The Asia Institute Makes its Presence Felt

Members of the Asia Institute team: (from left to right) Director Emanuel Pastreich, Program Director for Sustainable Development and Manufacturing; David Bigman; and SolBridge Business School Dean Tridib Biswas

There is a remarkable new think tank in Korea that is slowly making its presence felt through a focused approach to engagement in business, technology and policy: The Asia Institute. To start with, the Asia Institute is not located in Seoul, but rather in Daejeon, Korea’s center for science and technology. The reason for this decision is clear. The Asia Institute has thrown itself at addressing the pressing issues of our time: global warming, food sustainability, disease and nuclear nonproliferation. Science and technology will be at the heart of the solution to these problems, so it makes sense that a think tank grappling with those issues should be located in such a technology cluster. The Asia Institute has close working relations with research institutes, including the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB), the Korea Institute for Nuclear Safety, the Korea Institute for Non-proliferation and Control, the National Nano Fabrication Center and Korea’s leading technical university, KAIST.

The Asia Institute brings to researchers and technicians a global perspective that can help to integrate their efforts into larger projects. Asia Institute experts in business and policy learn more about the detailed workings of technologies. When the Asia Institute’s experts in business and international relations talk with researchers working on genetic treatments for liver cancer at KRIBB, they get a first-hand perspective on contemporary biotechnology that most think tanks do not have. When the Asia Institute holds a seminar with engineers at the Korea Institute for Nuclear Safety, it offers a behind-the-scenes view of the technical aspects of the challenges of nuclear power. SolBridge’s Alp Malazgirt, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, remarked, “The Asia Institute is an outstanding forum for engaging in business, technology and policy. We can debate with leaders in the field, challenge assumptions and dream of what is possible. The range of topics is not limited to the political or the economic, but plunges deep into the technical – which is near and dear to me.” Recent Asia Institute events have brought leading figures from Georgia Tech, the Nautilus Institute, Stanford University and Tsinghua University to engage in this hands-on policy discussion.

Many think tanks put on seminars about North Korea, APEC, free trade agreements and summit meetings. Few actually have experts on nuclear power present in the discussions on North Korea’s programs. The Asia Institute wants to consider the longterm questions that policy makers and businessmen care about: which technologies will be critical to the response to global warming? What techniques in biotechnology promise to contribute to the goal of developing plants that will require less water to thrive?

The Asia Institute is located inside the Solbridge International School of Business. That business school is unusual in itself as it is the only academic institution in Korea with an entirely international faculty and with students from 20 countries. That institutional foundation in a business school that is inherently international positions the Asia Institute to look at business and policy issues from multiple perspectives.

Equally striking is the decision to put an American in charge of the Asia Institute. Although the heads of such international organizations in Korea are internationals, it is unusual for a research institute within a Korean university to be administrated by a foreigner – especially a program focused on Asia. Dr. Emanuel Pastreich has plenty of experience with Asia: fluent in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, Pastreich has written on Asian culture, politics, science, policy and diplomacy. He established a popular lecture series on international relations at the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C. before coming to Korea, first to serve as advisor to the governor of Chungnam Province, and then to take up duties at the Asia Institute last year.

An Israeli, Dr. David Bigman, is currently conducting a high-profile study of national competitiveness on behalf of the Asia Institute. Bigman is a leading scholar on trade, currency and food security who has just released a book through Macmillan Publishing entitled “Democracy and Hunger.”

Fahad Altouraif of Saudi Arabia’s NCB Capital, a leading Middle Eastern investment bank, heads the East Asia Middle East Initiative at the Asia Institute, an effort to encourage closer dialogue between these two critical regions.

Director Pastreich imagines a research institute that grapples with Asia as it is. “We hear all about how important Asia is in the Western media, but you would be surprised just how little effort Western think tanks put into actually figuring out how Asia works. Business schools talk about the Pacific Rim, but the case studies produced are seldom set in India or China and rarely focus on leading Chinese, Japanese and Russian firms,” explains Pastreich.

The Asia Institute is open to engagement with all of Asia. That point is summed up in the Institute’s slogan: “A Broader vision of Asia; A Deeper understanding of contemporary challenges.” This expansive perspective captured the imagination of Markku Heiskanen, a retired Finish diplomat with extensive experience in Asia who now serves as its Senior Associate. Heiskanen notes, “The Asia Institute aims at covering all of Asia, which is increasingly linked by finance, energy needs, communication and transportation networks and shared global concerns. I think it is important to enlarge these visions to the whole of Eurasia, which is, in many respects, one and the same continent.”

Programs like the Korea-India Science and Technology Initiative, run by Neeru Biswas, and the Korea-Japan Environmental Policy Initiative, administered by Toraaki Nakamura, a Japanese scholar of environmental policy with a Ph.D. from Seoul National University, consider issues that weave regions together. The work of this bilateral Initiative has resulted in a Memorandum of Understanding between the Indian Nano consortium and Korea’s National Nano Fab Center. An international conference on information and communications technology involving Korea and India has been another result of the collaboration.

The Asia Institute was at the center of the founding of the Daejeon Green Growth Forum, an effort by scholars in the research institutes of Daejeon to address environmental issues more effectively. That forum now works with Tsukuba University’s 3E (Energy, Environment and Economy) Forum and launched a first-ever Asian 3E Forum in May 2009. That 3E Forum in Daejeon involved leading scholars from China, Japan and Korea discussing cooperative approaches to environmental problems.

Such activities can create a spirit of unity by rising above the common habit of just complaining about neighbors in Asia in order to achieve a higher level of business understanding. Granted the scale of the economic and environmental crisis, this process is critical for developing nations.

There are many high-profile conferences that grab attention with their lofty pronouncements. The Asia Institute is notable for its focus on the building of low-key, working-level relations between nations to follow up on those initiatives. The approach may not grab every headline, but it is an absolutely essential role.