Pacific Century Institute

Building Bridges Award

The Pacific Century Institute established the Building Bridges Award in 2000 to honor people who have enhanced relations between Americans and Asians and who exemplify PCI's commitment to building bridges to a better future.

Every year, academics, policy makers, journalists and interested individuals come together at an annual dinner to give out this prestigious award and to celebrate the dedication and the accomplishments of the recipient.

For information about the award and the annual dinner, including opportunities for providing sponsorship support please contact us.

Concordia Language Villages – Korean Language Village (Sup sogŭi Hosu)

Since 2018, PCI has partnered with Korean Language Village Sup sogŭi Hosu, one of Concordia Language Villages’ 14 summer language programs, allowing students to learn the Korean language and culture and cultivating courageous global citizens. Since the partnership, PCI has awarded scholarships to seven Project Bridge participants to a mix of two week Korean Language Immersion and four-week high school credit summer programs. Located near Bemidji, Minnesota, Sup sogŭi Hosu is located on Turtle River Lake on the site of a former resort.

Friends of Korea

With a new partnership with Friends of Kore (FoK), PCI has pledged lifetime to the new graduates of the Project Bridge Youth Ambassadors program in New York and Los Angeles. FoK was founded by former Peace Corps volunteers to South Korea, with a mission to fostering cultural awareness and friendship between Americans and Koreans. It has since expanded its focus to include anyone with an interest in enhancing cultural awareness of and friendship with Korea and continue to maintain a link to Korea and the Korean American community in the U.S.

James Laney professorship at Yonsei University

Since fall semester of 2013, Pacific Century Institute has been sponsoring the James Laney Chair Professorship at Yonsei University’s Underwood International College. Yonsei University has been recruiting Korean and foreign distinguished figures, career diplomats, professors and others as chair professors. The tenure is one year for chair professors, who has been holding open lectures or seminars on one or two subjects.

Korea-U.S. Journalist Exchange Program

The Korea-United States Journalists Exchange, launched by the East-West Center in 2005, is co-sponsored by the East-West Center, Korea Press Foundation and Pacific Century Institute to increase public understanding of the two countries and their relationship. The bilingual program offers opportunities for six to eight Korean journalists to visit the United States and for six to eight United States journalists to visit Korea. Following these study tours, all Korean and American participants meet at the East-West Center in Honolulu to share their experiences and new perspectives and to exchange opinions on how media coverage of each country can be improved. A total of nearly 160 journalists, including North Korean defector media, have participated in this program, and Americans have traveled inside North Korea on two different programs.

Salon de Palace Garden at Sanglimwon

Salon de Palace Garden at Sanglimwon

The PCI 25th Anniversary dinner in Seoul on May 19, 2015 introduced the idea, articulated by keynote speaker Volker Rühe that South Korea needs to develop a bipartisan, fundamental, strategic policy toward North Korea. To follow-up on that initiative, PCI co-founder Spencer Kim offered his Seoul residence in the Palace Garden building as a venue fora series of “salons” in the European style of the 17th to 19th centuries in order to bring conservative and progressive opinion-shapers together to discuss the various facets that would be entailed in developing such a bipartisan policy. Selected guests socialize over a convivial dinner and then discuss a specified topic, coordinated by a convener.

The salon discussions are carried out under the Chatham House Rule, which states. “When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed."

Topics included:

-The Ideological divide in the South Korean media, its impact on the unification issue, and how to overcome the gap.

-The Ideological divide in the South Korean: how do you define “progressive” and “conservative” in the South Korean context.

-The Ideological divide in South Korea: Current Issues.

To read the summary of each Salon session, please click on the links below.

  Sanglimwon Salon session 1
  Sanglimwon Salon session 2
  Sanglimwon Salon session 3
  Sanglimwon Salon session 4
  Sanglimwon Salon session 5

The Korea Peace Forum – Korea Peace Studies School (KPPS)

PCI sponsored Korea Peace Studies School (KPPS) program, through planned curriculum, aims to cultivate “Peacemakers” who will contribute to opening a new era of peace and prosperity by improving inter-Korean relations as well as shaping social mood of peace on the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia.

The Open Economy Project

The Open Economy Project is a PECC activity dedicated to building a stronger, and more inclusive cooperation framework. Its leadership comes from the Chinese and US committees in the belief that the international trade system requires these two largest economies to support common norms and rules. It places particular attention on identifying and reconciling systemic differences and providing opportunities for disadvantaged groups and for micro, small, and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs). It may also be a vehicle for track two discussion of a “Phase Two” China-US trade agreement set against a background of seeking to advance an open global economy.

The project was conceptualized by two Americans - Charles Morrison and Anyu (Andy) Lee of E-Bridge China. Morrison is an international studies scholar with his doctorate Johns Hopkins and Lee has his PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford and has long been involved with tech-related private business in the US and China as well as business schools. A number of other Americans as well as Chinese have been involved in preliminary discussions, as has Eduardo Pedrosa, Executive Director of the PECC International Secretariat in Singapore.

Vietnam Program

Pacific Century Institute supports UC Davis Health Department’s project, Advancing services and supports for family caregivers of persons with dementia in Vietnam. Under Dr. Hinton’s leadership, the team made excellent progress in developing and testing (in a small case series) a culturally tailored program (REACH-Vietnam) to support family caregivers of persons with Alzheimer’s disease in Vietnam, to engage policy leaders in Vietnam to lay the groundwork for broader dissemination and implementation of the model that is developed from this project, and to forge collaborations with other groups locally, nationally and internationally to advance this work. Two major activities will be conducted and will be critical for the longer-term success of the project –testing the model in a larger group of family caregivers of persons with Alzheimer’s disease and then holding a national meeting (November of 2018) to disseminate the results of project and to build momentum for next steps. Some of the major activities conducted are:

1. Training collaborators and staff at the National Geriatric Hospital in Vietnam
2. Pilot test the intervention in a small case series (n=6)
3. Engaging key policy makers to increase the impact of our work

Dr. Hinton has made several trips to Vietnam in 2018 to provide technical assistance and support to the team in Vietnam. With the support of the Vice Minister of Health, the team is also developing collaborations with an Australian group, led by a Vietnamese pharmacist researcher, to support the development of a national plan to address the challenge of Alzheimer’s Disease in Vietnam. With our collaborators, the team is planning a major event in November in Hanoi to bring together high-level policy makers, government officials, and other stakeholders to discuss the development of the national plan and to disseminate results of our eldercare project.

William J. Perry Lecture Series

The Pacific Century Institute has collaborated with Yonsei University’s Institute for North Korean Studies from 2016 to 2019, to host its annual William J. Perry Lecture Series at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. The special lecture series then resumed in 2021 at Ewha Womans University where future lectures will take place.

The lecture brings outstanding individuals who are professionals in academia, business or other endeavors who have answered their country’s call to government service and then returned to their chosen professions. They share their experiences in government and provide insights on what can be done to promote peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula. Past lecturers include: Sec. William J. Perry (2016), Ambassador Robert L. Gallucci, Dr. Siegfried Hecker, Robert Carlin, and Secretary Janet Napolitano.