Ms Choo Mi-Ae, a leading South Korean opposition politician, will deliver this year's annual Ra Jong-Yil lecture as part of the Department of East Asian studies' Asian Studies Center seminar series.

Her lecture will, in part, set out a series of bold proposals for promoting peace on the Korean peninsula and for resolving the international deadlock with the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea.

A member of the National Assembly of South Korea, Ms Choo is unusual in the politics of South Korea having held important positions in a sphere which is traditionally male-dominated.

A member of the opposition Democratic Party and representing the district of Gwangjin-gu in Seoul, she began her career as a judge, serving on the District Courts of Chuncheon, Incheon and Jeonju as well as the Gwangju High Court.

Ms Choo Mi-Ae was the first elected to the National Assembly in 1996 and has served on its Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, as well as becoming the chairperson of the Environment and Labour Committee. In 2003, she worked as a special envoy to the US during the North Korean nuclear crisis.

The Annual Ra Jong-Yil Lecture is named after the former Ambassador to the UK and Japan. Dr Ra holds a doctorate in international relations from Cambridge, where he was a student at Trinity College and gave the inaugural lecture in 2008.

The lecture series is part of the Department of East Asian Studies' continuing campaign to promote research and teaching in the field of Korean Studies, which dates from 2002 and which received a notable boost in 2008 with the inauguration by the Korea Foundation of a new lectureship in Modern Korean Studies held by Dr. Michael Shin.

Bruce Cumings, the renowned University of Chicago Koreanist, delivered last year’s lecture.

Ms Choo Mi-Ae’s lecture - Finding the Legacy and a Vision for Modern Politics in the Korean Peninsula - takes place at Robinson College on Friday, November 5th, 2010. The talk begins at 5pm. For further information contact Dr John Swenson-Wright (jhs22@cam.ac.uk )
 

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