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"The Perpetual Crisis: Two Decades of Diplomacy with North Korea"
L.Gordon Flake
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Planned Remarks:
This past spring, North Korea once again secured its familiar place in the headlines by testing a long range missile and a nuclear device, both in the face of new UN Security Counsel sanctions and widespread international condemnation. In recent months, North Korea seems to be once again tacking toward diplomacy, both with United States and with South Korea. Yet, there is little indication of flexibility in North Korea’s newly proclaimed nuclear status, and the Obama Administration faces yet another in long list of bedeviling complex international diplomatic challenges as it attempts to address not only North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs but also troubling allegations of human rights abuses, counterfeiting, drug smuggling and other illicit activities … and all this while simultaneously seeking to reassure our allies in the Republic of Korea and Japan and reaching out to other important players in the region such as China and Russia.
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Speaker's Biography:
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L. Gordon Flake joined the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation in February 1999. He was previously a Senior Fellow and Associate Director of the Program on Conflict Resolution at The Atlantic Council of the United States and, prior to that, Director for Research and Academic Affairs at the Korea Economic Institute of America.
Mr. Flake is co-editor with Park Roh-byug of the book, New Political Realities in Seoul: Working toward a Common Approach to Strengthen U.S.-Korean Relations (Mansfield Foundation, March 2008) and co-editor with Scott Snyder of the book Paved with Good Intentions: the NGO Experience in North Korea (Praeger, 2003) and has published extensively on policy issues in Asia. He is a regular contributor on Korea issues in the U.S. and Asian press and has traveled to North Korea numerous times. He is a member of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies and serves on the Board of the United States Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (USCSCAP) as well as on the Board of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, and the Advisory Council of the Korea Economic Institute of America.
Mr. Flake was born in Rehoboth, New Mexico. He received his BA degree in Korean with a minor in international relations from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He completed his MA at the David M. Kennedy Center for International and Area Studies, also at B.Y.U. He speaks both fluent Korean and Laotian. He has seven young children and is married to Pakayvanh Sisoutham of Vientiane, Laos.
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World Affairs Council of the Florida Palm Beaches
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