The Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea (ASCK) is a transnational organization of faculty, students, policy experts, and concerned individuals, who have joined together out of concern about current US policies toward the Korean peninsula. Founded in 2003, ASCK is committed to dialogue, cooperation, and the active pursuit of peace as the only solutions to current problems on the Korean peninsula and between the US and the two Koreas.  According to ASCK's mission statement, the group is "dedicated to the promotion of mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of Korea, both North and South."

In 2010, in collaboration with the National Campaign to End the Korean War, ASCK launched a three-year teaching initiative, timed to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the as-yet un-ended Korean War.  Thus far, seventy university professors have signed on to teach at least one course that focuses significantly on the Korean War—in Europe, at universities like Cambridge and Leiden, and in North America, at universities like Berkeley, Columbia, Chicago, and Toronto. Although ASCK members hail from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, they are united in their aim of countering the overwhelming lack of historical consciousness about “the Forgotten War” and its ramifications.   ASCK members believe fostering of accurate, historically informed analyses about Korea not only within the community of scholars but also among policy-makers and the general public is critical to their role as educators.  

“Knowledge about how Korea came to be divided after World War II, and recognition of the profound costs, both past and present, of war and militarization in Korea should not be irrelevant to formulating US policy toward Korea,” says Christine Hong, professor of Asian Pacific American and Pacific Rim Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and a member of ASCK, “As educators, we feel an ethical responsibility to speak out against policies that increase tensions in Northeast Asia and that may lead to another catastrophic war in Korea.”

ASCK has also actively supported academic freedom, endorsing a 2008 effort by historians in South Korea to defend the principle of political neutrality in education and authoring letters on behalf of South Korean scholars, such as Professor Kang Jeong-koo and Professor Oh Sei-Chul, who had been arrested under provisions of the National Security Law.

More broadly, the goals and activities of ASCK include:



1. Helping scholars, students, policy-makers and the general public learn about Korea, both North (DPRK) and South (ROK), through accurate, historically informed analyses;

2. Contributing to the constructive and peaceful development of US-ROK and US-DPRK relations;

3. Facilitating the exchange of scholars and students between the US and the DPRK.


For more information on ASCK and to learn how to join, go to asck.org.

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Nodutdol eNews is the monthly e-mail newsletter of Nodutdol.Through grassroots organization and community development, Nodutdol seeks to bridge divisions created by war, nation, gender, sexual orientation, language, classes and generation among Koreans and to empower our community to address the injustice we and other people of color face here and abroad. Nodutdol works in collaboration with other progressive organizations locally, nationally and internationally as part of a larger movement for peace and social change.

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