Asia Review Team has decided to hold a joint intensive seminar on the Asian Region with regional centers in SNU Asia Center after publishing <Diversity+Asia> to tackle the current issues of Asia. We are holding an intensive Seminar on the Asian Region to tackle the need to systematically understand some of the issues whose background and context are complexly intertwined at international, national, and sub-national level. In 2019, intensive seminars will be held in collaboration with Central Asia Center, West Asia Center, and South Asia Center. The First Intensive Seminar on the Asian Region tackles issues in West Asia in collaboration with West Asia Center.

Professor Hyondo Park gives a lecture on “Why did Pope go to Arabia” through the first Intensive seminar. He seeks to look back the purpose and the meanings behind Pope Francis’s official visit to Abu Dhabi, one of the emirates of the United Arab Emirates, in February this year. He seeks to looks at the reasons why reconciliation between the Christians and Muslims, who are over half of the world’s populations, is essential through the lens of ‘humanity’s brotherhood.’ He also attempts to see changes of Muslim world by finding the meaning of Pope’s visit to the Arabian Peninsula from the historical context where Christians and Muslims encounter and conflict with each other.  Professor Nam-sik In lectures on the future directions of the Middle East where the ISIS is about to collapse (‘After ISIS’). Although the official organization of the ISIS, which instigated terrorist attacks by declaring a caliphate, terminated without passing the 5^th anniversary of the creation, the Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTF) who were involved in Islamic sovereignty and the ISIS are still lurking and the media platform and propaganda the ISIS used are still available. This seminar seeks to find out with what kind of counter-argument should West Asia and the international society resist the terrorist groups by looking at the prospects of terrorist groups after ISIS.