Category: NOTES

[GRANT] Awarded a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) NextGen Grant

My book project has been awarded the Next Generation Researcher Grant of the National Research Foundation of Korea for my first book manuscript, TRADE WARS & CURRENCY CONFLICT: China, South Korea and Japan’s Responses to U.S. Pressures since the Global Financial Crisis. Originally, the book project was based on my PhD dissertation submitted to Boston University in 2015, […]

[WORKSHOP] 2019-2021 Korea Foundation Core Working Group – Japan and Korea in China-US Relations

On December 17 and 18, I would be hosting a group of scholars at the Research Information Services of the National Library of Korea (RINK) – where I am currently an Academic Book Publication Member – for a Core Working Group Workshop on a project led by Professor Haruko Satoh of the International Academic Forum […]

Singapore, the Second Half

I completed my two-year postdoctoral fellowship at NUS and left Singapore on August 15, 2017. The second half of my postdoctoral fellowship was an array of writings on Northeast Asia and the Middle East, presentations of my work at different conferences in several different countries – namely, Japan, China, South Korea, the US and the UK […]

China Visit – Tianjin, Beijing and Hong Kong

I had not gone back to China since I left Beijing after dissertation fieldwork on July 31, 2012. So my visit to China marked a return in almost five years. The Zhou Enlai School of Government of Nankai University in Tianjin, where I gave my first presentation within mainland China in 2008, had built a […]

‘Pay It Forward’ in the Age of Anti-Immigration

In mid-April, one of the personnel at a global immigration law firm came to me after seeing me in a series of TV interviews on current international affairs, and explained that his firm wants me to give a keynote at an upcoming immigration conference his firm will be hosting. He had looked up my research profile […]

US Visit – East Asian Policymaking Workshop

I recently returned from a trip to five major US cities in the Northeast – New York, Middletown, New Haven, Boston, and Washington, DC – via the Incheon International Airport in Seoul from May 15 to May 29. The trip was planned around the East Asian Policymaking Workshop at Wesleyan University. Because the trip was […]

UK Visit – Brexit, Terrorism and China

An unprecedented research trip to the UK occurred from the 19th to the 25th of March – three days each in London and Manchester. My previous visits to the UK had been purely for visit purposes – this time it was purely research and conference oriented. I spent the first three days in London digging […]

New Beginnings for South Korea

The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Korea’s decision to impeach (former) President Park Geun Hye and her departure from the Blue House comes at a difficult time when the country strives to find a way to make things anew. These are very challenging times both domestically and externally. Economic downturn, rapid aging of the […]

Asia Tour 2016-17

For the past month and a half I did a tour around Asia – from Singapore to Tokyo, to Seoul, to Bangkok, to Tokyo again, then back to Singapore. I was dispatched to Tokyo as part of the NUS-Keio Workshop, and spent two weeks of December and another two weeks in January in Tokyo Midtown. […]

‘Trump’s America’

American prestige has come to an end. Watching as the final vote count was webcast throughout the world, what struck me more than ever was the hidden preferences of the American voter. ‘Trumpism’ in the most negative sense has been manifested throughout the campaign, but opinion polls prior to election day failed to capture what the […]