grace_h_kim – Page 2 – GW Institute for Korean Studies

2018 Summer Study Abroad Program

January 29, 2019July 29, 2021Summer Study Abroad ProgramLeave a Comment

GWIKS’s second two-week summer study abroad program in Seoul, South Korea began on June 24th and ended on July 7th, 2018. During the program, the students explored Korean identities, division, reunification, and economic differences between the two Koreas. The theme for this year’s GW Institute for Korean Studies (GWIKS) Summer Program was “Korea in the 21st Century: Past, Present, and Future in the Age of Globalization.

The students gathered at a restaurant in Jongno, Seoul, on June 24th, for the welcoming dinner and met with the two instructors, Professor Jisoo M. Kim and Professor Miok Pak. Among the summer program participants, there were seven undergraduates and five graduates from various majors – Business, Biology, Anthropology, and International Affairs. Within the two weeks, compact site-visits were planned to help the students understand the complexity of Korea’s history and how it reflects in the current modern society. The purpose of the program was to have the students see firsthand Korea’s history, economic development, and culture from the lens of the border of the 38th parallel.

The first few days, students explored the past of Korea, from the birth of the nation up to the history of contemporary times. The students visited Gyeongbok Palace, Gwanghwamun, National Museum of Korea, Hangeul Museum, Seoul Museum of History, Seodaemun prison, National Museum of Contemporary History, and Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). They were able to learn when North and South was one country to how it was divided.

The students also visited sites that reflected the present of Korea, such as Ajou Institute for Unification, Hana Foundation, Korean National Defense University, and the Constitutional Court of Korea. They learned how the division of the country has affected the current situation of South Korea. In Hana Foundation, they had the opportunity to exchange with North Korean defector students to discuss about the unification issue. At the Constitutional Court of Korea, they met with Judge Chang-ho Ahn, who was deeply involved in the impeachment of the previous president and learned about the political and judicial issues of South Korea.

To further learn about the issues in South Korea, they visited Future Consensus Institute to learn about South Korea’s position in the East Asian region, and witnessed the Wednesday protest for Comfort Women issues, visited the Women’s Human Rights Museum to learn about the historical and social issues of South Korea. On the final site visit day, the students visited Google Korea to learn about IT industry and the U.S. Embassy to learn about the U.S. approach to public diplomacy in South Korea.

At the end of the program, the students presented their portfolios based on the two-week program. Alexis Simms was awarded the prize for giving the best portfolio presentation. The Students’ portfolio presentations of summer 2018 can be found here.

The Soh Jai Pil Circle on Contemporary Korean Affairs: David Kang, “North Korea in 2019: More of the Same, or a Historic Opportunity?”

January 25, 2019August 6, 2021Event Summaries, Soh Jaipil Circle on Contemporary Korean AffairsLeave a Comment

On January 23rd, 2019, GWIKS invited Professor David Kang, director of the USC Korean Studies Institute and Maria Crutcher Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, to lecture on “North Korea in 2019: More of the same, or a historic opportunity?”. Moderated by Professor Celeste Arrington, David Kang began by claiming that deterrence has been and still is a successful tactic for North Korea. North Korea and the U.S. had repeatedly threatened and provoked each other, and boasted its military capabilities. Professor Kang argued that the situations have changed and that there is a substantial opportunity for a game changer, despite the conventional American view on North Korea –skepticism.

Dr. Kang claimed that North Korea’s recent actions are not spontaneous responses to sanctions and Trump’s threats, but rather a long-term strategy that North Korea had put in place. He presented Kim Jong-un’s New Year speech from 2017 that announced Kim’s commitments to provide for his people and prepare for ICBM and nuclear weapon. During Kim’s New Year speech a year later in 2018, Kim proclaimed that North Korea has achieved its long desired goal of “perfecting the national nuclear forces” through 59 missile and nuclear tests conducted in 2017. Dr. Kang explained that North Korea had been evidently planning such tactic for years. Previously North Korea’s strategy was “stop us before we g,” but in 2017, North Korea have presented that it has the capacity and potential for nuclear warfare. Along with North Korea’s long-prepared entry to the Olympics, North Korea’s tactics had opened the door for negotiation.

Dr. Kang then proceeded to discuss South Korea’s strategy by presenting a Gallup poll. The poll revealed that the majority of South Koreans and the Americans desired to solve North Korean nuclear problems through means of diplomacy, rather than military confrontation. South Korean President, Moon Jae-in’s policy agrees well with the demand of the public, as he has a progressive left-wing political orientation. Progressive South Korean presidents have historically attempted to rebuild and normalize relations with North Korea and Moon eventually engaged in multiple Inter-Korean summits with Kim Jong-un. Dr. Kang explained that South Korean policies toward North Korea include fundamentally stabilizing the DMZ in order to end the aggression between the two Koreas.

Dr. Kang claimed that the possibility of North Korea denuclearizing before any negotiations is slim to none, despite the motives of the U.S. However, North Korea had made small-scale progresses over the past year, such as ceasing nuclear tests for fourteen months, dismantling nuclear test sites, releasing arrested American citizens, and stopping many Anti-American propaganda. Dr. Kang claimed that it is crucial for the U.S. to take action and make progress with North Korea instead of remaining highly skeptical. He concluded the lecture by arguing that North Korea is not a problem to be solved. It is crucial to view it as a real country without deeply held and contradicting stereotypes about North Korea: North Koreans are brainwashed and that North Koreans desperately desire freedom. Americans often overlook the fact that North Koreans are people with powerful nationalist ideology.

Soh Jaipil Circle: “Providing Humanitarian Aid in North Korea and Other Authoritarian Settings.”

December 11, 2018July 29, 2021Archived Events, Soh Jaipil Circle on Contemporary Korean AffairsLeave a Comment

GWIKS hosted a Lecture Series on November 29^th, 2018 with Christy Gavitt, a global health consultant, on “Providing Humanitarian Aid in North Korea and Other Authoritarian Settings.” Christy Gavitt had worked for Peace Corps, Private Voluntary Organization Consortium for North Korea (PVOC), and had visited both North and South Korea multiple times throughout her career. Moderated by Professor Gregg Brazinsky, Christy Gavitt shared with the audience her knowledge about the obstacles in making sure the humanitarian aid reaches those in need.

As a solution to tackle the obstacles previously mentioned, Gavitt suggested that aid organizations physically get in contact with the subjects of aid and get in-depth experience of the country. During 1998 and 1999, Gavitt had visited North Korea on a humanitarian aid project organized by five U.S. private non-profit relief and development organizations. The objective of the project was to support agricultural rehabilitation & reconstruction via food-for-work repairs of flood-damaged river and reservoir embankments in five provinces of North Korea.

Unemployed rural/peri-urban adult industrial/factory workers in four provinces received tasks to repair embankments in exchange of U.S. maize. Gavitt and her team visited the sites, monitored the workers, and evaluated the process and quality of the project. During her observation, she had discovered that there are far more workers than registered, small monitoring staff, and rigid restrictions on site visiting.

Gavitt then proceeded to discuss the famine crisis in North Korea. She explained that some of the causes of the longstanding famine are: lack of fuel to run equipment, lift irrigation systems, and factories, as well as decreased subsidies from China and Russia, on top of natural calamities. The harsh situation forced people of Pyongyang to leave for rural areas to grow their own food and large percentage the population to survive on mixture of amaranth plant, maize powder, grasses and herbs. Gavitt points out the consequential malnutrition and high mortality rates. The greatest challenge is that the North Korean government wants as little foreign involvement as possible and places stringent control on outsiders. This policy had caused some NGOs to pull out from North Korea because they felt that there were too much control over their movements and freedom. The NGOs that did remain focused on technically-oriented projects, limited media, and had built favorable relationship with the central and local authorities. Gavitt concluded the lecture by highlighting the significance of physical presence in authoritarian regions and building positive relationships.

December Blog Topic: Refugees in South Korea

December 6, 2018April 1, 2020UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Topic: Refugees in South Korea

Background: South Korea joined the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees in December of 1992 and became the first country in East Asia to have their own Refugee Act taking effect in 2013. Thousands of refugees from conflict zones such as Syria and Yemen seek asylum in South Korea today. Since the outbreak of war in Yemen in 2015 until 2017, only forty-nine Yemenis applied for asylum in South Korea. However, within 2018 alone, 561 escapees landed on Jeju Island as of June 20^th, 549 of which applied for asylum. The majority of the refugees are young male from late teens to late 20s. This influx of the refugees ignited an uproar among South Koreans, which resulted in series of protests against entry of refugees where hundreds of South Koreans marched the streets of Seoul and Jeju Island in summer of 2018. According a poll survey conducted in July 2018, 53.4% of South Koreans opposed admitting the entry of Yemeni refugees. Petition demanding the Moon Jae-in administration to stop accepting refugees garnered over 700,000 signatures, the highest number since the Blue House opened its online petition system in 2017. Some of the proclaimed reasons behind the opposition were: cultural conflicts, likely increase in crime rates-especially sex crimes, potential terrorist attacks, and more competition in the already saturated job market. The Blue House responded to the petitions by including Yemen in the list of countries prohibited from entering Jeju Island visa-free, forbidding more Yemeni refugees from entering South Korea to claim refugee status. The Moon administration also prohibited refugees from leaving Jeju Island to enter mainland Korea. On August 1^st, Justice Minister Park Sang-ki and the Blue House’s new media secretary, Chung Hye-seung affirmed that withdrawing from the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the international treaty that sets forth basic international obligation toward refugees, nor would it abolish Jeju’s visa-free policy would be realistically problematic. However, in order to comply with the worries of South Koreans, Blue House promised to test refugees for drugs, screening them for a criminal record, and strengthening patrol in Jeju.

Guiding Questions:

– Some European countries, such as France, Germany, and United Kingdom had been accepting refugees long before South Korea. Considering the outcomes of preceding cases in Europe, can we predict the outcome of refugee entry in South Korea?

– What are some of the things to consider when providing asylum for refugees?

– South Korean reaction to Syrian and Yemeni refugees are quite different from that to North Korean defectors. What could be the reason for that?

– According to a recent survey, the groups that expressed strongest objections to refugee admission were: women (61%), middle-class (62%), and people in their 20s (70%) and 30s (66%). This is unusual because women and younger generation tend to lean left, the side more open to immigrants and refugees. Why do you think that these groups that usually comprise high percentage of more liberal values would also be the ones opposing strongest?

The questions above are only suggestions; please feel free to take your own creative approach to the topic!

Submission Instructions:

– Posts should be approximately 300-1,000 words.

– Submissions will be accepted until Saturday, January 5th.