Emanuel Pastreich serves as director of the Asia Institute at the SolBridge International School of Business in Daejeon, Korea. In that position he leads the efforts of the Institute to foster cooperation between institutions throughout Asia in responding to challenges in business and policy including post-2008 finance, the environment, sustainable development, energy, nuclear proliferation and technology. Pastreich also serves as advisor for investment to the mayor of Daejeon Metropolitan City, Korea's primary technological research cluster. Pastreich is involved in attracting foreign direct investment, promoting tourism, and building strategic relations for Daejeon throughout the world in this position. He served previously as advisor to the governor of Chungnam Province for foreign relations (2007-2008).

Dr. Emanuel Yi Pastreich

Pastreich was co-founder of the Daejeon Green Growth Forum, the first broad effort in Korea at the local level to bring together representatives from business, academia, and government to discuss environmental issues.

The Daejeon Green Growth Forum has been officially recognized by the Korean Ministry of the Environment and works closely with Korean research institutes, citizen groups, and industry. Pastreich writes and speaks about science policy, international relations, culture, and business.

Pastreich worked in Washington, D.C. (2005-2007) as advisor to the minister for public affairs and the minister for political affairs at the Embassy of the Republic of Korea and as an adjunct professor of George Washington University. Pastreich also served as editor-in-chief of the daily on-line newspaper "Dynamic Korea" of the Korean Overseas Information Service. In addition, he was director of the foreign policy think-tank KORUS House run by the Foreign Ministry. Pastreich was best known in that position for the lecture series he initiated on East Asian politics and business known as the "KORUS Forum."

Articles by Pastreich include a proposal to rebuild Sichuan¡¯s Wenchuan in China after the devastating earthquake of 2008 as an ecocity, an article promoting Chinese international cooperation in higher education, and a discussion of US-China geopolitical relations in which he argues that analogies to the Cold War are misleading and fail to recognize both the reality of and the necessity for close US-Chinese cooperation.

Pastreich taught for eight years at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has a B.A. degree in Chinese literature from Yale University (1987), a master's degree from the University of Tokyo in comparative culture (1992) and a Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Harvard University (1997).