Professor Lee Examines A Troubled Peace

C.J. Lee, the BankAmerica Professor of Pacific Basin Studies at CMC and director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies, has written A Troubled Peace: U.S. Policy and the Two Koreas (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), examining the vicissitudes of U.S. policy toward South and North Korea since 1948, when rival regimes were installed on the Korean peninsula.
In A Troubled Peace, Lee uses a careful analysis of declassified diplomatic documents, primary materials in English, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese, as well as extensive interviews with American and Korean officials, to draw attention to factors that have affected U.S. policy, including the policies of Presidents Clinton and Bush North and South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia. Lee says he worked on the book for several yearsmost specifically during 2002-03 while on sabbatical and conducting research under a Fulbright grant in Korea. One early reviewer has called the resulting publication a "definitive study on the relationship between the U.S. and the Korean peninsula."
In addition to his new book, Professor Lee also has been lecturing extensively, including his discussions last summer on U.S. Policy Toward North Korea at Ewha Women's University, Seoul, and U.S.-Korean Relations at the School of International Studies, Peking University. Lee also chaired a session at the World Korea Forum in New York last August.
Lee, who has a bachelor's degree from Seoul National University and master's and doctorate degrees from UCLA, has served as author, coauthor, or editor of two dozen books and monographs dedicated to the Asia-Pacific Region, including China and Korea: Dynamic Relations (Hoover Institution Press, 1996), Zhou Enlai: The Early Years (Stanford University Press) and The United States and China: Changing Relations and Regional Implications, for Seoul: Sejong Institute.
Before arriving at Claremont McKenna College in 1989, Lee was twice a Fulbright-Hays Visiting Scholar at Seoul National University, and also served as both dean of The School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at California State University, Long Beach, and professor of political science. At the University of Kansas, Lee taught political science and East Asian studies and also served as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and co-director of the KU Center for East Asian Studies.
He is a member of the American Political Science Association, the Association for Asian Studies, the Board of Advisors for the National Bureau of Asian Research, and is on the Executive Committee of the Pacific Association for Korean Studies, as well as the Pacific Council on International Policy.