Victor Cha, Senior Advisor and Korea Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies; D.S. Song-KF Professor of Government, Georgetown University
Professor Victor D. Cha holds the D.S. Song-KF Professorship in Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University. In 2009, he was also named as Senior Adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
He left the White House in May 2007 after serving since 2004 as Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council. At the White House, he was responsible primarily for Japan, the Korean peninsula, Australia/New Zealand and Pacific Island nation affairs. Dr. Cha was also the Deputy ad of Delegation for the United States at the Six Party Talks in Beijing, and received two Outstanding Service commendations during his tenure at the NSC.
He is the author of five books, including the award-winning Alignment Despite Antagonism: The United States-Korea-Japan Security Triangle (Stanford University Press) (winner of the 2000 Ohira Book Prize), and The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (Harper Collins Ecco, 2012) which was selected by Foreign Affairs as a “Best Book on the Asia-Pacific for 2012.” His next book is Powerplay: Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia (Princeton University Press), forthcoming in the fall 2016. He is also co-authoring a new book, Korea After Unification: Planning for the Inevitable to be published by Columbia University Press. He published articles on international relations and East Asia in journals including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, Political Science Quarterly, Survival, International Studies Quarterly, International Journal of the History of Sport, and Asian Survey. Professor Cha is a former John M. Olin National Security Fellow at Harvard University, two-time Fulbright Scholar, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Scholar at Columbia University, and Hoover National Fellow, CISAC Fellow, and William J. Perry Fellow at Stanford University. He is currently a Fellow in Human Freedom (non-resident) at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, Texas.
Chaired by Carter Eckert, Yoon Se Young Professor of Korean History, Harvard University
The Korea Institute acknowledges the generous support of the Kim Koo Foundation. The Harvard Kennedy School’s Korea Working Group acknowledges the generous support of the Korea Foundation.
