Reading the Tea Leaves in Pyongyang: Seminar by Marcus Noland & Stephan Haggard

August 1, 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Mānoa Campus, John A. Burns Hall, Room 3118 Add to Calendar

In the past six months, the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has snubbed Google head Eric Schmidt, feted Hall of Fame basketballer Dennis Rodman, reputedly sent Rodman back with a message of peace, threatened a nuclear first strike against the United States, closed the Kaesong Industrial Complex, (the centerpiece of inter-Korean economic cooperation), announced that it wanted talks to re-open the zone-and then scuttled the resulting the talks, and recently was caught doing military deals with Cuba in violation of UN Security Council sanctions. Now it is talking about using its bloated military to build a ski resort. Is there any unified explanation for this seemingly contradictory behavior?

Marcus Noland is Director of Studies at the Peterson Institute of International Economics, and a Senior Fellow at the East-West Center. His research addresses a wide range of topics at the interstice of economics, political science, and international relations. His areas of geographical knowledge and interest include Asia and Africa where he has lived and worked, and the Middle East. He has written extensively on the economies of Japan, Korea, and China, and is unique among American economists in having devoted serious scholarly effort to the problems of North Korea and the prospects for Korean unification. He won the 2000–01 Ohira Memorial Award for his book Avoiding the Apocalypse: The Future of the Two Koreas. Noland was educated at Swarthmore College (BA) and the Johns Hopkins University (PhD).

Stephan Haggard is the Krause Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on the political economy of developing countries, with a particular interest in Asia and the Korean peninsula and a current focus on the relationship between inequality, democratization and authoritarianism in developing countries. He is the author of Pathways from the Periphery (Cornell University Press, 1990) and The Political Economy of the Asian Financial Crisis (Institute for International Economics, 2000) and co-author with Robert Kaufman of The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton University Press, 1995) and Development, Democracy, and Welfare States: Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe. He has also written extensively on North Korea with Marcus Noland, including Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform (Columbia University Press, 2007).

Please RSVP by July 31st: 944-7111 or EWCInfo@eastwestcenter.org.

Parking is available on the lawn between EWC’s Burns Hall and Hale Manoa for $5.00. Please pay attendant at entrance to lawn parking.


Event Sponsor
East-West Center, Mānoa Campus

More Information
944-7111, EWCInfo@eastwestcenter.org, http://www.eastwestcenter.org/events/reading-the-tea-leaves-in-pyongyang

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