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A Sobering Look at a Sinking America: The Perspective of a Harvard PhD on the Potential of Korea and Japan

Professor Park Sang-Hyun.

By Professor Park Sang-Hyun, Department of Japanese, Kyung Hee Cyber University

Readers in Korea and Japan have been awakened from their slumber by the recent release of the book Watching the Sinking of the USS America from a Distant Shore: The Castaway Journal of a Harvard PhD in Korea and Japan by the scholar and politician Emanuel Pastreich.

The author is unique as an American expert on Asia in that he is also deeply engaged in culture, education, and politics in Korea and Japan.

Pastreich started his career as a scholar of classical literature, focusing on Korea, China, and Japan. He later wrote extensively about society and government, diplomacy and security, to such a degree that many do not know he started in classical studies. His best-selling books in Korea, notably Life is About Direction, not Speed, The World's Great Minds Speak Out about the Future of Korea, Another Korea that Koreans do not know, Finding Answers for Global Management in Korea’s Hongik Tradition, and Treasures of Korea that Koreans do not know have had a tremendous impact on the Korean intellectual community of which he is very much a part.

I knew Pastreich from his time teaching at Kyung Hee University and I was struck from the start by his approach to scholarship. He did not simply stay in the ivory tower, teaching and conducting his research. He felt a need to go out into the world, to see how ordinary citizens pass their days, how they live and breathe, and then to write not only about what Korea was in the past, but what it is today and what it could be in the future. He interacted with ordinary Koreans, giving public lectures and writing for working people.

I saw him, above all, as a doer, someone who felt that even as a foreigner, he had a responsibility to be part of Korea, to be a Korean, and even to take a Korean name, Yi Manyol. His book “A Korea that Even Koreans Do Not Know” became a bestseller. In that book, he suggests that Korea’s own culture, from ancient times, offered the greatest potential for its future.

Eventually that commitment to moral action led him to return to the United States and to run for president on a constructive and honest platform unlike anything I have ever seen. He felt that speaking honestly and eloquently about the threats facing American society in an age when politics is dominated by money had real value.

His study of Asian languages and his research on Korean and Japanese literature cannot be separated from a deep commitment to establishing a United States that is engaged with the real issues of our age—and that includes understanding Asia accurately.

The trajectory of his life took him back to Japan two years ago, where he has been equally engaged with the Japanese and is working to create an America that not simply makes demands for more weapons purchases and more investment by private equity in Korea and Japan, but that will play a constructive role. It was no surprise that he published the book “Watching the Sinking of the USS America from a Distant Shore: The Castaway Journal of a Harvard PhD in Korea and Japan” in Japanese this March for a Japanese audience. It is a book like none other by an American. The reader can immediately sense that he has a deep love for Japanese and Korean culture, and he speaks frankly about the challenges of the current moment.

The book is divided into five chapters.

Chapter 1 describes how Pastreich took an interest in Asian culture from high school, came to believe that the future of American civilization would be impacted by Asia, and then committed himself to the serious study of Chinese literature at Yale and Taiwan National University as an undergraduate.

Chapter 2 describes his studies of Japanese literature and philosophy at the University of Tokyo in Japan, and how he was inspired by the writings of such figures as the painter and poet Tanomura Chikuden, the novelist Ueda Akinarai, and the philosopher Ogyu Sorai, as well as numerous professors and fellow students at University of Tokyo.

Chapter 3 describes his decision to return to the United States for his Ph.D. studies at Harvard University, how he was inspired by such scholars as Edwin Reischauer and Joseph Nye to consider public service in policy and diplomacy by helping Americans to understand Asia not just in terms of culture while he was a professor at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign., Pastreich fought against the increasing militarization of American society at the University of Illinois, eventually being compelled to find work in the Korean Embassy in Washington DC where he helped the ambassador at the time, Hong Seok-hyun, to introduce Korean culture to Americans.

Chapter 4 describes his decision to move to Korea in light of the increasingly closed environment in Washington, DC, where he started teaching at Woosong University in Daejeon while serving as advisor to the governor of Chungnam Province (and later prime minister), Lee Wangoo. Pastreich moved to Kyung Hee University in 2011, where his articles, speeches, and books attracted broad attention, leading President Park Geun-hye to praise his book as her favorite.

Chapter 5 describes his journeys in Japan, Korea, and the United States as a scholar seeking out the proper path forward for a morally dedicated intellectual in a period of tremendous instability. That led to his decision to run for president in 2020 as an independent and then in the Green Party in 2023. He made considerable progress, in spite of his lack of financial backing, becoming the first major political figure in American history who was fluent in Japanese, Korean and Chinese- perhaps a sign of hope for what might be possible in the future.

Pastreich writes eloquently in Japanese in this book about the topics that he has addressed in speeches and lectures for years: the need to build a real peace in East Asia rooted in culture, not weapons, the imperative for Korea and Japan to play the critical role in creating that new peaceful order, and the need to set the United States on a path towards true peace.

When I read this book, as a Korean who has studied Japanese literature and worked to promote meaningful cooperation between Korea and Japan over the years, I was impressed by his vision for what is possible right now and in the future and his commitment to realizing that vision in a concrete way by working with individuals and thereby seeking out peace within the cultures of Korea and Japan. I share that vision and that commitment.

I believe that the current era of ruthless competition, inhuman consumption and exploitation, and limitless hegemonies has reached its peak, and the time has come to call out for a new direction, for a reversal of this course, and a return to an era of coexistence, symbiosis, and true peace, not merely the absence of war.

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