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John Feffer
John Feffer is co-director of "Foreign Policy In Focus" at the Institute for Policy Studies. He has authored several books and articles, and has been a Writing Fellow at Provisions Library in Washington, DC and a PanTech fellow in Korean Studies at Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of "World Policy Journal," and has worked as an international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia for the American Friends Service Committee.John serves on the advisory committees of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea. He is a recipient of the Herbert W. Scoville fellowship and has been a writer in residence at Blue Mountain Center and the Wurlitzer Foundation. He has taught a graduate level course on international conflict at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul in July 2001 and delivered lectures at a variety of academic institutions including New York University, Hofstra, Union College, Cornell University, and Sofia University (Tokyo).
Beyond the Golden Couples of Pyongyang
It’s not likely that an Occupy Pyongyang movement will set up tents in Kim Il Sung Square anytime soon. Protest, after all, is virtually non-existent in that society. But the same widening inequalities that plague the United States and the global economy can also be found inside North Korea. What was once a relatively equitable society, albeit [...]
North Korea: Why Engagement Now?
Geopolitics drove the U.S.-China détente. It could do the same between Washington and Pyongyang. Relations between the United States and North Korea, never particularly warm, have truly frosted over in recent months. The Obama administration, in the wake of the Cheonan incident, has added financial sanctions to a lengthening list of [...]
Forging a Consensus on Human Rights
Roberta Cohen and I, along with most observers of North Korea, agree on the details of the human rights situation. We differ on strategies to address the abysmal state of affairs. But we don’t differ quite as much as Roberta suggests in her article Human Rights: A Means of Engaging North Korea. I don’t, for instance, suggest “setting [...]
Starting Where North Korea Is
Social workers are fond of saying that they must start where their clients are. This basic principle of social work is not theoretical. It comes from decades of practice. Simply telling people what they should do rarely translates into their actually doing “the right thing.” So instead, social workers have turned the tables by beginning not [...]
