Korea's contemporary politics and society; the role of the state and the power elite; the politics of networking.

I grew up in South Korea and completed my postgraduate degrees of Dip. Ed at Melbourne University, and MA and PhD at the Australian National University. My PhD dissertation was a study of "Park Chung Hee's Self-Reliance Ideology, 1961-1979: Modernization and National Restoration under President Park Chung Hee". I authored Korea's Development under Park Chung Hee: Rapid Industrialization 1961-1979, RoutledgeCurzon (2004), Reassessing the Park Chung Hee Era, 1961-1979: Development Political Thought, Democracy and Clutural Influence, Seattle: University of Washington Press (2011) (with C Sorensen) and many articles including "Industrial Warriors: South Korea's First Generation of Industrial Workers in Post-Developmental Korea," Asian Studies Review (2013); "President Roh Moo-Hyun's Last Interview and the Roh Moo-Hyun Phenomenon in South Korea," Journal of Contemporary Asia, December 16 (2016), and with Robert Cribb, "Out of Power and On Trial: The Corruption of Former Leaders in East Asia", Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Contex (2018), among other articles. I served as Founding-Director of the Australia-Korea Leadership Forum at the ANU (2008-9) and I taught) in the Department of Sociology, Yonsei University, South Korea, as Distinguished Professor (2014).

Career highlights

Associate Professor, Korea Politics and History, and Director of the Australia-Korea Leadership Forum at the Australian National University; Senior Research Fellow at the University of Wollongong (2004); Research Fellow at Wollongong and Newcastle Universities (2002-2003); Visiting Associate Professor, Linfield College, Oregon, USA (1998-99).