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Don Oberdorfer is a Distinguished Journalist in Residence and Adjunct Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. As of September 2006, he was named Chairman of the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS. Oberdorfer was a journalist for 38 years, 25 of them for *The Washington Post*. His areas of expertise included the White House and Northeast Asia, and he spent 17 years as a diplomatic correspondent based in Tokyo. He has also reported for *The Charlotte Observer*, *The Saturday Evening Post*, and *Knight Newspapers*. His work has won numerous awards for journalistic excellence, including the National Press Club's Edwin M. Hood Award for diplomatic correspondence (1981, 1988) and Georgetown University's annual Edward Weintal Prize for diplomatic reporting (1982, 1993). He retired from journalism in 1993. From 1994-96, Oberdorfer served as President of Overseas Writers, a professional association of American and foreign journalists who focus on U.S. diplomacy in Washington. He is a member of the Asia Society and the Council on Foreign Relations, and currently is Program Chair of the Washington Institute on Foreign Affairs, an organization of retired senior U.S. diplomats, military officers, and journalists. Oberdorfer is a native of Atlanta, Ga. He graduated from Princeton University in 1952 and returned as a Visiting Professor in 1977, 1982 and 1986. In 1996, Princeton bestowed on him its Woodrow Wilson Award, given annually to an alumnus for exemplary service to the nation.

Charles K. Armstrong is The Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Korean Studies in the Social Sciences in the Department of History and the Director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University. A specialist in the modern history of Korea and East Asia, Professor Armstrong has published several books on contemporary Korea, including *The Koreas* (Routledge, 2007), *The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950* (Cornell, 2003), *Korea at the Center: Dynamics of Regionalism in Northeast Asia* (M.E. Sharpe, 2006), and *Korean Society: Civil Society, Democrac*y, and *The State *(Routledge, second edition 2006), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. His current book projects include a study of North Korean foreign relations in the Cold War era and a history of modern East Asia. Professor Armstrong is a frequent commentator in the US and international media on Korean, East Asian, and Asian-American affairs. Professor Armstrong teaches courses on modern Korean history, the international history of East Asia, the Vietnam War, and US-East Asian relations, among others. He received his BA from Yale, MA from the London School of Economics, and PhD from the University of Chicago.

Ilpyong Kim is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, Storrs and is a past president of the New England Conference of the Association for Asian Studies. He is an active contributor in Asian Studies for the American Political Science Association and is the author of several books including The Politics of Chinese Communism: Kiansi Under the Soviets, Communist Politics in North Korea, and Development and Cultural Change: Cross-Cultural Perspectives.

Dae Sook Suh received his undergraduate education at Texas Christian University (B.A. in Government), and studied Political Science at the graduate level at Indiana University (M.A. in Political Science). He completed his graduate training in Political Science at Columbia University (Ph.D. in Public Law and Government, 1964). Dae returned to Texas to teach political science at the University of Houston and University of Texas at Austin before coming to the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He came to the University of Hawaii to establish and develop the programs for the Center for Korean Studies, and he served as its first Director from 1972 to 1995. The Board of Regents of the University of Hawaii appointed him to a chair professorship, Korea Foundation Professor of Policy Studies in 1994. Dae has also taught at Seoul National University and Yonsei University in Korea, and he was appointed George L. Paik Professor at Yonsei University. He was a Visiting Professor at Keio University in Japan and Honorary Professor at Yanbian University in China, and Visiting Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Alexandre Y. Mansourov is an associate professor at at the Department of Regional Studies at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, Hawaii. As a Northeast Asian expert he focuses primarily on the securities of the Korean Peninsula. Dr. Mansourov was a visiting fellow at Brookings Institution's Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies and was a faculty member of the Department of Regional Studies at the College of Security Studies. He earned his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University, B.A. in international relations from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) in Russia, and advanced diploma in Korean studies from the Kim Il Sung National University in Pyongyang.

Dr. Han S. Park is University Professor of International Affairs and Director of the Center for the Study of Global Issues (GLOBIS) at the University of Georgia. Throughout his life, Han Park has endeavored to find new ways to use his talents and abilities to serve humankind. He has been fortunate to have had the opportunity to do so in several capacities. Born in China (Manchuria) to immigrant Korean parents, Dr. Park received his education in China, Korea, and the United States, with advanced degrees in Political Science from Seoul National University (B.A.), the American University (M.A.) and the University of Minnesota (Ph.D.).

Billy Bean was born in Santa Ana, California in 1964 and graduated from Loyola Marymount University in 1986 with a degree in Business Administration. He played major league baseball from 1987 through 1995, breaking into the major leagues with the Detroit Tigers. Bean tied a major league record with 4 hits in his first major league game. He went on to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the San Diego Padres. Billy came out publicly in 1999 on the front page of The New York Times, and subsequently on a nationally televised story with Diane Sawyer. He is the only living former major league baseball player to acknowledge his homosexuality. Bean is the author of, Going the Other Way: Lessons from a life in and out of Major League Baseball. (Avalon Publishing Group, NYC.)

Ezra F. Vogel is a student of both modern Japan and China. He received his B.A. at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1950 and his Ph.D. in sociology at Harvard in 1958. He then spent two years in Japan conducting research. In 1960-61, he was assistant professor at Yale University and from 1961-62 through 1963-64 a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard, studying Chinese language and history. He remained at Harvard, becoming lecturer in 1964 and professor in 1967. Professor Vogel succeeded John Fairbank as second Director (1972-1977) of Harvard's East Asian Research Center and second Chairman of the Council for East Asian Studies (1977-1980). He was Director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at the Center for International Affairs (1980-1987) and, since 1987, Honorary Director. He was director of the Undergraduate Concentration in East Asian Studies from its inception in 1972 until 1989. In 1993 he took a two-year leave of absence, serving as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council. He returned to Harvard in September 1995 to direct the Fairbank Center until 1999 and was head of the Asia Center from 1997 to 1999. He taught courses on communist Chinese society, Japanese society, and industrial East Asia. The Japanese edition of Professor Vogel's book *Japan as Number One: Lessons for America *(1979) remains the all-time best-seller in Japan of non-fiction by a Western author. He officially retired in 2000 but remains active in research and East Asia related activities.