John Delury Keynote Speaker

Senior Fellow of the Asia Society
Former professor at Yonsei University Graduate School of International Studies; over a decade based in South Korea
Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Board Member of Pacific Century Institute

John Delury's Biography

John Delury is a prominent historian of modern China and expert on US-China relations and the Korean Peninsula (having visited North Korea and lived for over a decade in South Korea). He spent two years in Italy as the inaugural Tsao Family Foundation Fellow in China Studies at the American Academy in Rome and visiting professor at Luiss University and John Cabot University. Prior to Rome he was Professor of Chinese Studies at Yonsei University.

He is the author of Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA’s Covert War in China (Cornell, 2022) and Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century (Random House, 2013), co-authored with Orville Schell. His next book is on the Chinese traditional concept of empire and its implications for the future of the world order.

Dr. Delury is a senior fellow of the Asia Society, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and National Committee on North Korea, and public intellectual fellow of the National Committee on US-China Relations. He received his BA, MA, and PhD in history from Yale University, studying under Jonathan Spence.