User:Mwinog2777/John Delury

John Delury is an American East Asia scholar, with special interests in the history of China, U.S.-China relations and Korean peninsula affairs.

Background and education
Delury trained at Yale University, receiving a B.S. (1997), M.A. (2003) and a PH.D. in 2007, with all degrees in history. He his currently teaching at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. He had previously taught at Brown University, Columbia University and Peking University. He is the associate director of the Asia Society Center on U.S.-Chinese relations. He is the co-author, with Orville Schell, of Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century (Random House, 2013).

His career as a historian took a self-described detour when he visited South Korea for the first time in 2006 to meet his wife's family. His area of interest had been limited to modern Chinese history. After further visits to Korea, he joined the Yonsei faculty in 2010 and made Seoul his home base. His academic interests have since broadenend to include Korean peninsula studies, North and South; he has visited North Korea four times. He feels that his new interest in Korean affairs has broadened his views on China as well as U.S.-China relations.

Views on China
Delury states that knowledge of China's history is important to the understanding of its current government policies. He feels Xi's political program of austerity is a reflection traditional political reform dating from Confucius to the Communists. He posits that through China's recent history there is one constant: "the search for something, anything," that will restore China's greatness. China's challenge now is to reconcile its current success to its past sufferings. Delury looks for historical parallels, which can be strung together, to chart an alternate trajectory for the competing visions of China's future political and social order.

Views on North Korea
He is critical of American officials who know little about North Korean history. As with China, it is important to know the history of North Korea. Without this knowledge it is unlikely for American officials to understand and realistically deal with North Korea's nuclear weapons program, a highly complex problem with a lot of variation over time. "It takes years to understand that history and you can't read in a book even if you had time, you have to meet the people."Delury has several significant disagreements with President Trump's North Korea policy. President Trump has relied China to exert influence on Nortk Korea, using trade as an inducement. Delury notes that since 1958 China has not had any meaningful impact on Noreth Korea's foreign policy. Delury has described the sanctions as futile and counterproductive. He has argued that they are unenforceable and unlikely to stop North Korea's nuclear weapons program. He has a more conciliatory approach, suggesting that the best chance for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons is by helping its economic development. He recommnneds a gradual elimination of the sanctions. Talk of a preventive war had become part of the mainstream debate before the recent thaw in U.S.-North Korea relations; Delury feels that this should not be an option. Delury has been described as the media's "go-to expert" on North Korea; he warns that news about North Korea tends to be sensationalized, and care should be taken in judging its veracity. "There's a global appetite for any North Korea story and the more salacious the better. Some of it is probably true – but a great deal of it is probably not...the normal standards of journalism are thrown out of the window because the attitude is: 'it's North Korea – no one knows what's going on in there.'"