground and improve upon the initial endowments of the country being occupied. Institutional value-added has been minimal, reflecting the problem of state instability back upon those who expected to solve it.

These patterns raise serious doubts about the chances of success in even the most well-intentioned of regimechange missions. They demarcate the limits of projecting state power abroad, whether for humanitarian or security purposes. The failures of imposed regime change lead to the conclusion that indigenous gradual political development-with all of its potential for authoritarianism and civil unrest-may be the optimal path for sustainable democratization and state building.

When comparing the uneven history of post-colonial development with the poor record of nation building we are left paraphrasing Churchill's endorsement of democracy as the worst kind of government except for the alternatives: Sovereign political development may be the worst form of government except for all those kinds of nation building that have been tried.

Infrastructural weakness is not a technical problem surmountable through systematic review of prior experiences. Indeed, the notion of "learning past lessons" deceptively implies that the current generation of academics and policymakers can succeed where their predecessors failed. The idea that nation building is a flawed but salvageable project prejudges its fundamental viability.

Once we have set our sights on rescuing an enterprise that has repeatedly frustrated its architects and their subjects, we screen out alternatives that more effectively serve the same development goals. We also risk funneling research down an intellectual cul-de-sac, at great cost in time, resources, and lives lost for those participating in failed regime-change missions. Therefore, a more productive direction for contemporary interest in nation building may mean backing up and reassessing the core problem of weak states, on one hand, and the limits of foreign intervention, on the other. Ensuring a positive impact on the country considered for intervention requires orienting the enterprise away from the takeover of state functions and toward the short-term provision of aid to local communities.

Apart from the futile pursuit of infrastructural power or the doomed deployment of despotic power (coercion), one can envision a third kind of influence, "regenerative power," which is exercised during relief efforts, such as emergency assistance following natural disasters.

Regenerative power involves neither the adoption of domestic state functions nor physical coercion. It denotes the ability of a state to develop infrastructure under the direction of the local population. For example, it means rebuilding a post office, but not delivering the mail. It is typified by the U.S. response to natural disaster relief within its own borders and abroad.

Regenerative power turns nation building on its head. Rather than imposing a blueprint from outside, participants respond to the needs of the affected community. It is restorative rather than transformative. There is no preexisting master plan for what the "final product" will be, but rather an organically evolving process in which the assisting group serves at the direction of the people being assisted.

The exercise of regenerative power is inherently limited in scale since it depends on local engagement rather than elite planning. It is inimical to macro-level ambitions but it also acquires a bounded effectiveness that imposed regime change lacks. Where nation building attempts to overwrite existing organization and only belatedly incorporates local understanding, disaster relief efforts and regenerative projects begin from the assumption that local communities know best their own needs. Existing social networks and patterns of authority are an asset, not a hindrance, and local know-how offers the principal tool for resolving local crises.

Rather than pursuing the often destructive delusion of interventionist state transformation, regenerative power starts from an interest in using state power for constructive purposes and a sober assessment of the limits of that aim. The assisting foreign groups serve under the direction of indigenous political leaders toward the achievement of physical reconstruction and emergency service provision.

With remarkable prescience Rumsfeld commented in October 2001, "I don't know people who are smart enough from other countries to tell other countries the kind of arrangements they ought to have to govern themselves."

The experience of twentieth century U.S. interventions and ongoing operations in Iraq supports his insight. Proponents of nation building or shared sovereignty arrangements have exaggerated the ability of powerful states to foster institutions in developing countries. The empirical record, from successful outcomes in Germany and Japan to dismal failures across the global south, shows the societies alleged to be most in need of strong institutions have proven the least tractable for foreign administration. Rather than transmitting new modes of organization, would-be nation builders have relied upon existing structures for governance.

This dependence on the very context that was intended for change reveals how little infrastructural power nation builders wield. They are consistently unable to implement political decisions through the local groups. Contrary to recent arguments that sustained effort and area expertise can enable success, nation building has foundered despite such investments.

Understanding that nation building is a "known unknowable" is crucial for redirecting intervention where it can be more effective. Advocates of humanitarian assistance should consider the merits of smaller, regenerative projects that can respond better to uncertainty and avoid the perils of large-scale political engineering.

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University invites applications to receive funding grants for activities or programs focusing on health care policy in Asia. Shorenstein APARC welcomes research proposals on a wide range of topics from diverse disciplines, but has particular interest in international studies of demography; the effects of an aging population on social, economic, and political systems; and the causes and prevention of epidemics such as AIDS and Avian Influenza in Asian countries.