Professional Affiliation

Korea Foundation Chair Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, University of Missouri

Expert Bio

I am a chair professor of political science at the University of Missouri and am the founder of the Korea Barometer and a co-founder of the Asian Barometer. For the past two decades, I have conducted comparative research on the democratization of authoritarian politics and cultures in East Asia and other regions. I have also conducted public opinion research on the quality of life among the mass publics of Korea and other Confucian countries in East Asia. In collaboration with scholars in several regions of the world, I am currently working on three projects dealing with the shifting dynamics of democratic political culture, popular images of government around the globe, and the quality of citizens' lives in Confucian Asia.

 

Education

B.A. (1962) Political Science, Seoul National University; M.A. (1966) Political Science,

University of California, Berkeley; Ph.D. (1972) Political Science, University of Illinois

 

Experience

• Professor of Political Science, University of Illinois, 1972-99




• Fulbright Professor of Political Science, Seoul National University, 1981 & 1991




• Visiting Professor, Chuo University,Tokyo, Japan, May-June 2008




• Visiting Professor, University of California, Irvine, Spring 2005




• Visiting Professor, University of Cape Town, South Africa, Spring 2003




• Visiting Professor, European University Institute, Florence, Italy, June 2002




• Visiting Scholar, East-West Center, Honolulu, Summer 2000




• Visiting Professor, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology; Fall 1998




• Visiting Professor, the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland,Winter 1997




• Visiting Scholar, the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1996

 

 

Expertise

 

 

Democratization, Korean politics; political culture, and the quality of life

Wilson Center Project

"Confucian Values and Liberal Democracy: Testing "the Asian Values" Thesis with the East Asia Barometer Surveys"

Project Summary

The proposed study aims to empirically test the compatibility of Confucian values with cultural democratization in East Asia. Drawing upon three rounds of barometers surveys conducted in this region over the past five years, it will produce a book manuscript examining three questions: (1) to what extent are East Asians attached to Confucian values; (2) why are some East Asians more attached to those values than others; and (3) how does attachment to the values affect the way they understand and support democracy, and participate in the electoral and non-electoral process.

Major Publications

• Mass Politics and Culture in Democratizing Korea (Cambridge University Press, 1999).




• Citizens, Democracy, and Markets around the Pacific (Oxford University Press, 2006).




• How East Asians View Democracy (Columbia University, Press, 2008).