Thirty U.S. secondary school teachers, representing 11 states and multiple subject areas, came to Stanford for a three-day professional development conference that seeks to help teachers better incorporate Korean studies in the classroom.

Korea is arguably one of the most stable democracies in the world and its economic model often praised. Yet Korea-focused curriculum in the United States rarely covers much outside of the Korean War context, leaving a potential gap in students’ understanding of the Pacific nation. The Hana–Stanford Conference on Korea seeks to change that reality.

In its fourth year, the conference offers a venue for specialists on Korea to share knowledge with secondary school educators and creates an opportunity for educators to form a cross-cultural professional network toward the vision of enhancing their curriculum with Korean studies. 

For three days, scholars from Stanford and peer institutions taught the U.S. teachers about Korean history, economy, culture and the nation's regional and global relations. Speakers included economist Yong Lee and career diplomat David Straub, both scholars at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), as well as Middlebury professor Rachael Miyung Joo, also a Stanford alum. Teachers and students from Hana Academy Seoul, a private high school in Korea, also shared perspectives with the American teachers. The full agenda is viewable here.

Supported by the Hana Financial Group, the conference is organized by Shorenstein APARC and the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), a program that makes globally focused Stanford research accessible to K–12 grade levels.

SPICE’s Jonas Edman and Rylan Sekiguchi followed the lectures with curriculum demonstrations. Each teacher left the conference with a set of comprehensive lesson plans and strategies for putting the curriculum into practice.

Shorenstein APARC caught up with a few of the teachers (pictured below from right to left): Anne Schaefer from San Jose Middle School (Novato, CA), Orah Bilmes from Alvarez High School (Providence, RI), and Jeffrey Scharfen and Graham Rutherford from Cardinal Newman High School (Santa Rosa, CA). An abridged version of the conversation is below.

What has surprised you about Korea?

Anne: The process it took for Korea to have such strong economic growth—so quickly—and to understand all of the components that led to that growth really surprised me. Moving from an autocratic regime through many stages to where it is today, and the interesting role that education played in its development. Education really became a motivating factor for everybody. I found that a very unique, complex phenomenon.

Jeffrey: Hearing from scholars from both Korea and the United States about the Korean experience has given me a better sense of history. For instance, the Korean-American experience in Los Angeles during the 1992 Rodney King riots. I remember being there during those riots. For me, they were defining moments, but on the other hand, I never truly had a sense of the powerful impact it had on the Korean community.

What Korean cultural themes can U.S. students most relate to? Do your students consume Korean culture?

Orah: I teach many students from the Dominican Republic. One of the presentations gave me ideas for putting together activities for students to compare baseball in the Dominican Republic with baseball in Korea. When comparing cultures, starting with something that’s accessible allows students to develop the vocabulary needed to jump into higher-level discussions.

Jeffrey: My students are very connected to Korean pop themes. My own awareness actually comes from my own children and a student that I’ve taught who was adopted from Korea. For that student, Korean pop culture gave her a sense of identity and her interests emanated, so there was a multiplying factor and her friends became interested too.

Kimchi…you learned how to make the dish and sampled it, too. How’d it go?

Graham: I enjoyed watching and seeing how kimchi is made. It’s more than a name, it has this place in society. I’ve had kimchi before but it was neat to see and hear about its background. The variety of styles was surprising. And it was really good with rice.

Jeffrey: I love kimchi. I think I was first introduced to kimchi in 1973 and I’ve been eating it regularly since then. It’s one of those culinary pleasures that breaks down barriers and gives you an entrée into other relationships. In a way, it’s a kind of diplomacy.

Anne: The culture of kimchi as a family thing – having one’s own set of tastes and different ingredients depending on family history was fun to learn about. The conference made apparent that culinary history is important and creates an understanding of a culture.

What’s one lesson from the conference you’d share with other teachers?

Orah: I teach many immigrant and refugee students. For some, they left behind very poor countries. The information on Korea’s economic policies and history has my head spinning to have students try to “apply” the Korean economic approach to their home countries, analyze its strengths and weaknesses, and decide if one country’s approach can also work for another.

Anne: One of the tangential themes was that, despite all the talk of globalization, culture continues to exist in Korea and other countries. The Internet connects everyone, but I go to “this place” and it’s still “this place.” Culture—and the fact that we can still retain it even in today’s globalized world—is truly beautiful.

Graham: I try to get my students to not just look back at the problems they are studying but to also put themselves back into the time period—to realize that the decisions made then have to be understood in that moment in time. North Korea can be examined through that lens. And while it’s easy to look back and see the problems, it’s also worth encouraging students to look ahead and consider how the Korean divide could be solved.

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The Washington Post's Anna Fifield reviewed Crossing Heaven's Border (Shorenstein APARC, 2015), a book by author and journalist Hark Joon Lee. The book details the challenges facing North Korean defectors -- their perilous escapes, the repressive regime that they seek to flee from, and for some, what life looks like on the other side.

"Lee’s book is compelling because it offers a fresh perspective on the puzzle that is North Korea. He writes about the challenges he faced in reporting on this story and the ethical questions he encountered, and the toll it took on him as a person," Fifield writes.

Sensationalist stories about North Korea often swirl in news headlines, but Lee chronicles their hardships as a firsthand witness who embedded with defectors from 2007 to 2011. 

Lee, reporting for the Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo, initially published the stories as articles, and later as a documentary on the Public Broadcasting Service in 2009. Lee's account focuses on the lives of ordinary North Koreans.

"He writes about the tenderness he sees between a middle-aged couple from different social backgrounds who fled so they could be together; Soo-ryun, who had a difficult escape but found love and had a baby, only to be struck down by stomach cancer; pretty Young-mi, who dreamed of going to the United States but then found she couldn’t even understand the English that South Koreans use," Fifield writes.

The review and a Q&A with Lee is available on the Washington Post website.

Sponsored by the Korea Program and the Center for East Asian Studies, the Korean Studies Program Prize for Writing in Korean Studies recognizes and rewards outstanding examples of writing by Stanford students in an essay, term paper or thesis produced during the current academic year in any discipline within the area of Korean studies, broadly defined. The competition is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. 

Benjamin Pham has won the 4th Annual Korean Studies Writing Prize for his paper titled "How and why did South Korea transition to an economic model of export-led industrialization?" Benjamin, a junior, will complete his undergraduate degree at Stanford in political science in spring 2016.

For more details about the prize, please visit the Center for East Asian Studies.

Writing for NK News, Rob York reviewed Crossing Heaven’s Border (Shorenstein APARC, 2015), a book written by Hark Joon Lee, a South Korean journalist and filmmaker.

A project that began in 2007, the book is a firsthand account of the challenges facing North Korean defectors. Lee, reporting for the Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo, initially published the stories as articles, and later as a documentary on the Public Broadcasting Service in 2009.

“Lee has written a gripping account of his time among the escapees, seeing sights few people will and seeing through a lengthy stint (from 2007 to 2011) in which the possibility of arrest – and even death – were distinctly possible," York writes.

The book, now available in English, details the experiences of North Korean defectors in China as illegal immigrants seeking news lives and in South Korea as new citizens navigating unfamiliar territory, and would-be defectors who remain in North Korea finding ways to survive.

“Lee’s lengthy account…presents a full range of humanity among these refugees,” York writes.

The review is available on the NK News website.

Kathleen Stephens, a former U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea, will join Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) as the William J. Perry Distinguished Fellow in the Korea Program.

Her fellowship, made possible through the generous support of Jeong and Cynthia Kim, is effective Sept. 1, 2015.

Ambassador Stephens will be housed at Shorenstein APARC, the center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies working on policy-relevant interdisciplinary research related to the Asia-Pacific.

“Kathy Stephens brings exceptional diplomatic experience on a global scale to Shorenstein APARC. Equally impressive, she has four decades of experience in Korean affairs, first as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Korea in the 1970s, and in ensuing decades as a diplomat and as U.S. ambassador in Seoul,” said Shorenstein APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin.

"She is often cited as one of the most popular American envoys ever to South Korea. Her ability to deal with tough issues like North Korea and the U.S.-South Korean free trade agreement -- and to connect with everyday Koreans -- speaks to her deep expertise.”

Stephens came to Stanford previously as the 2013-14 Koret Fellow after 35 years as a foreign service officer in the U.S. Department of State. At Stanford, she taught a course on U.S.-Korea relations and contributed extensively to center activities, including a Koret Workshop focused on inter-Korean relations and the biannual Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum. Her time at Stanford, though, was cut short when she was recalled to the diplomatic service to lead the U.S. mission in India as charge d'affaires during the first seven months of the new administration led by Narendra Modi.

Stephens' diplomatic career included serving as acting under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs in 2012; U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea from 2008 to 2011; principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 2005 to 2007; and deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2003 to 2005.

She also served in numerous positions in Asia, Europe and Washington D.C., including as U.S. consul general in Belfast, Northern Ireland from 1995 to 1998, during the negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement, and as director for European affairs at the White House during the Clinton Administration.

“I am delighted and honored to return to Stanford,” Stephens said. “Shorenstein APARC is an incredibly stimulating place – an opportunity to be immersed in one of the world’s leading community of scholars working on U.S.-Asia-Pacific affairs.”

Stephens holds a bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies from Prescott College and a master’s of public administration from Harvard University, in addition to honorary degrees from Chungnam National University and the University of Maryland. As an undergraduate, she studied at the University of Hong Kong and was an Outward Bound instructor in Hong Kong. She was previously a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.

Stephens' awards include the Presidential Meritorious Service Award (2009), the Sejong Cultural Award, and Korea-America Friendship Association Award (2013). She is a trustee at The Asia Foundation, and on the boards of The Korea Society and Pacific Century Institute.

She tweets at @AmbStephens.

In a recent interview with Korea Daily, Gi-Wook Shin, director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, said that South Korea needs to be more strategic in its approach to its foreign policy agenda. The country’s leadership must aim to be more proactive in handling current diplomatic issues.

Shin suggested that South Korea should separate wartime history issues from other diplomatic priorities such as trade and security. This type of organization would allow each issue to receive the focused attention and expertise needed to understand and work toward resolution.

Recently, Japan provided a successful model for this, Shin said, referencing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s official state visit to the United States. Abe visited many major U.S. regions including Silicon Valley. He spoke mainly about the U.S.-Japan alliance and economic development as policy priorities for Japan. He did not address at length issues of the wartime past since the focus of his visit was U.S.-Japan relations and the economy.

Shin said he thinks it is important that South Korean President Park Geun-hye delivers a concrete foreign policy vision in her June visit to the United States. For the long-term, South Korea should find ways to boost its public diplomacy efforts to shore up support for that vision.

The full article is in Korean and available by clicking here.