Panel Discussion and Reception
Whither North Korea?

Dr. Bruce Cumings
Swift Distinguished Service Professor
University of Chicago

L. Gordon Flake
Executive Director
Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation

March 14, 2012

Coffee Reception: 5:30 p.m.
Program: 6:00-8:00 p.m.

Frick Fine Arts 125 (Auditorium), University of Pittsburgh, Schenley Drive, Pittsburgh

During the seventeen-year rule of Kim Jong-Il, North Korea became a dictatorship armed to the teeth, but unable to feed its own people without foreign aid. However, with the death of Kim Jong-Il on December 17th, foreign policy experts around the globe have wondered aloud what the future holds for this nuclear power. “North Korea as we know it is over,” a Korea specialist who served in the second Bush administration confidently asserted in the New York Times a mere two days after Kim died. North Korea, the last Stalinist state on earth, became the latest country to join the nuclear club in 2006. All eyes are
now on Kim Jong-Un, the youngest and least-known son of Kim Jong-Il. Will the “great successor” be able to avoid national collapse? Or will the country become subsumed by its northern neighbor, China? Please join us for a panel discussion with two of the United States’ most astute Korea watchers.

The Kims' Three Bodies: Dynastic Succession and its Antecedents in North Korea

Bruce Cumings is the Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History at the University of Chicago. He is the editor of the modern volume of the Cambridge History of Korea (forthcoming). He was also the principal historical consultant for the documentary Korea: The Unknown War.

1994 Redux: North Korea's Third Generation Hereditary Succession and what it means for China, South Korea, and the United States

L. Gordon Flake is the Executive Director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. He has traveled to North Korea numerous times. He is on the Board of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and the Advisory Council of the Korean Economic Institute of America.

Sponsored by the Asian Studies Center and the Korea Council of the University of Pittsburgh, and the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh.

For more information, please contact Rachel Jacobson at rej16@pitt.edu.