Joint U.S. Korea Academic Studies
From the Issue
Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies 2012About Joint U.S. Korea Academic Studies
For over twenty years, KEI has sponsored annual major academic symposiums at universities across the country and major academic conferences. Each year, papers are specially commissioned to fit panel topics of current policy relevance to the U.S.-ROK alliance and implications for the Korean peninsula. Following the symposium, KEI edits and publishes those papers in an annual volume entitled “Joint U.S.-Korea Academic Studies.”
Changes in political leadership are often associated with readjustments or reversals of policy, the impact of which can be both wide-ranging in scope and long-lasting in duration. Foreign policy, which had long belonged to the realm of sovereign decisions by the kings and their trusted servants in traditional times, has of late fallen into the domain of intense bargaining and compromises between the state and the society in the era of informatized popular democracy.1 Political leaders are, of course, still empowered to make authoritative decisions but their boundary of discretion is now significantly constrained by the obligations to reflect and accommodate the interests and, increasingly, sentiments of the people who vote for them.