In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

On November 4, a seminar jointly hosted by The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy and the Foundation’s office in Korea will convene in Seoul to address opportunities for expanding the U.S.-ROK alliance in international peacekeeping, overseas development assistance, and maritime security. The Seoul seminar is being supported by the Friends of The Asia Foundation in Korea, a membership organization under the leadership of former Prime Minister and Asia Foundation Trustee Lee Hong-koo.

The discussion will be the second in a three-part seminar series aimed at assessing a wide range of opportunities for U.S.-ROK cooperation. The inaugural symposium, held October 8 in Washington D.C. with the Brookings Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, focused on prospects for cooperation on pandemics and biological threats, counter-terrorism and space. The presentations offered practical suggestions to broaden and deepen the scope of the U.S.-ROK alliance beyond traditional security cooperation, as called for in the Joint Vision Statement released by Presidents Barack Obama and Lee Myung-bak on June 16, 2009.

The concluding seminar, scheduled for early December in Washington, D.C., will assess the potential for U.S.-ROK cooperation on nonproliferation, post-conflict stabilization, and human rights. The seminars will serve as the basis for a volume of essays on U.S.-South Korean global cooperation. Titled A Roadmap for Expanding U.S.-ROK Alliance Cooperation, the book will be published in 2010.

Read more about The Asia Foundation’s Center for U.S.-Korea Policy.