The Center for Korean Legal Studies continues to build on its leadership in a variety of areas. Jeong-Ho Roh ’88 was appointed legal advisor to the Korean government on the Light Water Reactor Project in North Korea and met with communist officials to discuss nuclear liability issues arising from the 1994 Agreed Framework between the United States and North Korea. In this agreement, a consortium under the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization was building two nuclear power plants in return for North Korea's pledge to forego its nuclear weapons program. Roh was part of the Korean government delegation that traveled to North Korea in April, along with representatives from other Western governments, to discuss matters relating to nuclear liability. Roh currently teaches a course on the North Korean legal system. Columbia is the first U.S. law school to offer such a course. It examines the interplay between North Korea's traditional laws and those new laws it must enact if it wants to encourage Western investment.
The Center also hosted its third annual international trade law seminar for members of the Korean Judiciary Research Institute in July 2000. The 12-day program was designed to teach various aspects of U.S. trade law to future Korean judges, prosecutors, and attorneys. Some of the topics covered were electronic commerce, investment, anti-dumping, environment, and trade.
Roh has spoken at a number of conferences in the past year, including the American Enterprise Institute-sponsored “Inter-Korean Trade: Can We Really Separate Business from Politics?” and the “U.S.-Korea Relations at a Crossroad” conference.
