For our third Gen A roundtable in 2024, we are sitting down with John Delury, historian and professor at Yonsei University, Seoul, and expert on US-China relations and Korean Peninsula affairs.

Join us for this exclusive conversation and bring your own questions to the table! 

John Delury is an Associate Professor at Yonsei University Graduate School of International Studies and Underwood International College in Seoul, South Korea. He is also the founding director of the Yonsei Center on Oceania Studies. This academic year, he is based in Italy as the inaugural Tsao Family Prize Fellow in China Studies at the American Academy in Rome, working on a book manuscript which explores the Confucian ideal of empire.

Trained as a historian of modern China, John received his BA, MA and PhD in history from Yale University, writing his PhD thesis on the Ming-Qing dynasty transition political thinker Gu Yanwu. In addition to China, his academic interests and competence include US-China relations, China-Korea relations, and North and South Korean history and politics. He closely follows Korean Peninsula affairs, having visited South Korea for the first time in 2006, lived in Seoul since 2010, and visited North Korea four times.

John contributes regularly to Foreign Affairs, 38 North and Global Asia (where he is an associate managing editor), and his op-eds have appeared in The New York Times and Washington Post, among many other reviews and newspapers. More of his writings can be found in American Foreign Policy Interests, Asian Perspective, Journal of Asian Studies and Late Imperial China. He is often invited to offer his analysis on East Asian affairs with government, think tanks, corporate, and civil society organizations globally. 

In his blog posts, articles, essays, op-eds, and book reviews, John tries to use historical thinking to shed light on current issues in China, the two Koreas, and US policy in the region – from politics and ideas in the PRC, to the intensifying US-China rivalry, to the intractable problem of what to do about North Korea.

John is also a senior fellow at the Asia Society, Pacific Century Institute and China Policy Institute, an adjunct fellow at the Center on Strategic and International Studies, and a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, National Committee on North Korea, and National Committee on US-China Relations.

He recently published Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA's Covert War in China (Cornell University Press, 2022)  – focusing on the case of imprisoned CIA officer Jack Downey and the spy war between the US and China in the 1950s – and is the co-author, with Orville Schell, of Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century (Random House, 2013) – looking at China's rise to preeminence. You can learn more about John and his writings on his website: https://johndelury.com

Resources and Preparation Material

• "A Solution on North Korea Is There, if Biden Will Only Grasp It". John Delury. The New York Times, March 16, 2024.
• "Will North Korea's next leader be a woman with Kim Jong-un's daughter on the rise?". Sophie Li and Bryan Wood. South China Morning Post. March 2, 2024.
• "The Koreas in the age of uncertainty: what's next?". Italian Institute for International Political Studies. November 23, 2023. First debate: From 00:14:44 to 1:09:56.
• "Global Pivotal State: What Type of Geopolitical Actor is South Korea Becoming?". Ramon Pacheco Pardo. CSDS Policy Brief 27/2023. Korea Chair at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy is a research hub at the Brussels School of Governance. November 8, 2023. 
• "The U.S.-Korea-Japan Partnership: What Happens Now?". Asia Matters Podcast. January 10, 2024.

Additional:

• "Hearings on Italy's role in the Indo-Pacific". John Delury. Standing Committee on Foreign Policy for the Indo-Pacific. October 18, 2023. From 00:27:10 to 00:47:43 (In Italian).