Emanuel Pastreich

Emanuel Pastreich (Chinese: 贝一明; Korean: 임마누엘 페스트라이쉬, 李萬烈; Japanese: エマニュエル・パストリッチ; born Nashville, Tennessee, 1964) in an American academic mainly active in Korea. Pastreich is an associate professor at Kyung Hee University and director of The Asia Institute in Seoul, who writes on both East Asian classical literature and current issues in international relations and technology.

Pastreich attended Lowell High School in San Francisco, graduating in 1983. He began his studies at Yale University, where he graduated with a B.A. in Chinese in 1987, and during college studied abroad at National Taiwan University. Pastreich obtained an M.A. in comparative literature at the University of Tokyo in 1991, where he wrote the master’s dissertation, Edo kôki bunjin Tanomura Chikuden: Muyô no shiga" (The Late Edo Literatus Tanomura Chikuden; The Uselessness of Painting and Poetry), entirely in Japanese. He then returned to the United States and in 1998 received his Ph.D. in East Asian studies at Harvard University. He served as assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, George Washington University, and Solbridge International School of Business. Pastreich is an associate professor at the College of International Studies, Kyung Hee University.

Pastreich previously served as an international relations adviser to the governor of Chungnam Province, as an external relations adviser at the Daedeok Innopolis research cluster, and was appointed to serve on the committee for city administration (2010-2011) and for foreign investment (2009-2010) for the city of Daejeon.

Pastreich is director of The Asia Institute, a think tank that conducts research on the intersection of international relations, the environment and technology in East Asia. Previously, he served as advisor for international relations and foreign investment to the governor of Chungnam Province (2007-2008). Pastreich served previously as director of the KORUS House (2005-2007), a think tank for international relations housed in the Korean Embassy in Washington D.C., and as the editor-in-chief of Dynamic Korea, a journal of the Korean Foreign Ministry that introduces Korean culture and society.

His writings include the books The Novels of Park Jiwon: Translations of Overlooked Worlds, a collection of the novels of Korea's critical pre-modern author, The Visible Vernacular: Vernacular Chinese and the Emergence of a Literary Discourse on Popular Narrative in Edo Japan, a study of the reception of Chinese vernacular literature in Japan, Life is a Matter of Direction, not Speed: A Robinson Crusoe in Korea, a description of his experiences living in Korea and Scholars of the World Speak out About Korea's Future, a series of interviews with leading scholars such as Francis Fukuyama, Larry Wilkerson and Noam Chomsky about contemporary Korea.