It's been more than three decades since India passed a law granting it the authority to grant compulsory licenses over drug patents in case of a public health crisis. On March 13, India finally exercised the powers it granted itself in that law. By granting the domestic Natco Pharma the right to manufacture Bayer's Nexavar cancer-preventative drug, India took precedent setting action that is being watched closely around the world. In this Asian Studies podcast we talk to Matt Schruers, an attorney, Vice-President of Law and Policy at the Computer and Communication Industry Association, and adjunct professor here at Georgetown. Schruers teaches about intellectual property at Georgetown Law and in the Communication Culture and Technology graduate program, he unpacked the legal technicalities of what kind of rights are negotiated with a compulsory license. We also talked to J.P. Singh, a global governance and development scholar, about the history of compulsory licensing in the world and why it took India more than 30 years to order one.
Read Full Post »
Jeonghoon Ha currently serves as a political researcher at the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in Washington, DC. Prior to this position, he worked as a research intern in the Korea Chair and the Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies(CSIS). He received his B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service in 2011 and will pursue a Master's in East Asian Studies at Stanford University.
"Learning from great scholars such as Professors Victor Cha, Michael Green and Pamela Sodhy greatly enhanced my understanding of East Asia and prepared me for a job that deals extensively with ROK-US Relations and US strategy in the Asia-Pacific. In addition, learning experiences at GU Asian Studies program helped me enormously throughout my graduate school application process. Therefore, I would advise students to fully utilize learning opportunities available through our Asian Studies department."
Read Full Post »
John K. Yi graduated from from Georgetown University in _ with a graduate certificate in Asian Studies. Today he lives in Moscow, Russia where he works for Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia and Central Europe. John talked with Robert Lyons, the MA Coordinator for the Asian Studies program about his work and how Georgetown University helped prepare him for his job.
Read Full Post »
Yifei Zhang has worked as an energy and geopolitics consultant to the UN and the Department of Homeland Security. His past research has taken him into copper and coal mines in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. His writings on nuclear energy have featured in publications from the Federation of American Scientists, and he's currently co-authoring a book on Chinese amphibious warfare and strategic culture. Yifei is a recent MA graduate of the Center for Peace and Security Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, where he also received a graduate certificate in Asian Studies, and an alumus of the University of Pennsylvania. He speaks Chinese and has a working knowledge of Japanese.
Yifei is a co-creator of the Silk Road Monuments Project: www.silkroadmonuments.com
"The Silk Road Monuments Project is a research and documentary project with a mission to record historically significant sites in Central Asia and Western China that are in imminent danger of destruction."
Read Full Post »
SFS' Victor Cha, director of the Asian Studies program, recently wrote a piece about how the Free Trade Agreement could spoil South Korea's upcoming state visit for Foreign Affairs.
Both the United States and South Korea are hard at work on just such preparations at the moment, ahead of a trip to Washington by President Lee Myung-bak next week. Lee and President Barack Obama will go to great lengths to celebrate the strength of the U.S.-South Korea alliance. As they should: by all accounts, both in terms of personal chemistry between leaders and actual accomplishments, the 58-year-old relationship between the two countries has never been stronger.
There's just one problem -- well, two, actually. The issues of North Korea and of implementing the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement still require a lot of hard work by Seoul and Washington to get this meeting right. Without some clear progress on either issue before Lee arrives at the South Portico on October 13th, all the pomp and circumstance could lead to naught.
Yet a considerable amount of work remains to be done. For starters, many Asian countries, especially in Japan, Korea, Australia, and several more southeast Asian states, worry about the staying power of the United States, given its financial difficulties. Obama thus needs to use next week's meeting to reassure Lee that he has no intention of allowing a power vacuum to arise in Asia.
The challenge from North Korea is more complicated. Publicly, both leaders will recite the familiar line that Pyongyang needs to commit to denuclearization and to the promises it made in the 2005 Six Party agreement to give up all of its nuclear weapons programs. Behind the scenes, however, both sides need to coordinate their game plans as they try to coax Pyongyang back to the Six Party talks. Moreover, Lee must prepare for what seems an increasing possibility: that the Obama administration will engage in direct negotiations with the North.
Read the full article The Free Trade Agreement Could Spoil South Korea's State Visit on Foreign Affairs.
Read Full Post »
Standard Podcasts [00:15:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Embeddable Player | Hits (165)
