Former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon discusses his new book Resolved: Uniting Nations in a Divided World on its release, in conversation with Korea Society board chairwoman Ambassador Kathleen Stephens and with a welcome by Korea Society president and CEO Tom Byrne. This event is co-hosted with the Korea Economic Institute of America.
Resolved: Uniting Nations in a Divided World
Tuesday, June 15, 2021 I 9 AM
The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Ban Ki-moon is a South Korean diplomat and former foreign minister who served as the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 2007 to December 2016. Throughout his career, Ban worked to mobilize international efforts against a slate of global pressures including: climate change, extreme poverty, and armed conflict to make the world a safer and more equitable place. His motto: Mission Possible.
ABOUT THE MODERATOR:
Amb. Kathleen Stephens
Chair, Board of Directors, The Korea Society
President & CEO, Korea Economic Institute
Ambassador (ret.) Kathleen Stephens is a former American diplomat. She was U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea 2008-2011. Korea has been a leit motif of Ambassador Stephens’ life and career since she served in rural Korea as a Peace Corps volunteer and trainer, 1975-1977. She was in Korea 1983-1989, first as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul reporting on Korea’s domestic political and human rights scene, and later leading the U.S. Consulate in Busan.
Other overseas assignments included postings to China, former Yugoslavia, Portugal, Northern Ireland, where she was U.S. Consul General in Belfast during the negotiations culminating in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and India, where she was U.S. Charge ‘d Affaires (2014-2015).
Ambassador Stephens also served in a number of policy positions in Washington at the Department of State and the White House. These included acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (2012), Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (2005-2007), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (2003-2005), and National Security Council Director for European Affairs at the Clinton White House.
Stephens was William J. Perry Fellow for Korea at Stanford University 2015-2018. She is a Mansfield Foundation Distinguished Fellow, Pacific Century Institute board chairman, vice-chair of the board of trustees for The Asia Foundation, and board chair of The Korea Society.
She has been President and CEO of the Korea Economic Institute of America since September 2018, based in Washington, DC.
