Instructors
Gi-Wook Shin - Professor, Department of Sociology

The basic purpose of this course is to understand modern transformation in East Asian countries (primarily China, Japan, Taiwan, South and North Korea) from a comparative perspective.  How can we explain diverse paths to modernity among East Asian nations?  How can we understand East Asia’s transformation from a struggling agrarian region to an industrial powerhouse?  How has Asian Communism survived and what will be its future?  What are the forms and nature of state-society relations? What is the current state of US relations with East Asian nations?  Is the North Korean issue being properly addressed and handled?  How will the growing Sino-Japanese rivalry affect the formation of a new regional order?  How has the recent process of globalization affected the region? These questions will be discussed from a historical-comparative perspective, especially in the larger context of the Asia-Pacific relations.  This course is not aimed to survey a general history of these countries but to discuss major issues in social change and development using the East Asian experiences as explanatory case studies. 

The class is a gateway course into the East Asian studies major and  fulfills the General Educational Requirements for Area III-B and IV-A.

Level
Graduate and undergraduate