About
Yen-Kai is from Taipei, Taiwan. He draws on comparative historical methods and archival data to study social movements, transnational politics, and development in East Asia, with a focus on the interplay between local and global-level dynamics. His current project examines how transnational social movements interact with international power relations. Specifically, he asks why, despite U.S. support for authoritarian regimes in Taiwan and South Korea, transnational democratization movements from the two countries developed divergent framings and repertoires in their engagement with the United States.
In his master's thesis, Yen-Kai examined how Cold War military threats shaped the divergent strategies and trajectories of state-led industrial development in Taiwan and South Korea. He argues that intra-state struggles between the military and economic planners, conditioned by their relations with U.S. advisory groups, account for this divergence.
