Speaker Biographies

Bruce E. Bechtol is an associate professor of international relations at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, Virginia. Prior to joining the faculty at Quantico, he was an assistant professor of national security studies at the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, from 2003–2005. Prior to joining the faculty of the Air Command and Staff College, Bechtol was employed by the Defense Intelligence Agency, serving as the senior analyst for Northeast Asia with the directorate for intelligence, joint chiefs of staff, in the Pentagon, until 2003. From 1977 to 1997, he was on active duty in the Marine Corps, serving as a cryptologist at various duty stations in the continental United States, the Western Pacific, and in East Asia. Bechtol is the author of Avenging the General Sherman: The 1871 Battle of Kang Hwa Do (Marine Corps University Foundation, 2002) and Red Rogue: The Persistent Challenge of North Korea (Potomac Books, forthcoming). He was editor of the Defense Intelligence Journal in 2004–2005, and sits on the editorial advisory board of the East Asian Review. In addition, he has presented papers and conducted briefings on a wide variety of intelligence and national security issues at conferences and symposia.

Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at AEI and is senior adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research in Seattle, Washington. He serves on the advisory board of the Korea Economic Institute of America, and is a founding member of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Mr. Eberstadt regularly consults for governmental and international organizations, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. State Department, USAID, and the World Bank. He has published over 300 studies and articles in scholarly and popular journals, mainly on topics in demography, international development, and East Asian security. His dozen-plus books and monographs include The Poverty of Communism (Transaction, 1988), The Population of North Korea (Institute of East Asian Studies, 1992), The Tyranny of Numbers (AEI Press, 1995), The End of North Korea (AEI Press, 1999), Korea's Future and the Great Powers (National Bureau of Asian Research, 2001) and, most recently, The North Korean Economy: Between Crisis & Catastrophe (Transaction, 2007).

Christopher Griffin is a research associate in Asian studies at AEI. Before joining AEI in January 2005, he was a research assistant in the strategic studies department at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Since May 2006, Mr. Griffin has been an associate editor of Armed Forces Journal, for which he writes on defense-industrial issues and military blogs.

Robert Joseph holds the position of senior scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy. Until March 2007, he served as under secretary of state for arms control and international security. In this capacity, he was the principal State Department officer for nonproliferation and counterproliferation matters, arms control, arms transfers, regional security, and defense relations. His responsibilities included oversight of three major bureaus: International Security and Nonproliferation; Political and Military Affairs; and Verification, Compliance and Implementation. From January 2001 through November 2004, Joseph served in the National Security Council as special assistant to the president and senior director for proliferation strategy, counterproliferation, and homeland Defense. From 1992 until 2001, he was professor of national security studies, and director and founder of the Center for Counterproliferation Research at the National Defense University. His awards include the National Defense University President’s Award for Individual Achievement and the National Nuclear Security Administration Gold Medal for Distinguished Service. He also received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Civilian Service (and Bronze Palm), and multiple Senior Executive Service Meritorious Achievements citations. In 2006, he received the annual Ronald Reagan award for his contributions to U.S. missile defense.

Sang-chul Kim is a former judge who is now in private practice and serves as publisher and CEO of the Future Korea Journal. He is president of the Pacific Asia Society and the Commission to Help North Korean Refugees, co-chairman of Save North Korea and the Korean Intellectuals for Freedom, and honorary president of the Korea-America Friendship Society (KAFS). In 1993, he was appointed mayor of Seoul Metropolitan City, becoming the youngest mayor in thirty years. As president of the Commission to Help North Korean Refugees, he has collected and submitted to the United Nations (UN) more than 11.8 million signatures to petition the UN to grant North Korean escapees refugee status. He has committed himself to various internal and international actions for protecting the lives and human rights of more than 100,000 North Korean defectors in China. As founder of both KAFS in 1991 and the Pacific Asia Society (PAS) of Korea in 1994, he is currently involved in many PAS and KAFS activities.

Tom Malinowski has been Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch since April 2001, in which capacity he is responsible for the organization’s overall advocacy effort with the U.S.  government. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, he was special assistant to President Bill Clinton and senior director for foreign policy speechwriting at the National Security Council. From 1994 to 1998, he was a speechwriter for Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright and a member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff. He has also worked for the Ford Foundation and as a legislative aide to U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and appears frequently as a radio, television, and op-ed commentator on U.S. human rights policy worldwide.

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. Her research areas include the Middle East (including Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), terrorism, and weapons proliferation. While at AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, a project on democracy for the Arab world, a roundtable of experts to discuss global energy security, and a project to develop bilateral relations between India and the United States. She recently served as a member of the congressionally mandated Task Force on the United Nations, established by the United States Institute of Peace. Before coming to AEI, she served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Ms. Pletka has also been a journalist based in Washington, D.C., and the Middle East.

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