Clements Center for National Security

Recent stops on the Clements Center's Korea May Term: the Former Japanese Navy Underground Headquarters in Tomigusuku, where Rear Adm. Minoru Ota’s Japanese Navy forces held out in a tunnel complex during the Battle of Okinawa; Miyajima (Itsukushima) Island and Itsukushima Shrine off the coast of Hiroshima; Seodaemun Prison History Hall in Seoul, which preserves the colonial-era prison used by Japanese authorities to detain Korean independence activists; Camp Casey, the U.S. Army installation near the DMZ that has anchored the American forward presence in Korea since 1952; and the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom, where United Nations Command and Republic of Korea forces stand face-to-face with North Korean forces across the armistice line.

On May 11, Clements Center Undergraduate Fellow Henderson Chandler took the Oath of Office and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant of Infantry in the United States Army.

Commissioning is the culmination of years of training through the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. It is the moment a cadet becomes an officer, sworn in to lead soldiers in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Henderson graduated this spring from the Canfield Business Honors Program with a degree in International Relations and Chinese. As a four-year Clements Fellow, he studied in our London May Term and Summer Beyond Borders: Korea programs, and his academic interests ranged from Arctic security to irregular warfare to the Korean Peninsula. He was also a Brumley NextGen Undergraduate Scholar and a junior editor for the Irregular Warfare Initiative.

Congratulations, Lieutenant Chandler. We are proud of all you accomplished at UT Austin, and we look forward to following your career.

Clements Center Korea May Term students visited the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul on May 7, where they heard from two of the institute's leading scholars and took part in a broader Q&A with Asan fellows.

Dr. Ji-Hyang Jang lectured on "The Korea Model as a Reform Aspiration for the Middle East," and Dr. Peter K. Lee presented "Comparing U.S. Alliances in a Multipolar Indo-Pacific."

The Q&A that followed covered the ROK-U.S. alliance [the longstanding security alliance between the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and the United States], developments in the Middle East, the defense and shipbuilding industries, and Indo-Pacific security cooperation. Exactly the kind of cross-regional conversation that prepares the next generation of national security leaders.