U.S.-Korea Cooperation in Asia During the Pandemic
June 24, 2020 ㅡ Asia Society Korea hosted an online discussion with Marc Knapper, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Japan and Korea, and John Delury, Asia 21 member and a professor of Chinese Studies at Yonsei University, to look into the U.S.-Korea relations amid the time of the pandemic crisis.
About the Guest Speaker
Marc Knapper
Mr. Marc Knapper is Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Japan and Korea. Prior to that, he was a Chargé d’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Seoul; the Director of the Department of State’s Office of India Affairs, and Japanese Affairs; Political Counselor in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad; Deputy Chief of the Political Section at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo; and Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi.
Mr. Knapper brings an extensive knowledge of the Republic of Korea and the Asia-Pacific region to his current assignment, having served twice at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul – first between 1993 and 1995, and again between 1997 and 2001. He has also completed assignments in the Department of State’s Office for Chinese and Mongolian Affairs, and during an early assignment in Tokyo, he served as aide to Ambassador Walter Mondale. Mr. Knapper has twice traveled to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for official purposes, once in 1997 as the State Department representative to the Spent Fuel Team at the Yongbyon nuclear facility, and again in 2000 as part of the advance team for then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s visit to Pyongyang.
Mr. Knapper is the recipient of a number of awards from the U.S. Department of State, including Linguist of the Year and three Superior Honor Awards. He is a summa cum laude graduate from Princeton University, with a BA in Politics and a minor in East Asian Studies. After graduation, he studied for two years at the University of Tokyo as a graduate research student. He is also a graduate of Middlebury College’s intensive Japanese program, the Army War College, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Seminar XXI course. Mr. Knapper speaks Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese.
About the Moderator
John Delury
Professor John Delury is a historian of modern China and expert on US-China relations and Korean Peninsula affairs. He is the author, with Orville Schell, of Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century, and his articles have appeared in the Journal of Asian Studies, Asian Perspective and Late Imperial China. He contributes regularly to Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Global Asia, and 38 North. He is a senior fellow of the Asia Society and Pacific Century Institute and member of the Council of Foreign Relations, National Committee on US-China Relations and National Committee on North Korea. Prior to joining the Yonsei faculty in 2010, Dr. Delury offered courses at Brown, Columbia, Yale and Peking University, and served as founding associate director of the Asia Society Center on US-China Relations in New York. He is currently writing a book about US-China relations during the Cold War, focusing on the case of imprisoned CIA officer Jack Downey. He is also working on a series of articles on China-North Korea relations and co-authored book project with Patrick McEachern on North Korean politics and history.
Professor Delury received his Ph.D. in History from Yale University.
