C. Kenneth Quinones

Dr. Quinones "currently is Professor of Korean Studies at Akita International University in Japan. He contributes monthly commentary columns to three Japanese newspapers and continues to publish numerous articles in academic journals in the United States and South Korea.  He is also writing a new textbook on modern Korean history to be titled, The Korean Problem - Yesterday and Today.

"Dr. C. Kenneth Quinones has been involved with Northeast Asia since 1962 as a soldier, scholar and diplomat. He has lived and worked in South and North Korea, plus Japan and visits China often. As a U.S. diplomat, he witnessed South Korea’s democratization during the 1980’s and was directly involved in North Korea’s opening to the outside world during the 1990s. After retiring from the U.S. Foreign Service in 1997, he arranged US-North Korea educational and agricultural exchanges for US NGOs. Since 2001, he has concentrated on writing and commenting about US relations with Northeast Asia, particularly the Korean Peninsula. Since 2000, he has published three books: The North Korea Nuclear Crisis – Off the Record Memories, (translated into Korean and Japanese in 2000; Beyond Diplomacy: Implementation of the Agreed Frame Work (published in Japanese in 2003), and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding North Korea, published in English by Penguin Publishers’ Alpha Books in 2004. His monthly columns appear in Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun and Sanyo Shimbun. He has contributed numerous scholarly studies and articles to academic journals, edited books and newspapers in the USA, South Korea and Japan. He has had numerous interviews with North American, East Asian and European radio and televisions stations. Dr. Quinones is the director of Korean Peninsula Programs at International Action (the successor of the International Center), a non-profit Washington, D.C. based research institute that supports the International Forum for Innovative Northeast Strategy (www.IFINS.org). IFINS facilitates dialogue to promote a durable peace in Northeast Asia and distributes electronically two newsletters, one in Korean and the other in English, to approximately 2,000 subscribers worldwide. Dr. Quinones holds a Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University."


 * Member, Task Force on US Korea Policy
 * Member, National Committee on North Korea