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South Korea remains a puzzle for political economists. The country has experienced phenomenal economic growth since the 1960s, but its upward trajectory has been repeatedly diverted by serious systemic crises, followed by spectacular recoveries. The recoveries are often the result of vigorous structural reforms that nonetheless retain many of South Korea's traditional economic institutions. How, then, can South Korea suffer from persistent systemic instability and yet prove so resilient? What remains the same and what changes?

The contributors to this volume consider the South Korean economy in its larger political context. Moving beyond the easy dichotomies—equilibrium vs. disequilibrium and stability vs. instability—they describe a complex and surprisingly robust economic and political system. Further, they argue that neither systemic challenges nor political pressures alone determine South Korea's stability and capacity for change. Instead, it is distinct patterns of interaction that shape this system's characteristics, development, and evolution.

In the past fifty years, two factors have led to global population aging: a decline in fertility to levels close to—or even below—replacement and a decline in mortality that has increased world average life expectancy by nearly 67 percent. As the population skews toward fewer young people and more elderly who live longer postretirement lives, demographic changes—labor force participation, savings, economic growth, living arrangements, marriage markets, and social policy—are transforming society in fundamental, irreversible ways. Nowhere are these effects of aging and demographic change more acute—nor their long-term effects more potentially significant—than in the Asia-Pacific region. How will these developments impact the economies and social protection systems of Japan, South Korea, China, and, by extension, the United States?

To assess this question, Aging Asia showcases cutting-edge, policy-relevant research. The first section focuses on demographic trends and their economic implications; the second section approaches select topics from a global comparative perspective, including social insurance financing, medical costs, and long-term care.

Although most South Koreans profess to holdfavorable views of the United States, the phenomenon of anti-Americanism in this "pro-American" country is wellknown. David Straub, who served as the head of the political section at the U.S. embassy in Seoul for three years, analyzes the arc of increasing anti-American sentiment from 1999 that climaxed in 2002 in massive demonstrations over the accidental killing of two schoolgirls by a vehicle driven by American soldiers. Straub argues—using case studies of major incidents during the period—that anti-Americanism was not simply a reaction to U.S. actions, but was powerfully embedded in a longstanding Korean national narrative of victimization at the hands of great powers, magnified by the election of a left-national government and media dynamics in the Internet age.

South Korea and Vietnam established diplomatic relations only twenty years ago. Today these former adversaries enjoy unexpectedly cordial and rapidly expanding bilateral ties. Leaders of the two nations—perceiving broadly shared interests and no fundamental conflicts—seek to leverage their subregional influence on behalf of common or complementary policy goals. Today they often profess a "middle power" identity as they explain their foreign policy in terms of such classical middle power goals as regional peace, integration, and common goods.

Broadly similar in many respects, South Korea and Vietnam are nonetheless sufficiently different that a comparison can yield interesting insights—yet there is a dearth of systematic comparative work on the two. While holding a range of views on the contentious concepts of middle power and national identity, the contributors to Asia's Middle Powers? help readers, both academic and policy practitioners, to gain an enhanced appreciation of South Korea and Vietnam's regional behavior and international strategies.

In 2009, while working on a PhD in Seoul, Andray Abrahamian visited North Korea, a country he had studied for years but never seen. He returned determined to find a way to work closely with North Koreans. Ten years and more than thirty visits later, Being in North Korea tells the story of his experiences setting up and running Choson Exchange, a non-profit that teaches North Koreans about entrepreneurship and economic policy.

Abrahamian was provided a unique vantage into life in North Korea that belies stereotypes rampant in the media, instead revealing North Koreans as individuals ranging from true believers in the system to cynics wishing the Stalinist experiment would just end; from introverts to bubbly chatterboxes, optimists to pessimists. He sees a North Korea that is changing, invalidating some assumptions held in the West, but perhaps reinforcing others.

Amid his stories of coping with the North Korean system, of the foreigners who frequent Pyongyang, and of everyday relationships, Abrahamian explores the challenges of teaching the inherently political subject of economics in a system where everyone must self-regulate their own minds; he looks at the role of women in the North Korean economy, and their exclusion from leadership; and he discusses how information is restricted, propaganda is distributed and internalized, and even how Pyongyang's nominally illicit property market functions. Along with these stories he interweaves the historical events that have led to today's North Korea.

Drawing on the breadth of the author's in-country experience, Being in North Korea combines the intellectual rigor of a scholar with a writing style that will appeal to a general audience. Through the personal elements of a memoir that provide insights into North Korean society, readers will come away with a more realistic picture of the country and its people, and a better idea of what the future may hold for the nation.

Why should Americans worry about South Korean security? The answer is clear: North Korea, and beyond. Most international attention to the North Korea problem has focused on U.S. policy, but South Korea's long- term role may in fact be more important. South Korea's security is vital to peace and stability, not only in Northeast Asia but also the wider world.

Written by eminent scholars, practitioners, and policymakers with extensive on-the-ground experience, Beyond North Korea assesses the varied contexts— regional and global, traditional and nontraditional—that underpin South Korea's varied security challenges. What are South Korea's military requirements? How do relations with its neighbors enhance or undermine its position? What economic, environmental, and demographic factors come into play? This book reveals that South Korea's national security rests as much on sound domestic policy choices as on successful interstate relations.

The same institutions that enabled China's massive urbanization and spurred its economic growth now require further reform and innovation.

To address the issues facing the next phase of the nation's transformation, the National New Urbanization Plan (2014–20) set ambitious targets for sustainable, human-centered, and environmentally friendly urbanization. This volume explores the key institutional and governance challenges China will face in reaching those goals. Its policy-focused contributions from leading social scientists in the United States and China explore aspects of urbanization ranging from migration and labor markets to agglomeration economies, land finance, affordable housing, and education policy. Subjects covered in the eleven chapters include:

Institutional problems leading to fiscal pressures on local governments and unequal provision of social services to migrant families

The history of land financing and threats to its sustainability

The difficulty of sorting out property rights in rural China

How administrative redistricting has allowed the urbanization of geographical administrative places to outpace the urbanization of populations within those areas

How the hukou system may not be the sole, or even primary, mechanism restricting migrants from public goods, such as their childrens' education

Whether the nation's food security is threatened by its ongoing urbanization

The current state of the provision of low-income housing, and future challenges

Northeast Asia stands at a turning point in its history. The key economies of China, Japan, and South Korea are growing increasingly interdependent, and the movement toward regionalism is gaining momentum. Yet interdependency, often set in a global context, also spurs nationalism in all three countries, and beyond in East Asia. The essays in this volume assess current interactions — or cross currents — between national and regional forces in Northeast Asia, and suggest their future direction.

Cross Currents features provocative, plain-spoken contributions from a range of eminent international scholars and practitioners. They address key questions facing the region today: What competing visions of regional integration are being considered in Northeast Asia? Will they be realized? How do national pressures, especially the renewed China-Japan rivalry, stunt the movement toward regionalism? What role can Korea play to mitigate tensions between the two archrivals? How does the United States figure in Northeast Asian regionalism? Do America's Cold War alliances still have currency?

By addressing these questions from both Asian and U.S. perspectives, Cross Currents sheds new light on the interplay of national and regional forces in this strategic part of the world. Reformulating these interactions constructively is one of Northeast Asia's most pressing contemporary challenges.

From 2007 to 2011 South Korean filmmaker and newspaper reporter Hark Joon Lee lived among North Korean defectors in China, filming an award-winning documentary on their struggles. Crossing Heaven's Border is the firsthand account of his experiences there, where he witnessed human trafficking, the smuggling of illicit drugs by North Korean soldiers, and a rare successful escape from North Korea by sea.

As Lee traces the often tragic lives of North Korean defectors who were willing to risk everything for their hopes, he journeys to Siberia in pursuit of hidden North Korean lumber mills; to Vietnam, where defectors make desperate charges into foreign embassies; and along the 10,000-kilometer escape route for defectors stretching from China to Laos and to Thailand.

Will the nations of Southeast Asia maintain their strategic autonomy, or are they destined to become a subservient periphery of China?

This book's expert authors address this pressing question in multiple contexts. What clues to the future lie in the modern history of Sino-Southeast Asian relations? How economically dependent on China has the region already become? What do Southeast Asians think of China? Does Beijing view the region in proprietary terms as its own backyard? How has the relative absence, distance, and indifference of the United States affected the balance of influence between the US and China in Southeast Asia?

The book also explores China's moves and Southeast Asia's responses to them. Does China's Maritime Silk Road through Southeast Asia herald a Pax Sinica across the region? How should China's expansionary acts in the South China Sea be understood? How have Southeast Asian states such as Vietnam and the Philippines responded? How does Singapore's China strategy compare with Indonesia's? How relevant is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations? To what extent has China tried to persuade the "overseas Chinese" in Southeast Asia to identify with "'the motherland" and support its aims? How are China's deep involvements in Cambodia and Laos affecting the economies and policies of those countries? "This rich collection," writes renowned author-journalist Nayan Chanda, answers these and other questions while offering "fresh insights" and "new information and analyses" to explain Southeast Asia's relations with China.

Half a century since the adoption of democracy in South Korea, the Korean people's high hopes for popular governance have not been met. There is widespread skepticism about what Korea's implementation of democracy has brought to the nation and whether it will be able to respond effectively in the future to the demands of an evolving society and world. What accounts for the conservative complacency of Korea's democratic system? Why do democratic administrations in Korea seem so incompetent? Do political parties in Korea legitimately represent the voice of civil society in legislating and policymaking on issues with a direct impact on the freedom and welfare of the people?

Taking an issue-oriented approach, renowned Korean political scientist Jang-Jip Choi endeavors to answer such questions as he examines the origins, structures, and conflicts of conservative democracy in South Korea as well as democratization's impact on the state, economy, and civil society.

Demographic transition, along with the economic and geopolitical re-emergence of Asia, are two of the largest forces shaping the twenty-first century, but little is known about the implications for innovation. The countries of East Asia have some of the oldest age structures on the planet: between now and 2050, the population that is age 65 and older will increase to more than one in four Chinese, and to more than one in three Japanese and Koreans. Other economies with younger populations, like India, face the challenge of fully harnessing the "demographic dividend" from large cohorts in the working ages.

This book delves into how such demographic changes shape the supply of innovation and the demand for specific kinds of innovation in the Asia-Pacific. Social scientists from Asia and the United States offer multidisciplinary perspectives from economics, demography, political science, sociology, and public policy; topics range from the macroeconomic effects of population age structure, to the microeconomics of technology and the labor force, to the broader implications for human well-being. Contributors analyze how demography shapes productivity and the labor supply of older workers, as well as explore the aging population as consumers of technologies and drivers of innovations to meet their own needs, as well as the political economy of spatial development, agglomeration economies, urban-rural contrasts, and differential geographies of aging.

Before 1947, South Asia was for the most part a single state. Multiple states emerged thereafter, and then moved apart politically, culturally, and economically. The resulting interstate tensions are manifest in the countless "negative lists"-items that may not be traded, tariffs that must be paid, transport lines that cannot be crossed-that govern these nations' daily interactions. Intermittent armed conflict in the region only intensifies feelings of distrust.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, interstate relations can be characterized by mutual wariness and circumspection. Failures in development and security cooperation have hurt South Asia, which contains two declared nuclear powers, India and Pakistan. Crossborder human trafficking and terrorism are increasing. Regional trade represents a paltry 5 percent of total trade. Globally, regional integration and prominent regional institutions-such as the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations-are gaining ground, but South Asia lags behind. It is almost as if South Asia, as a region, does not exist.

Given that South Asia contains India, one of the world's most dynamic, democratic economies, this is an anomaly. As shown in Europe, North America, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere, a "powerhouse" state can be the best guarantor of regional stability and integration. India's recent rise has prompted in some progress in regionalism, but it has been modest to date.

More can and must be done to understand regionalism's drivers, benefits, and barriers. Using a comparative perspective, this lively and broad-based volume draws on theories of trade, security, great-power influence, and domestic political theory to examine the prospects for South Asian regionalism. Does South Asia Exist? devotes particular attention to India, the largest power in the region, and analyzes the extent to which it enhances or blocks greater regional integration. As the distinguished contributors reveal with piercing honesty, the question at the heart of this provocative book defies easy answers.

Innovation and entrepreneurship rank highly on the strategic agenda of most countries today. As global economic competition intensifies, many national policymakers now recognize the central importance of entrepreneurship education and the building of financial institutions to promote long-term innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. Drivers of Innovation brings together scholars from the United States and Asia to explore those education and finance policies that might be conducive to accelerating innovation and developing a more entrepreneurial workforce in East Asia.

Some of the questions covered include: How do universities in China and Singapore experiment with new types of learning in their quest to promote innovation and entrepreneurship? Is there a need to transform the traditional university into an "entrepreneurial university"? What are the recent developments in and outstanding challenges to financing innovation in China and Japan? What is the government's role in promoting innovative entrepreneurship under the shadow of big business in South Korea? What can we learn about the capacity of services to drive innovation-led growth in India?

Drivers of Innovation will serve as a valuable reference for scholars and policymakers working to develop human capital for innovation in Asia.

Innovation and entrepreneurship rank highly on the strategic agenda of most countries today. As global economic competition intensifies, many national policymakers now recognize the central importance of entrepreneurship education and the building of financial institutions to promote long-term innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. Drivers of Innovation brings together scholars from the United States and Asia to explore those education and finance policies that might be conducive to accelerating innovation and developing a more entrepreneurial workforce in East Asia.

Some of the questions covered include: How do universities in China and Singapore experiment with new types of learning in their quest to promote innovation and entrepreneurship? Is there a need to transform the traditional university into an "entrepreneurial university"? What are the recent developments in and outstanding challenges to financing innovation in China and Japan? What is the government's role in promoting innovative entrepreneurship under the shadow of big business in South Korea? What can we learn about the capacity of services to drive innovation-led growth in India?

Drivers of Innovation will serve as a valuable reference for scholars and policymakers working to develop human capital for innovation in Asia.

Scholar and senior journalist Kim Hakjoon provides a timely analysis of the rise of the Kim Il Sung family dynasty and the politics of leadership succession in Pyongyang, including Kim Jong Il's death and the advent of his son Kim Jong Un. Drawing on official North Korean statements and leaked confidential documents, journalistic accounts, and defector reports, the book synthesizes virtually all that is known about the secretive family and how it operates within a bizarre governing system. Particularly valuable for a Western audience is the author's extensive use of South Korean studies of the Kim family, many of which have not been translated into English. Dynasty is insightful reading for officials, journalists, scholars, and students interested in the Korean Peninsula and its prospects.

Few regions rival the Korean Peninsula in strategic importance to U.S. foreign policy. For half a century, America has stationed tens of thousands of troops in South Korea to defend its ally from the threat of North Korean aggression. South Korea, in turn, is critical to the defense of Japan, another ally and the linchpin of American interests in East Asia. The rise of a nuclear-armed North has upped the ante.

Yet despite the stakes, the two Koreas have registered only episodically on the radar of the United States. The troubling gap between American perceptions of the peninsula and its strategic importance remained an unexplored phenomenon until now. First Drafts of Korea breaks new ground in examining how the American mass media shape U.S. perceptions of both Koreas and, as a result, influence U.S. foreign policy.

Beginning with a detailed analysis of American newspaper coverage of Korea between 1992 and 2003, the book features essays by Western journalists and senior U.S. officials with firsthand experience on the peninsula over the past two decades. These include frank accounts of the unique frustrations of covering Kim Jong-il's North Korea, undoubtedly the most closed and media-unfriendly nation on earth.

Addressing topics ranging from the democratization of South Korea in the 1980s to today's deteriorating nuclear crisis, the book's distinguished contributors offer unique insights into American media coverage of the peninsula and its impact on policymaking in Washington. What emerges is a complex, shifting portrait of two rival nations sharing one peninsula whose future remains inextricably linked to the global security interests of the United States.

As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) set about reforming its centrally planned economy, it faced the thorny policy question of how to reform its state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Should it support a shift from public to private ownership of the means of production? Such a shift would challenge not only the CCP's socialist ideology but also its very legitimacy. Mixing the business of corporate restructuring with the politics of socialism presented nothing short of a policy nightmare.

With policy-relevant acuity, the contributors to this wide-ranging volume address the questions about reform programs that have plagued China—and East Asia more broadly—since the 1990s. While China, Japan, and South Korea have all been criticized for implementing reform too slowly or too selectively, this volume delves into the broader contexts underlying certain institutional decisions. The book seeks to show that seemingly different political economies actually share surprising similarities, and problems. While Going Private in China sheds new light on China's corporate restructuring, it also offers new perspectives on how we think about the process of institutional change.

Will China come to dominate global high-tech innovation?

In the future, perhaps. Today, however, Greater China—Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong—is focused on the quest for innovation. The dominant paradigm on the Mainland is one of execution, not innovation. Beijing now aims to turn China—historically an adopter of technologies from elsewhere—into a major technology creator. Self-reliance has become the government's watchword and its ultimate goal.

The talents and resources available are impressive. More Chinese young people are well-educated, international patents and research and development (R&D) spending are on the rise, and China boasts a growing presence in world scientific literature.

Still, negatives remain. China must overcome the legacies of a top-down, state-run research system that is largely disconnected from commerce, and an academic system not always supportive of independent scholarly inquiry. The government is working to change these outdated institutions, but such shifts do not occur overnight.

Taiwan and Hong Kong have followed different paths to high-tech innovation. Taiwan's route has been dominated by government but implemented by mostly small- and medium-sized firms, with help from its Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a model for moving concepts to commerce. Significantly, Taiwan's companies maintain strong links to multinational firms both in the United States and in Mainland China. Taiwan's Hsinchu Science-based Park is seen as a model high-tech cluster throughout Asia and beyond.

Hong Kong has taken another road. While its formal R&D activity is small, it innovates in business models, particularly in logistics chains that reach into the Mainland and globally. It is a (largely unheralded) story of great success.

The big question is: When will Greater China's high-tech innovation have a major impact on the world economy?

China is transforming itself, and the world is adapting in response. Profound forces have reshaped the country's socioeconomic and political landscapes, but they have also brought challenges—growing pains—that China must face if it is to continue its upward trajectory.

Despite its successes, China is experiencing sharp growing pains. Rising levels of protest have accompanied the country's wrenching structural transformation. Corruption has prompted some observers to claim that the Chinese government is nothing short of a "predatory state." Legal reform continues to languish. Given that such challenges remain, can it be said that China's structural changes have succeeded? Or is the country trapped in transition?

Growing Pains contains new analytical and empirical research from preeminent scholars working on contemporary China. These scholars identify which of the many problems thought to threaten China's reforms are not as serious as some interpreters claim, as well as those that have already been solved. Further, they point to other high-profile challenges, some of which truly are serious and loom on the horizon. With thoughtful, nuanced analysis, the contributors tackle thorny issues in China's ongoing reforms—employment, land policy, village elections, family planning, health care, social inequality, and environmental degradation—and use rich survey data and on-the-ground observation to assess the severity of the problems and the likelihood of near-term solutions.

Moving beyond the hype and hysteria that often characterize conversations about contemporary China, Growing Pains seeks to present not an optimistic or pessimistic perspective but rather an objective, empirically based view of the country's transition.

Southeast Asia faces hard choices. The region's most powerful organization, ASEAN, is being challenged to ensure security and encourage democracy while simultaneously reinventing itself as a model of Asian regionalism.

Should ASEAN's leaders defend a member country's citizens against state predation for the sake of justice—and risk splitting ASEAN itself? Or should regional leaders privilege state security over human security for the sake of order—and risk being known as a dictators' club? Should ASEAN isolate or tolerate the junta in Myanmar? Is democracy a requisite to security, or is it the other way around? How can democratization become a regional project without first transforming the Association into a "people centered" organization? But how can ASEAN reinvent itself along such lines if its member states are not already democratic?

How will its new Charter affect ASEAN's ability to make these hard choices? How is regionalism being challenged by transnational crime, infectious disease, and other border-jumping threats to human security in Southeast Asia? Why have regional leaders failed to stop the perennial regional "haze" from brush fires in democratic Indonesia? Does democracy help or hinder nuclear energy security in the region?

In this timely book—the second of a three-book series focused on Asian regionalism—ten analysts from six countries address these and other pressing questions that Southeast Asia faces in the twenty-first century.

Life expectancy in Japan, South Korea, and much of urban China has now outpaced that of the United States and other high-income countries. With this triumph of longevity, however, comes a rise in the burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes and hypertension, reducing healthy life years for individuals in these aging populations, as well as challenging the healthcare systems they rely on for appropriate care.

The challenges and disparities are even more pressing in low- and middle-income economies, such as rural China and India. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the vulnerability to newly emerging pathogens of older adults suffering from NCDs, and the importance of building long-term, resilient health systems.

What strategies have been tried to prevent NCDs—the primary cause of morbidity and mortality — as well as to screen for early detection, raise the quality of care, improve medication adherence, reduce unnecessary hospitalizations and increase "value for money" in health spending?

Fourteen concise chapters cover multiple aspects of policy initiatives for healthy aging and economic research on chronic disease control in diverse health systems — from cities such as Singapore and Hong Kong to large economies such as Japan, India, and China.

Imperfect Partners is a unique hybrid – part memoir, part foreign policy study of U.S. relations with Southeast Asia, a critically important region that has become the central arena in the global U.S.-China competition. From the People Power revolt in the Philippines to the opening of diplomatic relations with Vietnam, from building a partnership with newly democratic Indonesia to responding to genocide in Myanmar and coups in Thailand, Scot Marciel was present and involved. His direct involvement and deep knowledge of the region, along with his extensive policymaking work in Washington, allows him to bring to life the complexities and realities of key events and U.S. responses, along with rare insights into U.S. foreign policy decisionmaking and the work of American diplomats in the field.

Imperfect Partners is a unique hybrid – part memoir, part foreign policy study of U.S. relations with Southeast Asia, a critically important region that has become the central arena in the global U.S.-China competition. From the People Power revolt in the Philippines to the opening of diplomatic relations with Vietnam, from building a partnership with newly democratic Indonesia to responding to genocide in Myanmar and coups in Thailand, Scot Marciel was present and involved. His direct involvement and deep knowledge of the region, along with his extensive policymaking work in Washington, allows him to bring to life the complexities and realities of key events and U.S. responses, along with rare insights into U.S. foreign policy decisionmaking and the work of American diplomats in the field.

Student mobility in Asia has reached unprecedented levels. Inbound and outbound student mobility creates opportunities for Asian societies but also challenges, such as growing diversity and brain drain. This book examines these and other related, timely issues for the case of South Korea, a major player in the internationalization of higher education in Asia, and draws on the comparative experiences of other key players in the Asia-Pacific region—Japan, China, Singapore, and the United States. By doing so, it offers critical perspectives on the internationalization of Korean higher education as well as innovative, policy-relevant solutions for Asian countries undergoing similar challenges. It will be a valuable addition to the growing literature on comparative and international education in Asia and can aid university administrators and policymakers striving to internationalize their higher education systems to meet new challenges.

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) came to power in 2009 with a commanding majority, ending fifty years of almost uninterrupted Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rule. Then, in 2012, just over three years later, the DPJ lost power in an equally stunning landslide loss to the LDP. This volume examines the DPJ's remarkable ascendance, its policies once in power, and its dramatic fall.

What explains the DPJ's rapid rise to power? Why was policy change under the DPJ limited, despite high expectations and promises of bold reform? Why has the party been paralyzed by internecine conflict?

Chapters in the volume cover: DPJ candidate recruitment; the influence of media coverage; nationalization of elections; electoral system constraints on policy change; the role of third parties; municipal mergers; the role of women; transportation policy; fiscal decentralization; information technology; response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster; security strategy; and foreign policy. Japan under the DPJ makes important contributions to the study of Japanese politics, while drawing upon and advancing scholarship on a wider range of issues of interest to political scientists.

Of Asia's 800 million Muslims, 215 million are minorities within their countries. These Muslim minorities have experienced a persistent decline in their socioeconomic and political status. Along with this decline, they are increasingly identified by their faith and largely accorded no other identity for civic relations. Why have these Muslim minorities been particularly affected during a time of unprecedented opportunities for the mainstream in Asia's unprecedented era of growth and rising freedoms?

Using detailed analyses of China, India, and the Philippines, Modes of Engagement argues that key factors in this phenomenon include the linkage between socioeconomic decline, loss of political power, and narrowing of identity; nationalism and its associated connotations of the assimilation of minorities; the weakness of civil society generally in Asia; and the rise in regional and global alliances for security and trade.

Contributors include Wajahat Habibullah (National Commission for Minorities and National Institute of Technology, India), Rakesh Basant (Indian Institute of Management), Dru C. Gladney (Pomona College), and Joseph Chinyong Liow (Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore).

North Korea is consistently identified as one of the world's worst human rights abusers. However, the issue of human rights in North Korea is a complex one, intertwined with issues like life in the North Korean police state, inter-Korean relations, denuclearization, access to information in the North, and international cooperation, to name a few. There are likewise multiple actors involved, including the two Korean governments, the United States, the United Nations, South Korea NGOs, and global human rights organizations. While North Korea's nuclear weapons and the security threat it poses have occupied the center stage and eclipsed other issues in recent years, human rights remain important to U.S. policy.

The contributors to The North Korean Conundrum explore how dealing with the issue of human rights is shaped and affected by the political issues with which it is so entwined. Sections discuss the role of the United Nations; how North Koreans' limited access to information is part of the problem, and how this is changing; the relationship between human rights and denuclearization; and North Korean human rights in comparative perspective.

Coverage of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) all too often focuses solely on nuclear proliferation, military parades, and the personality cult around its leaders. As the British ambassador to North Korea, John Everard had the rare experience of living there from 2006, when the DPRK conducted its first nuclear test, to 2008, just before Kim Jong Il's stroke. While stationed in Pyongyang, Everard's travels around the DPRK provided him with numerous opportunities to meet and converse with North Koreans.

Only Beautiful, Please goes beyond official North Korea to unveil the human dimension of life in that hermetic nation. Everard recounts his impressions of the country and its people, his interactions with them, and his observations on their way of life. He provides a picture as well of the life of foreigners in this closed society, considers how the DPRK evolved to its current state, and discusses the failure of current approaches to tackle the challenges that it throws up. The book is illustrated with striking and never-before-seen photographs taken by Everard during his stay in North Korea.

As the U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights from 2009 to 2017, Ambassador Robert R. King led efforts to ensure that human rights were an integral part of U.S. policy with North Korea. In this book, he traces U.S. involvement and interest in North Korean human rights, from the adoption of the North Korean Human Rights Act in 2004—legislation which King himself was involved in and which called for the creation of the special envoy position—to his own negotiations with North Korean diplomats over humanitarian assistance, discussions that would ultimately end because of the death of Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un's ascension as Supreme Leader, as well as continued nuclear and missile testing.

Beyond an in-depth overview of his time as special envoy, Ambassador King provides insights into the United Nations' role in addressing the North Korean human rights crisis, including the UN Human Rights Council's creation of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK in 2013–14, and discussions in the Security Council on North Korea human rights.

King explores subjects such as the obstacles to getting outside information to citizens of one of the most isolated countries in the world; the welfare of DPRK defectors, and how China has both abetted North Korea by returning refugees and enabled the problem of human trafficking; the detaining of U.S. citizens in North Korea and efforts to free them, including King's escorting U.S. citizen Eddie Jun back from Pyongyang in 2011; and the challenges of providing humanitarian assistance to a country with no formal relations with the United States and where separating human rights from politics is virtually impossible.

Lee Jong-Seok served as vice-secretary of South Korea's National Security Council and as its unification minister under the Roh Moo-Hyun administration (2003–08). After Roh's tragic death in 2009, Lee resolved to present a record of the so-called participatory government's achievements and failures in the realm of unification, foreign affairs, and national security.

Peace on a Knife's Edge is the translation of Lee's 2014 account of Roh's efforts to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula in the face of opposition at home from conservative forces and abroad from the Bush administration's hard stances of "tailored containment" and its declaration of the North as part of the "axis of evil." Lee's narrative will give American readers rare insights into critical moments of Roh's incumbency, including the tumultuous Six-Party Talks; the delicate process of negotiating the relocation and reduction of United States Forces Korea; Roh's pursuit of South Korea's "autonomous defense"; conflicts with Japan over history issues; and the North's first nuclear weapons test.

More than two decades after the cold war ended elsewhere, it continues undiminished on the Korean Peninsula. The division of the Korean nation into competing North and South Korean states and the destructive war that followed constitute one of the great, and still unresolved, tragedies of the twentieth century. Peacemaker is the memoir of Lim Dong-won, former South Korean unification minister and architect of Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae-jung's Sunshine policy toward North Korea.

As both witness and participant, Lim traces the process of twenty years of diplomatic negotiations with North Korea, from the earliest rounds of inter-Korean talks through the historic inter-Korean summit of June 2000 and beyond. Peacemaker offers a fascinating inside look into the recent history of North-South Korea relations and provides important lessons for policymakers and citizens who seek to understand and resolve the tragic—and increasingly dangerous—situation on the Korean Peninsula.

The world's two most populous countries face numerous policy challenges from rapid demographic change, including gender imbalance, population aging, and rapid urbanization. Drawing on social science expertise from China, India, and the United States, the contributors examine the social and economic challenges for policy across a range of domains, from family planning and old-age support to human capital investment, poverty alleviation, and broader issues of governance.

Sections focus on:

Policy challenges and economic impact

Fertility and sex imbalance

Human capital and urbanization

Population aging

In the past twenty years, Japan has undergone dramatic changes. Electoral reform has altered the relationship between politicians and voters, and Japan is increasingly a two-party system. The popularity of former prime minister Koizumi Junichiro highlighted the salience of telegenic party leaders.

Amid so many shifts, it remains unclear whether such changes will stand the test of time and where Japanese politics is heading. However, it is not too early to assess the permanence and the direction of political change in Japan. Each chapter in this wide-ranging volume addresses a key political development in Japanfrom "stealing votes" to the constraints that women candidates face.

Intended for scholars and students who study Japan, this timely volume also provides valuable reading for comparative political scientists. With contributions from some of the most distinguished scholars working on Japan today, Political Change in Japan seeks to answer the question: Was political reform in Japan a revolution or a flash in the pan?

Pharmaceutical policies are interlinked globally, yet deeply rooted in local culture. Prescribing Cultures examines how pharmaceuticals and their regulation play an important and often contentious role in the health systems of the Asia-Pacific.

The first section of this timely bookwhich includes a foreword by Michael Reich of Harvard Universityaddresses pharmaceutical policy in China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Australia, and India. The second section focuses on two crosscutting themes: differences in "prescribing cultures," especially among physicians, who are the primary dispensers of medicine in Asia, and the challenge of balancing access to drugs with incentives for innovation.

The book's contributors discuss important issues for U.S. policy, notably drug imports from Asia, regulation of global supply chains to assure drug safety and quality, and new legislation to encourage development of drugs for neglected diseases. In Prescribing Cultures, pharmaceutical policy serves as a window into the economic trade-offs, political compromises, and cultural legacies that shape regional and global health systems.

In the six Asian countries focused on in this book—China, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan—high economic growth has been achieved in many industrial sectors, the catch-up phase of growth has ended or is about to end, and technological frontiers have been reached in many industries. These countries can no longer rely on importing or imitating new technology from abroad and expanding imports, and instead have to develop their own innovations to maintain growth. The policy tools they often used to advance "innovation," for the most traditional industrial policies of identifying promising industries and promoting them, will no longer be effective. And indeed, governments in Asia have recently put forward new policies, such as China's push for mass entrepreneurship and innovation.

Domestic conditions in Asian economies have also started to change. Many countries are facing rapidly aging populations and low birth rates: Japan's population, declining for several years, is the first population decline not caused by war or disease in the modern world; South Korea's labor force started to shrink in 2018 as well; China's huge population will start to age, even as a large part of the population remains poor.

Facing these challenges, today Asia is at a juncture. East Asia as a whole has greater real economic output than North America, South and Southeast Asia possess enormous economic potential due to size and resources, and countries within Asia are becoming more connected in both trade and diplomacy. It is at this juncture that the authors of Shifting Gears examine and reassess Asia's innovation and focus on national innovation strategies and regional cluster policies that can promote entrepreneurship and innovation in the larger Asia-Pacific. Chapters explore how institutions and policies affect incentives for innovation and entrepreneurship; whether Asia's innovation systems are substantially different from those of other countries, and in which ways, and whether there are any promising strategies for promoting innovation.

Like in many other states worldwide, democracy is in trouble in South Korea, entering a state of regressionin the past decade, barely thirty years after its emergence in 1987. The society that had ordinary citizensleading "candlelight protests" demanding the impeachment of Park Geun-Hye in 2016–17 has becomepolarized amid an upsurge of populism, driven by persistent structural inequalities, globalization, and therise of the information society.

The symptoms of democratic decline have been increasingly hard to miss: the demonization of politicalopponents, erosion of democratic norms, and the whittling away of the courts' independence. Perhapsmost disturbing is that this all took place under a government dominated by former pro-democracyactivists. Will the election victory of opposition leader Yoon Suk-Yeol end this democratic erosion, or willthe rift between South Korea's progressives and conservatives only deepen with the next administration?

The contributors to this volume trace the sources of illiberalism in today's Korea; examine how politicalpolarization is plaguing its party system; discuss how civil society and the courts have become politicized;look at the roles of inequality, education, and social media in the country's democratic decline; andconsider how illiberalism has affected Korea's foreign policy.

Like in many other states worldwide, democracy is in trouble in South Korea, entering a state of regressionin the past decade, barely thirty years after its emergence in 1987. The society that had ordinary citizensleading "candlelight protests" demanding the impeachment of Park Geun-Hye in 2016–17 has becomepolarized amid an upsurge of populism, driven by persistent structural inequalities, globalization, and therise of the information society.

The symptoms of democratic decline have been increasingly hard to miss: the demonization of politicalopponents, erosion of democratic norms, and the whittling away of the courts' independence. Perhapsmost disturbing is that this all took place under a government dominated by former pro-democracyactivists. Will the election victory of opposition leader Yoon Suk-Yeol end this democratic erosion, or willthe rift between South Korea's progressives and conservatives only deepen with the next administration?

The contributors to this volume trace the sources of illiberalism in today's Korea; examine how politicalpolarization is plaguing its party system; discuss how civil society and the courts have become politicized;look at the roles of inequality, education, and social media in the country's democratic decline; andconsider how illiberalism has affected Korea's foreign policy.

Japan's first decade of the twenty-first century was both disappointing and bewildering, producing wildly contrasting evaluations. Many have come to call this period the "second lost decade," characterized by policy paralysis and overall lackluster economic growth. For those studying Japan more closely, however, the same decades reveal nothing short of a broad transformation numerous core tenets of Japan's postwar political economy. How can we best capture this transformation?

Each chapter in this volume examines a different aspect of Japan's political economy within a longer historical trajectory, from multiple angles, to depict a flexible but resilient system. We characterize Japan's process of change as syncretism—practices foreign, domestic, old and new were selectively adopted, mixed and matched, along the way creating a new and unique hybrid system.

Kim Jong-il once declared he would transform North Korea into a "great and powerful country" by 2012, apparently believing that nuclear weapons would compel the international community to engage on his terms. With no such prospect in sight and Kim himself now in failing health, his regime faces a multitude of intractable problems. Kim has apparently chosen his twenty-something third son as his successor, but will North Koreans accept this inexperienced young man as their leader, and will he embrace new thinking to solve the country's problems? Why do North Korean leaders resist reform of an economic system that impoverishes the people? Can a country so dependent on outside help continue to defy the international community?

In Troubled Transition, leading international experts examine these dilemmas, offering new insights into how a troubled North Korea may evolve in light of the ways other command economies and totalitarian statesfrom the Soviet Union and East Germany to Vietnam and Chinahave transitioned.

From tariff wars to torn-up trade agreements, Michael Beeman explores America's recent and dramatic turn away from support for freer, rules-based trade to instead go its own new way. Focusing on America's trade engagements in the Asia-Pacific, he contrasts the trade policy choices made by America's leaders over several generations with those of today–decisions that are now undermining the trading system America created and triggering new tensions between America and its trading partners, allies and adversaries alike.

With keen insight as a former senior U.S. trade official, Beeman argues that America's exceptionally deep political divisions are driving its policy reversals, giving rise to a new trade policy characterized by zero-sum beliefs about the kind of trade America wants with the world and about new rules for trade that it wants for itself. With enormous implications for the future of regional and global trade, this timely analysis unravels the implications of America's seismic shift in approach for the future of the rules-based trading order and America's role in it.

Walking Out is essential reading for anyone interested in the domestic and international political economy of trade, international relations, and the future of America's role in the global economy.