Alumni Reminiscences

AlumniReminiscences:

Reflections on 60 years of the Fulbright program in Korea

American Alumni

Alum

ni Rem

iniscences: Refl ections on 60 years of the Fulbright program

in Korea

Refl ections on 60 years of the Fulbright program

in Korea

Contents FOREWORD ················································· 4Jai Ok Shim Sung-Wook Jung

Short Grant Program Participants ··············· 149Gary J. Kaasa· 151 Kyong-Mal Kim· 154

Senior Lecturer/Researchers ························ 9Barbara Mintz· 11Roy U. T. Kim· 13Edward John Shultz· 18Donald N. Clark· 21Barbara Grinell· 25Steven R. Brown· 27 Komelia Hongja Okim· 29James F. Larson· 34Donald R. Ranish· 36 Henry Sanoff· 38Charles K. Armstrong· 40Donald L. Baker· 42Jonathan C. Kramer· 45Michael Devine· 47

Alvin Magid· 49Young-Key Kim-Renaud· 51James Perkins· 53Richard D. Weis· 56Robert C. Morgan· 59Maureen Fleming· 61Henry B. Sirgo· 64George Katsiafi cas· 66Danny Wedding· 67 Helena Meyer-Knapp· 68Seung-chan Choi· 72 Sugwon Kang· 74 Robert D. Grotjohn· 76Soojin Kim Ritterling· 78

English Teaching Assistants (ETA) ·············· 107Fred Yeon· 109Charles B. Chang· 110JohnDre Jennings· 111Aimee Jachym· 113Alexis Stratton· 116Sara Shin· 118Michelle Lee Jones· 120 Laura Tschop· 122Nicole Guarino· 123Laura Johnson· 124

Kenny Loui· 125Jane Lee· 129Brian Wylie· 132David Libardoni· 134Elizabeth So· 136Carolyn Straub· 138Sarabeth Craig· 140Sarah Slagle· 143Sarah Walker· 145Rachael Maureen Williams· 147

Junior Researchers (U.S. Student) ················ 81David McCann· 83Edward J. Baker· 85Laurel Kendall· 89Carter Eckert· 91Il Young “William” Byun· 93

Elizabeth Underwood· 95Kate Hers· 97Deberniere Torrey· 99Franklin Rausch· 102Katherine Lee· 103

Since the beginnings of the Fulbright program in Korea, over 3,800 extraordinary grant recipients have journeyed to the other side of the world under the flag of Fulbright.

Whether they began their Fulbright grant early in their careers or after establishing themselves as well-respected academics and professionals, each one of them has left an indelible mark on their respective fields. In each case, the time they spent in Korea has been invaluable to their personal and professional development.

Korea’s Fulbrighters span every field, work in every sector of public service and private enterprise, and can be found here in Korea, in the U.S., and around the world. Among those who have experienced the Fulbright program are government officials, ambassadors, university presidents, professors, authors, artists, justices, scientists, and educators.

The list goes on, and just as Fulbright has played a key role in the educational and professional development of many grant recipients, American Fulbrighters in turn have had a profound impact on the development of Korea, and particularly upon the development of Korean education in the aftermath of the Korean War.

The occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the Fulbright program in Korea presents us with the perfect opportunity to encourage this diverse group of alumni to reflect upon their time in Korea, and how it has changed their lives.

Their stories, collected and presented together here for the first time, are a collage of individual moments, experiences, impressions and memories that have helped to create the sixty-year history of this program.

F O R E W O R D

American Alumni Reminiscences

I am extremely proud of the achievements of our American alumni, and pleased that their memories of Korea and their reflections on Fulbright may now be found in one publication. This book, together with our collection of refl ections of Korean alumni, shows the more personal side of the Fulbright experience and gives a new perspective on the people behind Fulbright Korea’s achievements. It is this side of the Fulbright Program―each grantee’s individual journey towards international understanding―that rests at the

heart of the program and that we seek to build upon each year. For as far as we have come, we know that there is still much more that we can accomplish.

It is my hope that through these refl ections readers will be inspired, as I have been, by the achievements of our past alumni, and feel a sense of promise for the future of the Fulbright program. Given the outstanding legacy that our alumni have created, one can only imagine what the future of Fulbright Korea may hold.

Jai Ok ShimExecutive Director

Korean-American Educational Commission

As an editor of the Korean Fulbright Alumni Reminiscences to be published in Korean as a companion to this volume, I was unexpectedly asked to write a foreword. I read through the following stories of the U. S. Fulbright alumni and felt them shine like stars in the sky. That is, any introductory add-on remarks to shed more light on them may hinder, rather than enhance, readers’ natural understandings.

Some stories look like the morning star, and others like the evening star, depending on the contexts of the experiences they describe and the presentation styles. Some are short, and others rather long; some are faithful reports of what went on during stays in Korea, and others poetic drawings of the unexpected; some highlight professional achievements, and others personal experiences, all of which were made possible thanks to the Fulbright program. However, we might be better off after all without reducing the varieties to one and the same object of understanding. Probably, we had better leave them as various as they are in the eyes of viewers, in order not to lose anything in conveying what has been achieved by a bright idea. As a whole, the stories you will read in the following pages convinced me that the idea would continue to branch into many more wonderful stories as it has done for the past 60 years.

Like stars in the sky, the reminiscences of the U. S. alumni form at once both beautiful and meaningful constellations in the minds of readers. I do not know what each one of you will make out of them, though I am anticipating something wonderful. The following stories are thus incomplete until you grasp them, and I hope every one of you will enjoy reading them.

Dr. Sung-Wook Jung1996 Alumnus of the Fulbright Program in Korea

Planning Director of the Korea Fulbright Alumni Association

Dr. Sung-Wook Jung

F O R E W O R D

American Alumni Reminiscences

AlumniReminiscences:

Reflections on 60 years of

the Fulbright program in Korea

American Alumni

Senior Lecturer/Researchers

Junior Researchers (U.S. Student)

English Teaching Assistants (ETA)

Short Grant Program Participants

[ Senior Lecturer/Researchers ]

Alumni Reminiscences:Reflections on 60 years of


American Alumni

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When my husband Grafton and I arrived in Pusan in 1962, we really didn’t know what to expect other than students to teach at Pusan National University. I was assigned to the Business Department, Grafton to the English Department. As one of very few women on the faculty, I later learned that the overwhelmingly male faculty didn’t quite know what to do―to include me in the university and departmental parties, for instance? Besides being female, I was a bit young (in my twenties) to be a university professor! I had only young men as students, another interesting departure from my classes at Ohio State. The students were eager and helpful. They always wanted to talk (practice their English) before and after class, carrying my books as we went, and once, as I was writing on the chalkboard with my back to the class, I was a bit startled to realize that one of my helpful students was vigorously brushing the back of my skirt, which had gotten covered with chalk dust! I also learned that practicing the minimal pair see/she (to work on pronouncing the word city) was not quite the thing to do in class. Besides two years in Pusan (we renewed for a second Fulbright year), I was the recipient of a second Fulbright later in the 60s after we had moved to Seoul and I had made a detour to work as Language Specialist for the 8th US Army at

Barbara MintzGrant Profile Host Field1962: Senior Lecturer Pusan National University TESOL1963: Senior Lecturer Pusan National University TESOL1967: Senior Lecturer Sungkyunkwan University TESOL

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| Alumni Reminiscences

Yongsan. Beside teaching various classes at Yonsei University and Sungkyunkwan University, I also functioned as Fulbright liaison to the newly arrived Peace Corps in 1966. I observed with interest the moderate chaos as staff and PCVs set up the office and later participated in training workshops for the PCV English language teachers. I vividly remember one winter workshop for K-1 that was held in a small Catholic college near Chuncheon―yep, up there in the wintry weather. The sisters at the time were having a financial crunch―a bit nippy it was in the dorm and in the classroom! What can I say about Korea itself―its people, its culture, its wonderful hangeul writing system? It says something that we stayed for more than 30 years as expat residents with good friends stemming from the Fulbright years, some of whom I continue to see and correspond with. The Korea experience also made it possible for me to expand my professional work in Asia, in Europe, and now back in the United States, where I continue teaching and am engaged in seeing America at last! Those of us fortunate enough to be Fulbright grantees in Korea during the years it was going through tremendous change learned far more than we could ever hope to teach thanks to our Korean students, colleagues, and friends, and thanks to the Fulbright program!

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Reflections on My FulbrightTopic: Observing the armistice agreement in progress

Preparation

I carefully prepared for this opportunity. Drexel University in Philadelphia hired me in 1969. I got promoted to associate professor with tenure. I was very active in my academic research and publications. I presented a lengthy paper on “The Origins of the 38th Parallel in Korea” at the Association of Asian Studies in Chicago in 1971. I met the late Ham Byung-choon (함병춘). He liked my paper and encouraged me to visit Korea as a Fulbright Scholar. In the fall semester of 1971, I was appointed as a “scholar-diplomat” at the Korea Desk of the US State Department. With a clearance, I was able to review and evaluate the confidential files on the 1951-53 armistice negotiations. The files were well kept and in detail, but there was no major new information. One possible exception was US Navy Admiral Turner Joy’s personal observation of his North Korean counterpart Gen. Nam Il (남일), noting his clear logic and arguments. After evaluating all the files, I was all the more eager to actually observe the management of the armistice at Panmunjeom (판문점). I had an unusual encounter at the US Department of State. The director of the Policy Planning Council wanted to have coffee with me. I did not know much about him, but he knew much about me. He congratulated me on getting a Senior

Roy U. T. KimGrant Profile Host Field

1971: Senior Lecturer East-Asian Research Center at Korea University

International Relations

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Fulbright Research Fellowship. He said, “You will encounter a totally unexpected event in Korea between the two Koreas.” I replied that nothing was likely to happen in my lifetime. He suggested a bet, and I agreed. I lost my bet when the two Koreas made the historic North-South Announcement on July 4, 1972.

Major Activities

Once I was comfortably settled at the Fulbright House behind Seoul City Hall, I was academically affiliated with the East-Asian Research Center (아연) at Korea University, with a big office next to that of its Director, Kim Joon-yup (김준엽). I seldom used the office, while I did enjoy getting to know Prof. Kim and his colleagues. My primary activities were at the 8th US Army Base at Yongsan, the US Embassy, and Panmunjeom. In fact, the US Embassy, and not Korea University, issued me my ID. I spent most of my time at the negotiating table at Panmunjeom. There were two levels of interactions, first at the Colonel level and second at the Two-Star level. I used to be picked up at my Fulbright apartment by a US limousine whenever there were meetings. I flew out to Munsam-ri (문산리) on a helicopter and then drove to Panmunjeom across the famous bridge. My basic function was simply to observe the interactions in the Panmunjeom conference room at the two levels. I would simply sit right next to the US military officers and take notes, including translations. I was not identified at all.

Personal Observations

Interactions, most of the time, were peaceful and businesslike, without too much propaganda. Second, the negotiations at the lower levels were much more productive, without the time-consuming translations. North Korean military representatives were able to conduct negotiations in English. Finally, I wondered why the UNC side was completely dominated by the USA; the ROK government was completely ignored and absent. This was probably because Seoul, under President Rhee Syng-man (이승만), was opposed to signing the 1953 Armistice Agreement. I felt that this gave an unnecessary advantage to the North Korean side, which completely dominated the negotiations at Panmunjeom.

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Important People I Met

I met and became close with two North Korean specialists at Korea University, Kim Chang-soon (김창순) and Kim Nam-sik (김남식). Other Koreans I met and interacted with frequently in Seoul and around Panmunjeom were Kang In-duck (강인덕), Chung Sae-young (정세용), and Lee Bum-suck (이범석). These three ROKG officials were actively engaged behind the scenes with North Koreans starting in the early spring of 1972. There were several Americans I interacted with frequently, including US General John Wickham (Commander of the US Forces in Korea), Philip Habib (US Ambassador), and Ed Wagner (Fulbright Director). While I took advantage of the Yongsan Military Base (the library, the tennis courts, and the PX for shopping), I disliked the base personally. The Japanese and Chinese had used the same base previously. I told Gen. Wickham about this. He did not know its historic background.

Surprise North-South Announcement, July 4, 1972

At 10 a.m. on July 4, Pyongyang and Seoul announced three national principles of national unification (samdae wonchik, 삼대원칙). First, both sides would reconcile differences peacefully; second, they would respect Korean nationalism; and finally, they would not rely on outsiders. Both Koreas conducted secret negotiations utilizing their intelligence networks. Kim Il-sung and Park Chung-hee utilized the prevailing mood of reconciliation between Beijing and Washington at that time. I was at Panmunjeom when the announcement was made. On that beautiful Saturday afternoon, there was a major celebration of the occasion. Both Koreas prepared all kinds of traditional foods, and all of the media were fully represented. Several hundred came from both sides. People were dancing around. It was an unreal celebration, as though the DMZ would be removed immediately and the two Koreas would be reunited. Both sides came prepared to celebrate the occasion with gifts to present to the other side. At the end of the celebration, the North presented the Southern representatives with ginseng wine (insamju, 인삼주), cigarettes, and other gifts. I got on a bus to go back to Seoul. After we passed the bridge, South Korean intelligence agents took away anything the Northerners had presented. I wanted to keep my gifts, and I ended up arguing with the KCIA agents. They said it was

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against South Korean law for anybody to possess any North Korean products. Finally, I had to show my ID issued by the US Embassy. I realized by the time I returned to my Fulbright apartment that the July 4 excitement had not lasted even 24 hours. Kim Jong-pil (김종필) announced on the evening news that the US was not an “outside force,” negating one of the three basic agreements. In the evening, I had an unusual dinner with Amb. Habib. He was fully engaged in all the activities at Panmunjeom and between Pyongyang and Seoul through Washington. He told me that Henry Kissinger felt that the North-South reconciliation process was getting ahead of Sino-American reconciliation. Then I realized that the North-South efforts were part of Kissinger’s scheme of things beyond the domain of both Koreas. Somebody should investigate the whole story on the July 4 episode―who initiated it and how, and why it failed. Terribly disappointed I was, to say the least. I returned to Korea University to say goodbye to Prof. Kim Joon-yup. He offered me a teaching position, but I declined the offer. But my own task of observing the Armistice Agreement at Panmunjeom proved to be much more involved than I had expected in my academic life. Even today, the Armistice Agreement remains about the same as it was initially in 1953. Of course, it has become much more complicated, as North Korea now possesses nuclear weapons. I decided to return to the US to continue my academic interests at Drexel University.

Fast Forward

I remain interested in investigating negotiations. Another topic I was curious about was the US-Soviet commission over Korea during 1945-48. American and Soviet military representatives used to meet at Deoksugung Palace (덕수궁) in Seoul. In hindsight, the failed joint commission appears to have facilitated the establishment of separate regimes in Seoul and Pyongyang, thus making the Korean partition permanent. I presented my basic research at the Paris International Oriental Convention in 1973. While in Paris, I met the academician Georgii Kim and North Korea’s Hŏ Jong (허종). Kim told me that there were additional documents in Moscow. He then invited me to the USSR. I visited Moscow for the first time in 1979 at the invitation of academician Yevgeny Primakov, the head of the Oriental Institute. After that, my academic interest turned toward US-Soviet negotiations,

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and particularly strategic nuclear arms control, known simply as SALT. Since then, I have visited the USSR about a dozen times as part of US official delegations. My Russian study proved very useful. Primakov invited me to attend the Khabarovsk Conference in the summer of 1979. He introduced me to Dr. Kim Dal-hyŏn (김달현) from the DPKR. Kim invited me to North Korea for three weeks in the summer of 1979. This was my first return visit to Pyongyang―my hometown. It was indeed an unforgettable trip. I have visited North Korea about a dozen times since then. I started all of these academic trips with my initial Fulbright experience in Korea in 1972. For this, I am ever grateful for the Fulbright opportunity.

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Fulbright

Few people can claim to be the beneficiary of three different Fulbright awards. I consider myself and my family extremely lucky, having received Fulbrights in 1973-74, 1982-83, and 2005-06. Over some thirty-plus years, I have watched Korea change dramatically, and with it the Fulbright program. With each Fulbright grant, there was a new location for the Fulbright office: first at Seosomun, then at Garden Tower, and finally at its present location in Yeomni-dong, Mapo. Each time there was a different director, from the legendary Ed Wright to the ever-enthusiastic Mark Peterson, and now to our first Korean director, Shim Jai-ok. Each director maintained a commitment to the Fulbright mission and to enhancing ties between Korea and the United States. As a PhD candidate, I moved with my wife into Fulbright House in the fall of 1973, with a grant to carry out dissertation research on Goryeo history at Sogang University. Little did I realize that during that one year, I would not only renew old acquaintances with former fellow Peace Corps volunteers and East-West Center grantees, but meet and work with others as well, all of whom have remained close friends to this day. In part because of Fulbright support, I have had the privilege

Edward John Shultz Grant Profile Host Field1973: Junior Researcher Sogang University Korean History1982: Senior Lecturer and Researcher Hanyang University Korean History2005: Senior Lecturer and Researcher Sogang University Korean History

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of growing up with a whole generation of scholars of Korea, both Korean and American. To this day, we continue to meet, study, and learn together. Living in Korea in the early 1970s posed all sorts of challenges, from watching soldiers march out to check student unrest, to racing home before the midnight curfew, to traversing town and country on crowded buses. Despite the travails, even a casual observer could not but be impressed by the Korean spirit and the Korean commitment to build their country. The “Miracle on the Han” that we enjoy today was predictable and is a testament to the tenacity, the diligence, and the sheer will of the people of Korea. When my family returned to Korea in 1982 on our second Fulbright, we had two frisky boys, ages five and seven, to accompany us. Now I was an associate professor teaching at Hanyang University and completing research on Goryeo’s 12th century. Returning as a mid-level professor carried with it new experiences and responsibilities. The pleasure of teaching Korean history to Korean youth in the Korean language is an experience I value to this day. And the fact that a Korean university would allow and trust a foreigner to present their history to their youth is a statement that exemplifies the confidence that Koreans had and have in confronting the world. Returning to Korea after nearly a decade’s absence also afforded me an excellent chance to catch up on Korea’s staggering progress over the previous ten years. I was able to renew ties with colleagues and gain a firmer foundation in Korean history that has benefited my research. But it was not I alone who was positively impacted by the Fulbright experience. I would be remiss not to mention how my wife and our sons thrived in Korea, creating family memories we still treasure. Although in the ensuing years I made a number of trips back to Korea, it was not until 2005 that I was honored with my third Fulbright award. This time I

▲ Sorak Mountains, family shot (1982)

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taught at Sogang University, where I had been a student in the 1970s both as an East-West Center grantee and as a pre-doctoral scholar on my first Fulbright. As at Hanyang University, I was again permitted to teach Korean history in Korean to Korean students. Many of my colleagues were the very same people I had studied with thirty years earlier, and some are ready to retire. Through these three Fulbright grants, I witnessed and experienced dramatic changes in Korea. The study of Korea’s history has advanced immeasurably just as its economy surged from “underdeveloped” status to a global power. Korea moved from martial law to one of the most democratic societies in Asia, from steam locomotives to the KTX, from crowded buses to air-conditioned subways, and from exporting wigs and sweaters to selling cars and dramas around the world. When Korean students take field trips today, it is not only to Gyeongju but also to China or Japan. Yet despite these staggering changes, Korean good will and the Korean commitment to fill a day with 28 hours of activity have not diminished. It is this indomitable Korean character that explains Korea’s successes of the past and the future. It has been a privilege to be part of the Fulbright family and to live and grow with dynamic Korea. ▲ Hanyang University field trip (1973)

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Remembering Life in Fulbright House

Korea Fulbrighters of a certain age will remember Dr. Edward Wright, Korean-American Educational Commission (KAEC) Executive Director and the program’s leader in the 1970s. In those days, the Fulbright program leased most of a ten-story apartment building in Sunhwa-dong, near Seosomun in downtown Seoul. The first three floors were used by the building’s owner, but the rest were used by Fulbright. Grantees got their mail, read newspapers, traded paperback books, and received visitors in the KAEC grantees’ library/lounge on the fourth floor, which also housed the KAEC offices. My generation of American scholars of Korean Studies, many of us having discovered Korea during Peace Corps service in the previous decade, drafted our doctoral dissertations in the fifth floor work room. The sixth through ninth floors were for grantees’ apartments. The top floor was a penthouse reserved for Ed Wright himself, used partly as a sometime dwelling―for he had another apartment elsewhere―and partly as a place to store his extraordinary collection of Korean furniture. It was a privilege to be invited to this place at the pinnacle of the building. Wright hosted early versions of the Fulbright Forum here, and from time to time we would listen to

Donald N. Clark Grant Profile Host Field1975: Junior Researcher Korea University Korean History1983: Senior Lecturer and Researcher Yonsei University Korean History1989: Senior Lecturer and Researcher Yonsei University Korean History

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distinguished scholars, and occasionally peers, delivering research reports, events that always ended with the consumption of moderate amounts of alcohol and the passing around of exquisite hors d’oeuvres made by Wright’s housekeeper―morsels of rare quality for Seoul in the seventies. Indeed, scholars from all over the city would converge on the tenth floor of Fulbright House on these occasions for culinary as well as intellectual nourishment. Residents of Fulbright House were well aware of our good fortune in having furnished habitations waiting for us when we arrived in the city after enduring the rigors of travel from America and passage through the inspections and interrogations of Yushin-era Kimpo Airport. The building was located a short walk from City Hall Plaza, easily accessible to Seoul’s first subway line, a few paces from a steady taxi supply, and near a stop on the #8 bus line that seemed to go to most places of any consequence in the city. Up the alley beyond Fulbright House was the old Seoul Union, the city’s erstwhile expat swimming and tennis club. (A unique feature of the Seoul Union was a pair of bowling lanes transplanted from Unsan, in North Korea, where they had been in the gold miners’ staff club of the Oriental Consolidated Mining Company before the OCMC was forced out of business by the Japanese in 1939.) A stone’s throw away in the other direction was a military police building, where one imagined, and occasionally even heard, dark happenings under the Park dictatorship. And next to Fulbright House, at about the level of the eighth floor, was the steeple of a Protestant church whose bells went off at 4 a.m. every day and multiple times on Sundays. In other words, Fulbright House seemed to be in the middle of everything, and to live there was to experience the fast-changing urban landscape on many levels at once. Fulbright House had many conveniences, including an elevator that worked most of the time. The scale of the building was such, and we were young enough, that if the elevator was out of order we could still get up to wherever we were going. However, it did have one notable design flaw. The building’s oil tank was installed on top of the concrete cistern in the sub-basement that was part of the water intake. In time, spilled oil leached into the cistern, enough to give the running water in Fulbright House, whether hot or cold, an oily sheen. Indeed, you could run a dandy bathtub full of hot water, but it would have a diesel smell and a yellowish cast―just barely acceptable for bathing. American civilians in early 1970s Korea still sorted themselves out by access

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to US Embassy and military facilities. Most desirable were PX privileges, access to Army shopping on the base at Yongsan, which might also be accompanied by commissary privileges―access to the very good grocery store on South Post―and Army Post Office (APO) privileges for cheap, fast, and reliable mail back to the US. Access to these “privileges” was at the discretion of the Commanding General of US Forces Korea, and by the 1970s most non-governmental American civilians such as missionaries and businesspeople had long since lost their “privileges” and been left to sink or swim living “on the economy.” “The economy” was the Korean market, including the black market, which still offered much that had not long before been on the shelves of the aforementioned PX and/or commissary. American expats used to argue the right or wrong of buying former PX supplies on the black market, since their availability invariably involved some form of crime, or at least rule-bending, ultimately at the expense of the US taxpayer. To the everlasting gratitude of his grantees, Director Ed Wright arranged through the Embassy for us to avoid the petty crime of the black market by getting us privileges in the PX and commissary at Yongsan, plus the Embassy’s own commissary on Compound Two in Anguk-dong. To get us to the Embassy commissary, Wright even provided transportation in a large orange-colored Dodge van, one of the official KAEC vehicles. Wright kept this van to transport fragile items such as his Korean furniture collection, which meant padding the interior with the best available material, which turned out to be orange shag carpeting on the floor and walls. In the orange shag-rug comfort of this van on Saturday mornings at 10 a.m., the KAEC driver would take us shopping on Compound Two to stock up on coffee, frozen chicken, canned items, and ridiculously cheap tax-free liquor. Part of the commissary ritual was passing through an inspection upon checkout, at which an ancient embassy employee would painstakingly inspect our cash register tape against the actual items we were taking, making sure we didn’t exceed our ration of coffee or liquor―never actually blocking a sale, but leaving us feeling like we were operating right on the thin edge of the law. Once safely back in the van with our booty, back we would go to Sunhwa-dong, sitting cross-legged on the orange shag carpet. At the end of the 1970s, we Fulbrighters lost our army privileges, though Embassy commissary privileges continued for a while longer. From the vantage point of the 2010s, it is hard to see how these luxurious arrangements could have

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seemed like anything more than ugly American-ness to the KAEC staff and others around us at the time. But if we graduate students felt pangs of conscience about having access to tax-free Embassy scotch, I don’t recall it. Today, the Korean market certainly offers every kind of consumer comfort, and nobody much feels the lack of access to taxpayer-subsidized goodies, whether legal or illegal. Korea even makes excellent vans: if you want an orange one, you can even get it customized with a matching shag rug lining. The old Fulbright House looks small today, but in those days it seemed tall, and it had great views of downtown Seoul. Across the Seosomun-dong main drag was the JoongAng Ilbo, and beyond it Namsan, with the newly-built Namsan Tower. From the north windows you could see the Blue House, with its barrage balloons and anti-aircraft emplacements atop buildings to enforce the no-fly zone over the center of the city. Deoksugung Palace was visible beyond Paichai Boys’ High School (cf. the present Russian Embassy site), and one never tired of the majestic Bukhan Range sheltering the city on its northern side. After Fulbright House, KAEC moved to the Garden Tower near the front gate of Changdeokgung Palace, then again to a building next to the Cheondogyo headquarters temple (Su’un Hoegwan), and much later to the present site near Gongdeok Station. The cement tower formerly known as Fulbright House still stands, but it looks forlorn and far outclassed in size and style by everything around it―a metaphor for its heyday, still deserving of a grateful backward glance.

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Christmas in Korea

Early this morning, the sound of the day’s first church bells rang with a singular clarity―unlike the muffled tones that swim through the summer heat. It is in this cold crystal winter air that light and sound and scent solidify back into themselves―metal becomes rigid, fruit bright, the sky a broad, clear open cavern blowing sharply from its depth and, like a polished mirror, picturing beneath it one flickering reflection: life on Earth. Slowly, the cool light of dawn filters through the delicate green-black of the great willow tree that stands, the screen of a withered bouquet, at the end of my street. I pass this tree each day as I walk the hilly roads toward my daily business. In these brief minutes I imagine this land slowly sloping away from some Siberian origin―drawing with it the thick steam that loosens with the sun and whose vapor tongues twist in a silent mist, subduing the dwarfed movements of the city. Softly, a sturdy country woman eases by me with a large cloth-wrapped parcel on her head. Behind her bends an old man, in a Russian fur hat and Korean coat, cane in hand―his thin, browned body led on, perhaps, by memories of small lamp-warmed rooms where, at one time, he could take pleasure and forget. By midday, narrow alleys have burst from their sleepy lethargy into sweet oily bakeries and spicy soup houses. The once half-empty drinking houses are now perfumed dens of smoke and sweat and coarse conversation. And there is new

Barbara GrinellGrant Profile Host Field1978: Senior Lecturer Kookmin University Painting

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excitement at the market, brought by the high tide of kimchi cabbage and radish, which have engulfed the stalls in one great sea of green. Here women navigate the footpaths―firm, pink-cheeked agile bodies generating gaiety and pride―dancing to a deep sense of order and joy―a feminine Christmas celebrating its advent. Above the market, the first snow of the year has begun to fall from a wide, low, ice-laden cloud, which has congealed in readiness for a long winter. I am gently told that this is “flower petal” snow, which lifts the ground in a wild flurry of blurring white. The snow is brief and hasn’t kept me from my errands. In its wake, I climb my usual bus, push to the front where there is sometimes more room, and stand, prepared for the long, shaky ride. I bend to look out the window but can see only the mechanical breath that has streaked the frosted panes―and through this dizzy pattern, time and light are reduced to rhythm and color, and the city, in a moment of fleeting pleasure, disappears behind the warmth and distance of a spontaneous shadow play. It is dusk by the time I reach the train station near my home. From the cross bridge, my eye automatically follows the low line of the heavy tracks as they dart beneath piping puffs of smoke and inscrutable black shadow, and is caught by the wink of electric light, suspended, lantern-like, on the hillside, by an invisible puppeteer. Chilled, I stop to linger by the yeontan seller’s stall, where the live fire of the boiling charcoal brings relief. And maybe, one evening, I will pause by one of those tent stalls, draped with striped flags as in a medieval pageant, aglow with burning tallow and cooking sausage, and be a knight-errant, supping on five minutes of fellowship, away from a life of willful labor. On my street, men are working into the night to repair the road, which has been impassable this week. As they sing to ease their labor, a low, melancholy voice, rooted in an unbroken past, carries to my front gate the tune of a quiet, hidden bravery.

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My Fulbright experience in Korea was brief (spring semester 1981), but it had an important influence on my professional life, resulting in the six publications listed below, plus a rich variety of material used for illustrations in numerous courses. It also led to lifetime friendships that continue to reward in terms of annual Christmas cards, phone calls, e-mails, personal visits, and a stream of Korean graduate students who have come to Kent State University at the suggestion of their mentors. I took many photographs while in Seoul, but the camera was primitive, and we were in the predigital age. Few if any photos have survived. One of my fond memories from that semester was of helping Mrs. Shim Jai-ok complete her master’s thesis using Q methodology, a procedure in which I had gained some measure of expertise. I subsequently helped found the International Society for the Scientific Study of Subjectivity (in which Q methodology plays a central role), and I like to think that the later founding of the Korean Society for the Scientific Study of Subjectivity (and its journal, Q Methodology and Theory) was in part due to the residual influence of my lectures on Q methodology at Seoul National and Hanyang Universities during that period. I was in Korea at the time of martial law (less than a year after Chun Doo-hwan’s ascendancy) and so was able to witness the consequences of the happy transition when I returned for the international Q methodology conference in 1998―the happier faces, the brighter colors, the conviviality. I was drawn to Korea

Steven R. Brown Grant Profile Host Field

1981: Senior Lecturer and Researcher Seoul National University Political Science

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in part due to the sociopolitical inconsistencies an d contrasts that were on the surface for the casual observer to see and study, but I am pleased that the dialectic has been permitted to proceed and to resolve many of those inconsistencies.

● Writings on Korea

The Indigenization of MethodologyBrown, S.R., & Kim, K.J./ Social Science and Policy Research (Seoul), 3(3), pp.109-139 / 1981

Values, Development, and Character: Appraising Korean ExperienceBrown, S.R. / Korea Fulbright Forum, No. 1, pp.33-66 / 1984

Exploring Korean ValuesBrown, S.R., & Kil, B.O. / Asia Pacific: Perspectives, 2(1), pp.1-8 / 2002 Available on-line: http://www.pacificrim.usfca.edu/research/perspectives/app_v2n1.html

The Indigenization of Methodology (revisited)Brown, S.R. / Journal of Human Subjectivity, 1, pp.1-21 / 2003

The Science of Subjectivity: Methodology, Identity, and Deep StructuresBrown, S.R. / Q Methodology and Theory, 11, pp.5-31/ 2005

Q MethodologyBrown, S.R. / L.M. Given (Ed.) / The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods , Vol. 2, pp. 699-702 / Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage / 2008

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1982-83, Fulbright Senior Exchange Scholar to Korea for Teaching and Research on Korean Metal Techniques

1. I taught metal arts courses to sophomores, juniors and graduate students at Hongik University. My son Kevin and I lived at Seo-Kyo Apartment very near to the school.

2. At the beginning, I faced a little difficulty teaching metal arts in the Korean language due to the relative lack of professional metal terms and knowledge in Korea, as it was a relatively new field at the college level at that time. However, my students were impressed by my “hands-on” teaching methods and processes and my being a female Korean-American professor.

3. In May 1983, two other visiting professors from America and I conducted a one-day seminar/workshop at Seoul National University for seniors, graduate students, and young faculty members from several universities. This seminar/workshop event was the first in Korean history in the metal arts field.

Komelia Hongja OkimGrant Profile Host Field1982: Senior Lecturer and Researcher Hongik University Metal Craft1994: Senior Lecturer and Researcher Wonkwang University Korean Metal

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4. My son Kevin, who was 12 years old, attended Seoul International Foreign School. He gained very practical experience, learning about Korean foods and customs, and he also learned to travel many parts of the city by bus with my students and friends. He was scolded many times by old people for not being able to speak Korean. (People didn’t know he was Korean-Japanese, born in America, and didn’t speak Korean.)

5. Before my departure back to America in 1983, I helped to organize a young metal artists’ association called the “No. 3 (or Third) Metal Artists’ Group” (Je Sam Geurup, 제삼그룹) among Hongik, Seoul National and Kookmin Universities. During that time, mingling among students from different universities was very unusual and forbidden.

The inaugural No. 3 Group exhibition was held in July 1984, and I was invited as their advisor. This association is still active, prominent and strong today among young MFA graduates from Seoul and other cities.

6. Before my departure for the US in July 1983, over 25 graduate students from three universities got together to invite me for a farewell trip to the Emille Museum (충청북도 보은 에밀레 박

물관). This is the Cho Ja-ryung Private Museum of Korean Minsok (traditional crafts); it has shamanist dance tools, funeral ceremony equipment, paintings, and a large collection of huge old Korean outhouse earthen jars (they were displayed outside). We learned a lot about the Korean traditional religion of shamanism, traditional Korean crafts, and customs of old culture and craft arts. The evening was a memorable one, with young future metal artists, museum director Cho Ja-ryung, and staff members gathering around a wood fire outside discussing future metal workshops and seminars and planning future events. These concepts of joint seminars, workshops and exchanges of ideas and techniques were quite rare in Korea during those days.

7. From 1984 to 1998, because of my academic and professional influence and Fulbright exchange programs, many of my students from Hongik and other

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universities in Korea came to the US for a second MFA in American metal arts, as well as other craft arts fields.

1994-95, Fulbright Senior Exchange Scholar to Korea

I introduced Korean students and artists to Western surface metal techniques in copper alloy projects using different chemical patina techniques of brushing on heated solution, burying in sawdust, and wrapping with clothes with many chemical combinations to create different colors, including blue, green, brown, and mixtures. Through two invitational art exhibitions at Myung-Bo Rang (1988) and Hyundai Gallery (1994) showing these patina surface embellishment processes, teaching at Wonkwang University as a Fulbright exchange professor, and lecturing and giving demonstrations to many other college students and professional artists in Korea, I became very popular in the Korean metal arts field, and remain so even today. Before my departure back to America in June 1995, I helped to organize a three-day international workshop/seminar, combined with a short exhibition of artwork created by art professors invited from England, America, and Japan, together with Korean professors at Wonkwang University. Over 200 students and faculty members from all over Korea attended this event. After the seminar, we took a three-day bus trip visiting special craft villages and historical sites located in the southern part of Korea. This large-scale international workshop/seminar had a huge impact on the Korean metal art field, motivating many young Korean students to go abroad for further education and develop their future professional careers. Before my departure from Korea in 1995, I also helped to establish the Ewha International Metal Arts Association (EMAA), an organization comprised of Ewha graduates who later went on to obtain metal art degrees from other art institutions in Korea and to pursue their second major field of study. This art association held its inaugural exhibition in Seoul’s Insa-dong neighborhood during my stay in Korea as a Fulbrighter. This association is still quite active and holds exhibitions regularly, featuring the works of women artists from Germany, Japan, Taiwan, Canada and the US. While in Korea, I traveled and visited many museums, cultural centers,

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and National Living Treasures, from whom I learned Korea’s traditional metal techniques. Today, these special techniques are widely known as the Korean Damascene Technique (pomok sanggam), an inlay of fine silver and gold wire or foil on mild steel created by chiseling very closely in four different directions, and geumbu overlay, which uses heat to fuse 24-carat gold onto silver jewelry and objects. After returning from Korea, I held numerous workshops and seminars introducing Korea’s unique traditional metal techniques to the metal art worlds of America, Canada, Norway, England, Russia, Taiwan, Thailand, and China through art centers, universities, summer arts and crafts programs, and professional metal arts associations In terms of metal and fiber arts programs in Korea, I actively participated in inviting several well-known American university professors to Korea and Korean professors to America, where they presented high-quality workshops and seminars while introducing American educational systems and methods. My later professional activities involved coordinating and curating for the Korean Metal & Fiber Arts Traveling Show for three years through many university museums and art centers in North America, including Toronto Art Center, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD), Northern Arizona University, California State University―Long Beach, Oregon State University, the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, Indiana University, Montgomery College, the Florida Museum, Kutztown University, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and the St. Louis Museum, as well as holding a Homecoming Exhibit at the Walker Hill Art Museum.

▲ Group photo from the workshop/seminar on the Wonkwang University campus. All attendees stayed at the school dormitory.

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In the late 1990s, six of my former students from Hongik and Kookmin Universities decided to come to live in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, where I live and teach. Many of my former students have earned second MFA degrees in America. Some returned to Korea and are teaching at universities or working as active practicing artists. Two of my former students have been teaching part-time at my college while practicing as active and successful metal artists. All in all, my experiences of teaching and researching as a Fulbright Exchange Scholar in Korea have given me a great deal of personal reward and professional satisfaction, enhancing my academic career and professional endeavors by expanding my global vision as an educator/artist. As a Korean-American educated in both Korea and US, I gained experiences as a Fulbrighter in Korea that provided me with a wider and more meaningful perspective on my own personal life, as well as a global perspective, as I became deeply engaged in the various cross-cultural events and academic programs. The Fulbright program has helped me grow, mature, and contribute to the field of education, the development of metal arts programs, and international cultural exchange endeavors. I was honored and given an enormous opportunity to become more creative with an open mind, international exposure, and a deeper understanding of the importance of international peace initiatives.

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My Experience of the Fulbright Multiplier Effect

My Fulbright experience illustrates the multiplier effect of intercultural educational exchange about which Senator Fulbright himself spoke. To date, I have spent more than one quarter of my entire life in Korea, pursuing interests made possible in large part by a growing personal network of friends and colleagues. My Korea experience started with my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer, teaching English at Gangwon National University in Chuncheon (1971-72). The Peace Corps is where I first met Fulbright’s current Executive Director, Shim Jai-ok, whom I next encountered upon my return to Korea as a senior Fulbright grantee (1985-86) in the Mass Communication Department at Yonsei University. Those were the years when Korea was preparing to host the Seoul Olympics. Both my research opportunities and my network of friends and associates with Korea interests began to snowball. I attended numerous academic conferences associated with the Seoul Olympics and co-authored a book, Global Television and the Politics of the Seoul Olympics, with a Yonsei colleague, Professor Park Heung-soo. At a 1987 conference in Seoul, I first met Miquel de Moragas, with whom I would co-direct a 25-nation study of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics that led to our book Television in the Olympics. Another Yonsei colleague, Professor Choe Chong-ho, came to the United

James F. LarsonGrant Profile Host Field1985: Senior Lecturer Yonsei University Communication

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States on a Fulbright grant of his own while I was teaching at the University of Washington. He knew my interests and took the initiative to introduce me to Dr. Oh Myung, who was at the time Chairman of the 1993 Taejon Expo. With Dr. Oh’s invaluable assistance, I was able to research and write The Telecommunications Revolution in Korea, published in 1995. Although the book dealt with Korea’s first digital and electronic networks, it was my expanding personal networks in Korea that most influenced my life and career. I designed and directed a large executive training program for Korea Mobile Telecom (now SK Telecom) at the University of Colorado in Boulder. About the time that 18-month program ended, a vacancy opened up for the position of Associate Director of the Fulbright Commission in Seoul, with responsibilities for both testing and technology. Back in 1996, computer-based testing was just beginning, with large-scale activity in Korea starting in 2000 with the computer-based TOEFL. Likewise, the arrival of the internet promised to re-shape the nature of Fulbright’s study-abroad advising. So while it may have been Korea’s spicy food and culture that first caught my attention, as for so many others it was the growing web of personal acquaintances and friendships that drew me in over the years. At Fulbright, I’ve had the privilege of working closely over recent years with Mrs. Shim and Horace H. Underwood as Executive Directors. Perhaps it was also destiny that brought me to Korea just at the time this country was emerging as a world leader in broadband Internet, and the IT industry more generally. I’ve stayed in touch with Dr. Oh Myung and many associates in Korea’s telecom sector. The study of Korea’s rapidly evolving information society has given me a challenging and always changing avocation. That’s it: my personal experience of the Fulbright program’s multiplier effect. All in all, through work, play, and my experience of Korea, I’ve been given an extraordinary opportunity to follow my bliss.

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My recollections of my Fulbright experience are extensive, significant, and still boldly clear in my mind. My wife, son and I recall our arrival in Seoul in the middle of winter in 1987―a cold and dark evening―and the long ride to the hotel. Burdened with doubts and concerns about what to expect, as well as struggling with jet lag, I did not know what would happen. How would my family and I adapt? What would be the response from my academic and professional colleagues? How would we adjust to the cultural and language barriers that we perceived to be overwhelming and impenetrable? The next morning, we were driven to the Fulbright office, a nondescript building near the American embassy―not at all imposing or impressive. We took the elevator to the Fulbright office. As we walked through the door, everything changed. The dynamic energy was quickly evident. Staff members cordially greeted us. Fred Carriere, then the executive director, was amazing, as were Mrs. Shim and the entire Fulbright community, seeking to accommodate every question or concern we had. All doubts, all worries, all fears disappeared. Once we had settled at Kyung Hee’s Graduate Institute of Peace, with the strong support of the Fulbright office as well as of the university, it was clear that our lives would never be the same. We were so comfortable the year we were in Korea. Although it was a time of political disruption and continuing tension over American military forces in the Republic of Korea, not once did we feel threatened, intimidated or concerned for our well-being. We lived in a small community outside of Seoul. We interacted with the people of the village. We shopped in local stores. We rode buses and taxis all over Seoul. We traveled by train and intercity

Donald R. Ranish Grant Profile Host Field

1987: Senior Lecturer Kyung Hee University Political Science

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bus to almost all parts of the country, walked the markets and neighborhoods, and practiced our primitive Korean. The more we embraced the people and the culture, the more we became inextricably tied to the essence of a nation. We learned, grew, and became better citizens of the international community. A single experience cannot change the world or overcome misunderstandings and miscommunication. I believe there is an inherent schism between the American and Korean culture and national experiences that is not easily overcome. This is true regardless of the strong bilateral relationship between the two countries, the large number of Koreans who study in the United States, and the vibrant Korean-American communities such as those found in Los Angeles and New York. I never believed that I would change Korea or make a difference in any profound way; however, Korea changed us forever. We are now more globalized and sensitive to cultural differences and values, and we consider ourselves part of a universal village. Senator Fulbright’s vision lives on in all Fulbright grantees. I know this to be true; that vision lives within me each day. That is the greatest legacy of our year there, and nothing will ever change that.

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Seoul in 1990 was very different from Seoul today, particularly since I was the first international scholar invited to Seoul National U n i ve r s i t y ’ s A r c h i t e c t u r e Department . At that t ime , Westerners were often viewed as being either in the military or visitors from Utah, since the Mormons were quite popular and a major military base was located in Seoul. Since I was too old to be in the military, young people often asked if I was from Utah. They also had a desire to test their English speaking with me. At SNU I taught a PhD seminar and worked with a group of students translating Design Games, which was my third book translated into Korean. During my several months in Korea, I lectured at different universities and met many colleagues with whom I am in continuous contact. As a result of that experience, many Korean professors came to work with me at North Carolina State University as visiting scholars. More recently, I lectured at Yonsei and several other Korean universities.

Henry SanoffGrant Profile Host Field1990: Distinguished Lecturer Seoul National University Architecture

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Dramatic changes had occurred in Seoul in the preceding twenty years, including new urban development across the Han River, an extensive array of excellent international res taurants , an expanded subway system making all parts of the city accessible, and

a new and impressive airport. Each visit to Korea included a traditional Korean meal with former visiting scholars, academic colleagues, and students sharing memorable experiences.

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The Fulbright program has been an exciting and integral part of my development as a student and scholar. I have been privileged with a Fulbright award twice: first as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, when I received a Fulbright IIE grant to do PhD research in Seoul in 1991-92; and second as an Assistant Professor at Columbia University, when I returned to Seoul as a Fulbright Senior Scholar during my sabbatical year in 2000. Thanks to these grants, I was able to spend extended periods living and doing research in Korea. This was, of course, crucial for my scholarship, but these experiences also enabled me to get a feel for the life and mood in Korea at these two critical moments in recent Korean history and Korea-US relations. The program has always been an important facilitator for the exchange of ideas and of mutual understanding between our two countries, as Senator Fulbright intended. It has enhanced my understanding of Korean invaluably and enabled me to establish personal and institutional connections that have stayed with me throughout my career. During my student Fulbright days in the early 1990s, I was affiliated with the Asiatic Research Center at Korea University under the supervision of Professor Choi Jang-jip. It was a time of significant transition on the Korean Peninsula: the Republic of Korea was about to elect its first civilian President in 30 years, the transition to democracy was giving rise to a burgeoning civil society movement

Charles K. ArmstrongGrant Profile Host Field1991: Senior Lecturer and Researcher Yonsei University History1999: Senior Lecturer and Researcher Yonsei University History

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(which would be the subject of my first book1) , and North and South Korea signed their most wide-ranging agreement on mutual cooperation in the history of the divided peninsula. Ambassador Donald Gregg ably represented the United States in Seoul at this crucial juncture, and the Director of Fulbright―in my eyes a figure nearly as important as the US Ambassador―was Fred Carriere. Little did I imagine that years later I would be working closely with both of them at the Korea Society in New York, where Ambassador Gregg was President and Fred was Executive Director! Not least, the program introduced me to my fellow student grantees, many of whom would go on to be prominent scholars in Korean studies. Andre Schmid, Laura Nelson, Tom Lee, Victor Cha and others whom I got to know at that time have remained my friends and colleagues ever since. The second time I came to Korea on a Fulbright was nearly eight years later, sponsored by the Institute for Modern Korean Studies at Yonsei University. Much had changed in the meantime. The program itself had moved from the conveniently located but somewhat cramped offices in Anguk-dong to brand-new facilities in Mokpo. The ETA program had just started, and I met the first batch of eager American English teachers to come to Korea on that program. North-South Korean relations had made considerable progress, and the Pyongyang Summit between Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il took place that June. Ten years later, much has changed again in Korea and in the US, but the importance of the Fulbright program for US-Korean relations is undiminished. I have been fortunate to play a small part in this 60-year history.

1 Charles K. Armstrong, ed. Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy and the State (London: Routledge, 2002).

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Twice Fortunate, Twice Grateful

I have enjoyed the unusual good fortune of going to Korea as a Fulbright scholar on two separate occasions, once as a doctoral candidate in Korean history at the University of Washington in the late 1970s and then again over a decade later, in the early 1990s, as a professor of Korean history. Spending a substantial amount of time in Korea as a member of the Fulbright community has made me a better Korean historian, both because of what I learned from the Korean historians I met in Korea and because of the material I found there that I would never have had access to in North America. When I first came to Korea as a Fulbright scholar, I was preparing to write a dissertation on pre-modern Korean history. That means that the people I was studying had been dead for centuries. Unlike those who study the history or politics of late 20th century or early 21st century Korea, I didn’t need to go to Korea to interview my subjects. Moreover, I might have been able to produce an acceptable doctoral dissertation using only books and articles I could find in libraries in the US. However, if the Fulbright program hadn’t invited me to Korea, I never would have gotten to know so many of Korea’s top historians, scholars such as Han Young-woo, Cho Kwang, and Keum Chang-tae, all of whom are

Donald L. Baker Grant Profile Host Field1978: Junior Researcher Seoul National University Korean History1993: Senior Lecturer and Researcher Seoul National University Korean History

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recognized as the best in their field in Korea, and all of whom offered me priceless advice about where to look for historically significant data, and how to interpret that data, that I never could have gotten just by reading their publications. The guidance and insights I gained from my personal contact with those scholars―contact made possible because of my Fulbright-funded stay in Korea―profoundly shaped my understanding of Korean history and, I believe, made it possible for me to do a better job explaining Korean history back on this side of the Pacific Ocean. I should also add that although my research focuses on pre-modern Korea, I also teach modern Korean history. Thanks to Fulbright, I was in Korea when some of that history was being made. The assassination of President Park Chung-hee, the rise to power of Chun Doo-hwan, and the Kwangju massacre of May 1980 all occurred soon after the Fulbright program brought me to Seoul for doctoral dissertation research. As a result, my students today get more than just an academic analysis of that pivotal period in modern Korean history―they also get an eyewitness account. When Fulbright invited me back in the early 1990s, Korea was a much more peaceful place. So instead of watching battles between pro-democracy demonstrators and those who were violently opposed to democracy, I instead wandered around the peninsula looking for evidence of both traditional spirituality and the ways in which that spirituality had been transformed in recent decades. I could have found books in US university libraries on Korean Buddhism, shamanism, Confucianism, and Christianity. But to actually understand what Korean Buddhists, shamans, Confucians, and Christians do, I had to talk with them and watch them engage in their various religious practices. A Fulbright research grant made such direct contact and personal observations possible. The result was a series of articles on various religious organizations in Korea today and in the past, culminating in the 2008 publication of a broad survey of Korea’s pluralistic religious environment, Korean Spirituality (University of Hawaii Press).

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I would never have been able to write that book, informed as it is by personal encounters with religious Koreans, if the Fulbright program had not invited me to Korea to research Korean religiosity. Without the Fulbright grants that brought me to Korea on those two different occasions, I would not have been a very productive scholar of Korean history and religion. In fact, I might not have been able to be an academic at all, since the publications that earned me my university position all drew heavily on what I learned during those Fulbright-funded research stays. And if I were not a professor of Korean Studies, I would not be able to contribute very much to the more accurate American understanding of Korean culture and history that is essential for better Korean-American relations. I am sure that the Korea Fulbright Program has had an equally positive impact with the research opportunities it has provided to many other American and Korean scholars. Over the last six decades, many American Fulbright scholars have returned to the US with an enhanced understanding of Korea, and therefore with an enhanced ability to teach and write about Korea. Over those same decades, many Korean Fulbright scholars have returned to Korea from America with an enhanced understanding of America that allowed them to write and teach about America more accurately and effectively. So on this 60th anniversary of the Korean-American Educational Commission, I would like to offer my thanks, not only for my career but also for all the Korea Fulbright Program has done through fellowships to me and to many others to promote friendship and mutual understanding between the people of America and the people of Korea.

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Reflections on the Korea Fulbright Experience, 1996

I received the Fulbright Fellowship following two summers in residence at the Center for Traditional Korean Performing Arts (Gungnip Gugagwon) in Seoul in 1993 and 1994. The six-month fellowship gave me the opportunity to continue my study of haegum sanjo under the tutelage of Professor Shim Im-taek in Gwangju. As it happened, the professor teaching cello at Chosun University died a month before my arrival in Gwangju, so I replaced him that semester, taking over a studio of seven undergraduate cellists. So it was a real “East meets West” experience, teaching Western art music while studying a highly complex traditional Korean folk genre. I performed numerous recitals in Gwangju, Seoul, and elsewhere while in Korea, including, by the end, combination programs with the cello and haegeum. The six months of memorable ex-periences were shared with my wife Debbie and our two children―Brittney, age 11, and Matthias, age one. People were extremely helpful and generous,

Jonathan C. KramerGrant Profile Host Field1995: Senior Lecturer and Researcher Chosun University Music

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and the children provided a common area of mutual interest―and they certainly contributed to the adventure. Brittney picked up an impressive amount of Korean, made friends with a number of Korean children, and had many sleepovers. During a stay at Songwonsa Monastery, she asked the abbot, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” He laughed and said he didn’t know. Back in the US later that fall, we hosted the same monk in Raleigh while he was on his way to the Atlanta Olympics. The six months in Korea were extremely important to my career. Upon my return, I began teaching courses in Asian music at Duke University, which I have continued since; and I initiated a number of programs , concerts and courses at North Carol ina S ta te University that include Korean subjects. In addition, Korean music appears in a number of case studies in the college textbook I am developing. Friendships made more than fifteen years ago are still fresh, and the beauty of Korean expressive culture continues to enrich my life and, through me, I hope, the lives of my students.

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My selection to serve as a Senior Fulbright Lecturer on American history in 1995 provided my first opportunity to return to Korea for an extended visit since my Peace Corps service 25 years earlier. The changes in Korea over a quarter of a century were startling. My assignment teaching history at Yonsei University placed me in the same Sinchon area of Seoul that I had known during my Peace Corps service, when I taught English at neighboring Sogang University. In addition to teaching bright graduate students, a highlight of my Fulbright experience was the opportunity to get to know several members of the remarkable Underwood family―in particular, Horace H. Underwood, who a few years later became director of the Fulbright program in Korea, and his father Dr. Horace G. Underwood, a one-time president of Yonsei University whose illustrious grandfather had founded that great institution in the late 19th century. My friendship with Dr. Underwood led to collaboration with him on his memoirs, recording his life growing up in Japanese-occupied Korea, his imprisonment by the Japanese authorities in 1941 following the attack on Pearl Harbor, his release and eventual service as a naval officer in the Pacific, and his many years of involvement with Yonsei University as it grew into the outstanding institution of higher education in the Far East that it is today. Dr. Underwood also played an important role during the Korean War. He and his younger brother Richard served as officers in the United States Navy and

Michael DevineGrant Profile Host Field1995: Senior Lecturer Yonsei University American History

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Army, respectively, and as interpreters for several years at the peace negotiations at Panmunjeom. Dr. Underwood’s memoirs were published by Yonsei University Press in 2001 as Korea in War, Revolution and Peace: The Recollections of Horace G. Underwood.A Korean-language version was published in 2002.

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Some people collect stamps, others coins. Over the past 27 years, I’ve been collecting Fulbright awards: three Senior Scholar honors (Belgrade University, Yugoslavia, academic year 1983-84; Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, academic year 1997-98; National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, spring semester 2004) and two Senior Specialist ones (Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts, Bratislava, Slovakia, fall semester 2006; Faculty of Law, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Macedonia, spring semester 2010). My Korea Fulbright was very special. My wife Sally and I traveled in the country and “mined” Seoul, a truly wonderful city with its great subway system, Art Center, museums, restaurants, outdoor markets, etc. In many venues we enjoyed being with Koreans from all walks of life. Korean food remains among my favorites worldwide: I got hooked on kimchi for life. We lived on the Yonsei campus, affording us many opportunities to interact with Korean students and staff. It was great teaching at Yonsei. As a Fulbrighter, I began researching the question of North Korean survivalism. I continued doing so for nine weeks in the summer 1999 as a Visiting International Scholar in Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul. I returned to Seoul for two weeks in the summer of 2000 to participate in various conferences.

Alvin MagidGrant Profile Host Field1997: Lecturer and Researcher Yonsei University Political Science

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In due course, I published articles on North Korean survivalism in two English-language Korean scholarly journals. I continue to follow closely political developments on the Korean Peninsula and the impressive attainments of Korean athletes in international competition, most recently at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. I never stop talking up Korea to my compatriots all over the US I’m giving serious thought to making my next auto purchase a Hyundai.

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My Fulbright Connection

My relationship with the Fulbright program has been rather long and extensive. In 1985, I went to Korea as a member of the US delegation selected by the US Department of Education to attend a two-week Fulbright-supported International Symposium on Korean Language Teaching at Yonsei University from June 24 to July 5. This was a period when Korean studies and Korean language education were emerging as part of the regular curriculum at US universities. In 1993, I lectured in courses on Korea in a Fulbright Training Program for teachers of English to Koreans in Seoul. In the summer of 1994, I joined a dozen other professors selected among some 400 applicants from US universities for an eye-opening study tour to Jordan to learn about “Islamic Culture and Civilization Today.” My most important Fulbright-supported work was carried out during the academic year of 1997-98, when I sojourned in Seoul. I was comfortably and warmly welcomed by Seoul National University, where I was given an office with a beautiful view of the creek. Through language change, particularly in honorific marking, I could glimpse how the society was changing. One thing that never seemed to really go away was the importance of human relationships in every facet of Korean lives. After returning to the US, I was called to serve on the

Young-Key Kim-RenaudGrant Profile Host Field1997: Senior Researcher Seoul National University Linguistics

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Fulbright Senior Scholar Review Committee for Japan/Korea for three years (1999-2002). On February 21, 2002, I had the honor of delivering a keynote address at the 7th Annual Fulbright Reception sponsored by the George Washington University Beta Omicron Chapter of the Phi Beta Delta Society for International Scholars; the Office of Fellowships and Graduate Support; the International Services Office; and Research and Graduate Studies. It was held under the title “Fulbright Now, More than Ever,” the text of which is attached. I have been a happy lifetime member of the Fulbright Alumni Association since 1999.

My interest in linguistics and in different cultures of the world was formed rather early in my life. It has only intensified as I have come to live a multicultural life in a faraway land that I have adopted as my own. It did not take me long to realize that learning about others and

trying to explain my own language and culture were in fact excellent ways of learning about myself. The Fulbright program, to me, epitomizes a belief in peace and harmony among different nations and peoples, and is even more crucial in the current atmosphere, where force―more than dialogue―and walls―rather than openness―seem to reign. In many ways, the program is the most successful and significant public initiative of foreign policy developed by the US in the last half-century. As a Korea-born scholar who has led her professional career at US universities for decades, I think the Fulbright program has helped me to seek, see, and appreciate learning about new cultures and peoples and, through that experience, to rethink and rediscover my own roots and identity and to reexamine how I may contribute to my adoptive country and society. It has been a one long, exciting and rewarding journey.

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Snapshots of My Best Day in Korea

Just as the mountains are the backbone of the peninsula of Korea, so the family, steeped in the vestiges of a Confucianism that took stronger root in the rocky soil of Korea than it did in its native China, is the backbone of Korean society. For as the mountains protect this tiny land and ameliorate the fury of storms the seas bring from three directions, so the enclave of the family turns inward and protects itself as well as the society in times of trouble and unrest. Koreans are a friendly and caring people, but their friendliness is a public matter; it does not usually extend to an invitation for a foreigner to participate in a family event. So I was honored and a bit awed when one of my students at Seoul National University, where I was teaching during the fall semester of 1999 as a Senior Fulbright Professor, asked my wife and me to join her family on a Sunday outing in the country northeast of Seoul.

Snapshot #1

We are standing near the Gangnam subway stop on the Green Line in Seoul, hoping that we got the instructions right. Since we speak and read no Korean, we have had wonderful days wandering about Seoul looking for things. It hasn’t

James PerkinsGrant Profile Host Field1998: Senior Lecturer and Researcher Seoul National University American Literature

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mattered. We are new in the country, and everything we see, whether it’s what we planned to see or not, is new and interesting. Whenever we pull out a map, a crowd gathers to help us―a crowd eager to try out English. It is a bit chilly here in the shade. Soon Ms. Lee and her parents arrive (her sister, who is still in high school, had to stay home and study; Korean young people work very hard and take their schooling seriously), and we are off to the mountains northeast of Seoul.

Snapshot #2

We are seated in a beautiful country restaurant, Jane and I on one side of the table, Ms. Lee and her mother on the other. Ms. Lee’s father is not in the picture. He is holding the camera. Like most Korean men, he works quietly and hard in the background to make things happen, to provide for his family. Between us on the table are an array of dishes, a seafood soup, and many varieties of kimchi. The food is spicy and delicious, and I hope my fork-trained fingers will allow me to get through breakfast with metal chopsticks. The tiny muscles in the back of my hand tire, and toward the end of the meal I begin to drop squid.

Snapshot #3

This is like our trip to England. We have just eaten a big meal, and now we are hiking along a mountain road with the Lees. Ms. Lee’s mother and father are very proud of her. They went to Seoul National University in the days when it was difficult to get through a semester because of student protests against the government. We talk about the school, about Ms. Lee’s plans, and about the impact of the Asian financial crisis. We do not talk about Ms. Lee’s mother’s health. The rocky spine of the protective mountain looms above us. Finally, we pause on rocks in the midst of the swift, cold waters of a mountain stream, and Ms. Lee’s mother serves us ginseng tea.

Snapshot #4

We are at the family farm, a small vegetable patch overseen by Ms. Lee’s father’s nephew. Here, as elsewhere in Korea, we are struck by the fact that every square meter of arable land is under cultivation. Today, they are harvesting radishes and cabbage that will find its way into kimchi jars. There are two Koreas not the south

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and north, but Seoul and everywhere else. Standing here on this patch of ground, looking over the small, well-tended fields of other farmers, I think that if I could not see the Lee’s car standing on the road, I might very well be in some other time altogether.

Snapshot #5

We are eating again in a rustic, outdoor restaurant with tables under trellises surrounding open wood fires in concrete rings. The food is wonderful. Ms. Lee’s mother asks the waiter to bring my favorite Korean dish, pajeon, a sort of green onion crepe. We are looking out on the Bukhan River. Its waters rise in the foothills of the Diamond Mountains in North Korea. A few miles south of here, it joins with the Namhan River to form the Han River, which flows through Seoul to the West Sea at Incheon. The waters of the Namhan rise on Mt. Sobaek to the south. Koreans believe that these two rivers, one from the north and one from the south, joining to flow through the capital, are the symbol of what should be a united country. But I am not thinking about politics now, or of the reach of water or the strength of mountains. I am watching the logs burning in the fire circle in this lovely outdoor bower and thinking about families, especially the Lees.

Snapshot #6

We are driving home through the comparatively light Sunday evening traffic in Seoul. We are quiet. Ms. Lee is nodding off, worn out by the day, by the semester, by the struggle she has waged to get where she is, and by her deep concern for her mother. I imagine other return trips, Ms. Lee’s sister along, everyone singing and laughing. The Lees are fine people, and they have given me a special gift: my very best day in Korea.

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A fifth floor studio at Hannam University in Daejeon was home base during my six-month Fulbright in Korea in 2003. My open-door policy attracted students from adjacent studios in the Fine Arts Department and created a wonderful ongoing dialogue. When I returned from my daily explorations with drawings to post on my walls, the students were noticeably curious. By the end of the six-month period, I had over 40 works and many friends. I came to Korea equipped with a list of Korean artists who had attended the Vermont Studio Center. With the help of Professor Shin Jung-deok, and the invaluable assistance of Ms. Kim Ji-eun of the art history faculty, I began setting out to meet many of the prominent and upcoming contemporary artists in the country. Traveling much of Korea, I interviewed and exchanged ideas with 22 artists in their studios and spent significant time with at least 50 others. I visited Professor Kim Hyun-dae at his studio in the Young-un Museum, as well as Gwon O-sang, Moon Beom, Nam Cheol, Koo Kyoung-sook, Lee Sang-gill, Lee Min-joo and Jin Ik-song in their studios. I returned frequently to the pottery village in Mt. Gyeryong National Park near Gongju and spent time with several families there. These contacts led to

Richard D. WeisGrant Profile Host Field2003: Senior Lecturer and Researcher Hannam University Fine Arts

▲ Sculptor Nam Choel, one of the early modernist sculptors at his rooftop studio in Daejeon, with Richard Weis

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a 2004-05 residency for Jin Ik-song at my home campus, Green Mountain College, and inspired a Hannam professor to apply for a Fulbright research award in the US. He visited our campus as a guest lecturer during his Fulbright year. A very special memory from Korea involved an impromptu visit with the widow of pioneer modernist sculptor Kim Chong-yung, arranged by her son. One moment we were visiting the Kim Chong-yung Museum, and the next we were spirited away to her nearby apartment where, over tea, we discussed what she had seen as art flourished after the war years. Through her eyes, we were able to sense the creative spirit of a wonderful people in a difficult time. While at Hannam University, I was involved in discussions with the Center of International Relations about developing a short-term summer program for non-Koreans to introduce them to Korean culture. In 2004, I returned with six students for the first of Hannam’s Korea Summer Studies Programs, and I have returned twice more since then. A 2004 Fulbright Alumni Initiative Award increased interchange between Korean art students and the art students on my campus. My involvement with international activities led to my appointment as Director of International Programs at Green Mountain College. I am proud to say there was a substantial increase in the international activity on campus during my tenure, with more students going abroad and significantly more international students attending our campus.

▲ Artist Professor Ahn Young Na with Richard Weis

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Currently, I am listed on the Fulbright Specialist roster, and I have hopes that I will be returning to Korea or other locations abroad to continue working as an artist/educator through the Fulbright Program. This spring, I retired from full-time teaching to devote more time to my studio work. Those who have known my work through the years have recognized the influences from my time in Korea, and I feel as if I am seeing the world through fresh eyes. There is a new sensitivity to the expressive potential of the materials with which I work as a result of my Korean experience.

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The fine arts and the study and investigation of art history on all continents, in all cultures, and under varied circumstances are the air I breathe and the reason I feel such immense delight in relation to my work. I believe that artists have the potential to offer a more positive alternative to the normative realities of politics, meeting the complex challenges of the present and seeking a better world. My four months as a Senior Scholar with the Fulbright Foundation in the Republic of Korea revealed an enriched intellectual and cultural terrain in which the manifestation of purposefully endowed experiences with artists was realized. My research, lectures, and exchanges with artists included contact with traditional artisans, painters, sculptors, conceptual artists, dancers, and musicians. These immensely gratifying encounters occurred primarily in Gwangju and Seoul. Since 2005, I have returned to Korea on three occasions, often reconnecting with students, interviewing artists, lecturing at conferences, exchanging ideas with scholars, visiting exhibitions, and writing critical essays on contemporary Korean art and culture. I continue to see a wealth of creative possibilities among artists in Korea, as I stay in touch with this moving intellectual and emotional climate of individuals who are seeking a better world and stretching the boundaries in understanding the human condition as a worldwide global consciousness. With the relatively new challenges of advanced communication technologies, Koreans continually reinforce the necessity of

Robert C. MorganGrant Profile Host Field2005: Senior Researcher and Lecturer Chosun University Modern Art

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bringing the virtual world into closer contact with tactile experience, and thus maintain the balance of yin and yang, the righteous path of the Tao. In doing so, there are many Korean artists who project a steady course by acknowledging the presence of nature and intrinsic human values in everyday life. This highly enlightened point of view offers great encouragement as a point of strength in balancing the weaknesses that exist in other parts of the planet. My Fulbright experience in the Republic of Korea opened the threshold to recognize important spiritual realities, coming to terms with the imbalances fomented in the wake of selfish consumerist lifestyles. It convinced me of the mountain of work ahead of me in my travels, research, writing, and general work as an artist, critical thinker, and art historian.

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I am an American choreographer/performance artist and came to Korea with Fulbright in 2006 and 2007 to both lecture and conduct research. I am now in my fifth year as an Artist-in-Residence at the Seoul Institute of the Arts, teaching dance, non-verbal performance and collaboration classes both for dancers and actors, as well as continuing to perform internationally. I have been blessed by the abundant opportunities that the Fulbright Scholars Program has provided. I have created new works for stage and video, including the evening-length works “Waters of Immortality and Other Works” and “Effulgent Wings,” and have developed Fleming Elastics, an original training method incorporating movement and voice to increase strength, flexibility and vocal presence. In 2009, I organized intercultural projects that have since involved Korean students in performances of my choreography with students at Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and I have taken Seoul Institute students with me as interns for full-scale professional performances in Boston, Cincinnati and Brazil. I believe these experiences have created positive opportunities in giving students a broader understanding of global culture, which I feel is a very important aspect of the Fulbright experience. Often, students return more interested in studying Korean arts because they realize what an important resource this study is for their development as a whole person. Another unexpected development that I had during my experience in Korea

Maureen FlemingGrant Profile Host Field2006: Senior Lecturer and Researcher Seoul Institute of the Arts Dance

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is that I found photography. The Seoul Institute of the Arts is a top school in the field of photography in Korea, so I started studying and began taking photos of myself. I organized “Dances from Home,” my first photography installation, in New York City in August 2009; this also involved over 25 years of collaborations with renowned dance photographers including Lois Greenfield and Spencer Tunic. However, I may be the first dancer to sign her own name to her photo image and sell it as a work of art. I believe this is an empowering new and sustainable resource for dance artists: the possibility of presenting photography installations in conjunction with dance performances. On September 11, 2010, “Dances from Home” will be presented in conjunction with a new presentation of “Waters of Immortality and Other Works” at SUNY Oneonta in New York. I think that leaving the US allowed me to create a breathing relationship with America. During my Fulbright residency in Korea, I performed in the Fall for Dance Festival at New York’s City Center; the renowned Jacob’s Pillow Festival; and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. I have been able to step back and see things more objectively, which, in turn, has influenced my art. Since coming to Korea, I have had increased opportunities on both sides of the globe. I am also currently in the process of creating a new evening of performance art that

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integrates photography and video with live performance, as well as integrating voice to take my work to a new level. One of the most important things I have learned in Korea is how to turn “chaos” into creativity. I sense that there is a level of chaos that is accepted as normal due to the turbulent history that makes Korea what it is. I have found that decisions are often put off to the last moment, creating an unknowing and a feeling of not being in control of crucial decisions in one’s life. This frustration, at its best, procures an energy...a seed for transformation. I have found that mastering this process of transformation and turning it into creation is the key to gaining the respect that opens doors in Korea. I believe this is a phenomenon unique to Korea, and perhaps other countries still living in the wake of war. The Cheonan incident, for me, is an example of the chaos created from the unexpected, and it is, of course, linked to the Korean War experience. I feel it is important to recognize that chaos can be a weapon that can also create destruction instead of clarity. It appears to me that it is important for all of us to become aware when we are creating a state of chaos in someone’s life by making or not making a particular decision, or other activities that lead to destructive chaos. If we can become keenly aware of this in our interactions with others, I feel we are giving meaning to the deaths of these men, who could have been any of the students we have known and loved. This awareness is a choice that can hopefully bring us all closer to unity.

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Legacy of a 2007-08 Fulbright Senior Lectureship

Dr. Chung Kyung-chae, an urban planner, enlightened me during my service as Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Yonsei University during the 2007-2008 academic year. He graciously guided me through his ancestral home in Bangsan-dong, Siheung, and subsequently invited me to write the foreword to his manuscript on environmental policy in Northeast Asia. Following my return to the United States, we communicated primarily via e-mail, but also, on at least one occasion, via telephone. The manuscript is being considered for publication by the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland-Korea Branch. I have long been interested in comparative political analysis across political jurisdictions, and particularly in the realms of gender, governance, the functioning of political parties and environmental policy. I participated in a day of oil spill cleanup on a beach in Korea following the collision, in December 2007, of a vessel owned by Samsung Heavy Industries and an oil tanker. In Cameron Parish in June 2010, I participated as a member of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana in a beach cleanup in anticipation of possible forthcoming damage from the British Petroleum oil rig catastrophe. Comparisons of both oil spills featured prominently in lectures on environmental policy in both sections of my State and Local Government course late in the spring semester of 2010. My experiences at Yonsei University made possible my paper “The Public Governance Programme of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and

Henry B. SirgoGrant Profile Host Field2007: Senior Lecturer Yonsei University Political Science

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Deve lopment /Korea Po l i cy Centre (OECD) and Other Public Adminis t ra t ion and Publ ic Policy Opportunities in Asia,” submitted to the 2009 Meeting of the Southwestern Soc ia l Science Association in Denver. I lectured in the Department of Political Science & International Studies at Yonsei University, but met Professor M. Jae Moon of the Yonsei University Department of Public Administration when I attended a program on administrative discretion. Prof. Moon, whose publications on e-government are frequently cited and who travels to the United States every year for the annual meeting of the American Society for Public Administration, arranged for me to make a Power Point presentation on executive branch reorganization to the OECD. At other OECD functions, I made the acquaintance of ambassadors to Korea from Denmark and Indonesia. Materials acquired from an OECD program proved an excellent resource as I mentored Mr. Micah Boudreaux in his capacity as Undergraduate Scholar Participant representing the McNeese State University Department of Social Sciences in “A Program for Student Scholars in Search of Excellence,” which was held on April 28, 2010. The title of his project was “How Does Indonesia Civil Service Compare with United States?” I have been invited to participate in a panel on governance in Korea by Professor Richard Feiock of Florida State University at the 2011 Meeting of the Southern Political Science Association (SPSA) in New Orleans. At the 2009 SPSA meeting in New Orleans, I chaired a panel entitled “Comparing Presidential Nomination Processes in South Korea and the United States,” and at the 2010 SPSA meeting in Atlanta I served as chair/discussant on the “Korean Electoral Behavior” panel. The legacy of my Fulbright in Korea is a rich one.

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My Fulbright grant sponsored me in Gwangju, where I was able to interact with people whose understanding of the US was often refracted through the prism of US support for Chun Doo-hwan in 1980. This tragic choice, the genesis of modern anti-Americanism in South Korea, continues to animate resentment and discussion, especially as antagonistic US relations with North Korea continue into the 21st century. Despite the political issues dividing governments, the hospitality and friendships I experienced were incredible. During my tenure at Chonnam National University, I never personally experienced any problems of a political nature. Instead, I enjoyed the warmth and critical collegiality of my Korean counterparts, and I continue to cherish the memories of my Gwangju days.

George KatsiaficasGrant Profile Host Field2007: Senior Lecturer Chonnam National University Social Movements

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My students at Yonsei were exceptionally bright, and teaching there was a genuine joy. After I returned to Missouri, I was surprised and pleased to learn that the Department of Psychology had nominated me as the Yonsei “Teacher of the Year,“ and on the basis of their nomination and student evaluations I was selected for this award, which was accompanied by a cash prize of 1,000,000 won, which I will invest in an airline ticket to return to Seoul next year to visit my Yonsei friends.

I’ve always been friendly to visiting students and international guests, but since my Fulbright experience I ’ve gone out of my way to be friendly and hospitable and to seek out opportunities to assist and support international colleagues who visit the University of Missouri.

Danny Wedding

Grant Profile Host Field2008: Distinguished Lecturer Yonsei University Psychology

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BEGINNINGS

March 3

I spent the day in Seoul today being “in-processed“ by Fulbright and getting a cell phone. It’s a used phone and has an account that costs $10.00 or so per month. I don’t need a cell phone much, but it’s a safety device in a country where I really can hardly get a word of language to cross my lips and I cannot read easily at all yet. When one travels, the names assigned to bus stops seem pretty random―“Such-and-Such Elementary School,” for example. But I made my way home successfully via a subway and bus route that no one had shown me. An adventure.

March 6

I woke up this morning to realize that I have been here ten days. Time really does

Helena Meyer-KnappGrant Profile Host Field

2008: Senior Lecturer and Researcher Kyung Hee University Peace Studies

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fly. I’ve done my first class―ten bubbling students, and more to come next week. I may promise more fun in class and more participation than some of my older and rather more severe colleagues. Last week’s formal graduation photo shows you the full array, missing only Chong Sik Lee, a distinguished Korean-American scholar. I am looking forward to meeting him.

March 17

I hope that neither my old Japanese friends nor my new Korean ones will be offended by my instinct to make patterns that compare the two nations. Humans make patterns all too easily, as my statistics co-teacher at Evergreen used to say. But like an Asian who sees deep similarities between the French and the Germans, I find I am making patterns linking the Japanese and Koreans.

A Similarity: The banking systems of these hugely important global trading companies. They have a difficult time allowing foreigners to actually use their home-grown banks―the VISA logo on an ATM means nothing. After all, there are Korean and Japanese VISAs, and then there are those cards whose provenance simply cannot be ascertained. In Korea, it’s even the case that an ATM that “speaks” English may very well not accept alien cards. And service in the banks is the same, too. Take a number and wait your turn. Perhaps 40 minutes.

Differences: There are many. Today’s concerns the food―not the spices, but the aesthetics. KFC and Starbucks are everywhere. Mickey D’s as well. And they look similar. I’m talking about the local food. Korean food comes in lots of small dishes, reminiscent of Japanese food, but the dishes themselves are not pretty. My Fulbright confidante says, “No, the Koreans are practical.” And that’s true. Some of the serving dishes have a fine aura―old, ceramic, blackened, and, on the right day, sizzling with hot rice. But most are institutional china. Chopsticks are metal

here, and, very practically, they come with spoons.

ENDINGS

June 5

Last year, when I began talking about coming to Korea, quite a few people wondered, “Why Korea?“ Now, in these more crisis-laden times, the reasons a peace studies specialist might be here are more obvious. But today’s e-mail is

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going to be about the mundane and not the dramatic. There will be more military tests and more diplomatic drama. Still, I am reasonably sanguine myself, and like most people in South Korea, I just go about my daily life. When I first arrived, this country was brown and grey―frozen grasses, trees with no leaves, and even the evergreen shrubs had a burned quality to them. Huge numbers of small patches of ground looked desolate and abandoned. Bare earth and rocks. Now, four months later, it’s all changed. Those bare patches of ground turned out to be dozens and dozens of small vegetable patches, and I’ve commented several times already on Korean passions for flowers. Now we’re through the peonies and into roses―banks and banks of red climbing roses. I gave a lecture this week to students in hotel management, entitled “Touring Seoul with the Eyes of a Peacemaker.” The current national agenda is to sell Korea as a shoppers’ paradise. It is, in the sense that there’s lots to buy and it’s cheap. But they are missing the distinctiveness of Korean shopping―those riverside markets and arcades I talked about. Local retail everywhere. They want to send us to a vast underground mall. It’s vast, all right, but underground, and the vastness cannot be seen from any given passageway. The tour guides are also missing the distinctiveness of Korean scenery―the farming, for instance. Rice paddies are everywhere―even between the city and the airport. At the industrial scale, it’s remarkable that so much farming is still happening within the confines of city life. At the local scale, it’s humane, quite lovely, and incredibly tidy.

June 19

I am sure I will be going back to Korea some time, perhaps sooner rather than later. They have invited me to consider b e i n g a n “ i n t e r n a t i o n a l scholar,” and I have realized that there are things I could teach students at GIP about r e s e a r c h a n d a n a l y s i s , including ways to approach data unclouded by emotions,

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while remaining connected to rigorous scholarly traditions. More importantly, my own work stands to gain a lot from doing more here. In Seoul this week, Rob and I spent a lovely four days ensconced in a tiny hanok, a traditional guest house I have come to love. Small pond outside the back door to the room. Table and chairs right there and evening light to sit by. (Plus bugs―not so nice the second night.) We wandered art museums and temples. We bought shiny shoes for the UK kids and glittering jewelry for me. We went on a boat ride on the Han River as a farewell to a beautiful body of water. And I gave a pretty successful talk at the Fulbright headquarters about the research. Then back to GIP to pack and clean up the details of life―grades for the students, fifty more questionnaires to process, one last dinner with the wonderful Chong Sik Lee, and packing four months of life back into the suitcases it arrived in.

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Reflection on a Fulbright Experience

I had visited my parents in Seoul many times in the past. However, it was a totally different experience to visit Korea as a Fulbright scholar. Now I was representing the US. My role was to connect academics in the two countries via teaching and research. The past visits were mostly private and short, without many official interactions or responsibilities. But this time, it was official, with a long-term commitment. It was a real pleasure to teach classes at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), where the students were extremely bright. The student-faculty relations were much more devoted and lasted much longer than in the US. I was able to work with a prominent scholar at KAIST on a joint research project. It was very collegial and cordial, a process that resulted in a paper that is currently under review at a prominent academic journal. Beyond the official activities, however, the most valuable aspect of the Fulbright experience is the fact that I gained an entirely new perspective as a foreigner staying in the land in which I was born and raised. Many things I saw, heard, and felt were different from what I used to know. Streets were familiar yet somehow different from my memory. The people looked familiar yet were different from those I used to know. I attended several cultural events and performances of the traditional performing arts, some of which were arranged by the KAEC. They were totally different experiences from what I would have felt as an insider. This

Seung-chan Choi Grant Profile Host Field2008: Senior Lecturer and Researcher

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Marketing

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was like discovering the other side of the moon for the first time. This feeling was amplified when my family members briefly joined me. Exploring the countryside, including Jeju Island, with my children, who were born in the US and are both in their twenties, I was able to see things through their eyes. And I was able to see what I had not been able to see―the culture, the people, and its history. For me, it was a rediscovery of Korea.

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When I applied for a Fulbright lectureship in 2007, I was already in retirement. I had qualms about entering this competition, knowing that my success as an applicant would deny a younger applicant the chance to have a valuable professional experience. Once I had won the lectureship―which surprised my wife no less than myself―I could but hope that my return voyage out of Korea would be as satisfying as I knew my trip over would be, full of hope and anticipation. I taught at Sogang University in Seoul 2008-09 as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in the Department of Political Science. Then I was invited last spring to return in the fall as a visiting professor of history teaching US history, the position I currently hold. As I look to my upcoming return home at the close of my second year in Korea, which feels to me like an extended Fulbright appointment, I have the happy conviction that there is indeed a place in the Fulbright program for an oldster with a passion for learning. Did I say “learning”? For me, learning and teaching are but two sides of the same coin, for the passion for one largely explains the passion for the other. And when there’s no passion for teaching, the students are the first to know it; they know when they’re being cheated. It is the teacher’s own thirst for knowledge that brings excitement and zest to the classroom, there being nothing more thrilling to students than the realization that they are in some sort of chase alongside their professor.

Sugwon Kang Grant Profile Host Field2008: Senior Lecturer Sogang University Political Science

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Spending two years in the twilight of my professional life teaching Korean students has been a true privilege; I cannot imagine anything else I might have done during this time that would have been more rewarding. Watching some of these famously passive, incommunicative and timid Korean youngsters slowly transform themselves into lively and inquisitive budding scholars, capable of an occasional free-for-all in the presence of their professor, all in the course of one semester, is certainly an experience to cherish. And that’s the reward that awaits any future Senior Fulbrighter who has something to share and knows teaching for what it is: a noble calling.

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My first teaching job was at Chonnam National University in Gwangju, South Korea, from 1981 to 1984. Except for a few weeks in 2004, I hadn’t visited Korea

since the 1980s, but I have a lifelong connection to the country because I met and married my wife of 27 years when I was there in the 1980s, and my son was born there. I have watched from a distance as the country moved from an authoritarian dictatorship dominated by ex-generals to an active democracy, from economically developing to developed, from an exporter to an importer of shoes and shirts. I received a Fulbright as a Senior Lecturer in American literature at Chonbuk National University in Jeonju for the 2009 school year. Last spring, I was able to watch the Lotus Lantern Festival parade in Gwangju for the first time in 25 years. I remembered the parade, with the lanterns glowing from the candles inside them, as a magical brightness

Robert D. Grotjohn Grant Profile Host Field2009: Senior Lecturer and Researcher

Chonbuk National University American Literature

▲ The photos are from the day of the parade. The women in white and blue piled out of the back of the truck, practiced and joined the parade.

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in the dark downtown streets. Last year, the magic had diminished. That seemed a sign of my age: the magic of one’s twenties may dissipate by one’s fifties. Then I realized that the change wasn’t in me, or at least not entirely; it was in the streets themselves. In the 1980s, there were few streetlights; in fact, neon was illegal because of the energy expense. Now, downtown Gwangju glows with neon. What seemed a disappointing indication of my aging actually was an encouraging indication of Korean economic progress. The lanterns hadn’t become darker; the country had become brighter, and in many ways. In the early 1980s, the country suffered under a repressive authoritarian regime; now, there is a flourishing democracy. In the early 1980s, it was unwise to mention in public the Gwangju people’s uprising of May 18, 1980; now, there is a People’s Democracy Park that celebrates the citizen-heroes of the uprising for the whole country. In the early 1980s, there was little freedom of the press; now, presidents and politicians are openly criticized in the media and throughout the active Korean cyberworld. In the 80s, I knew one professor with a car; now, I know no professor without one. In the 80s, I never saw a tractor on the Honam Plain; last year, I never saw an ox at all, except in the movies. The magical lanterns may have been dimmed by neon, but that neon illuminates the magic of the “Miracle on the Han.”

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Gangneung Danoje Festival

The Fulbright experience has been positive in every respect. Living in Korea has provided me with a global view of Korean music that I would have missed without the support of Fulbright. I have been surprised at the level of international participation and conscience of Korean music. It was unfortunate that I missed many of the yearly festivals due to the H1N1 precautions in 2009; however, the relationships created while contacting and interviewing other Korean music enthusiasts and professionals have been immeasurably valuable. My Fulbright experience has enabled me to live within the culture of my research. The thrill of experiencing everything first hand cannot be described in words. I feel that the overall product of my research will reflect this unique experience. I have been very fortunate to make professional contacts and friendships within the area of my study that will help in the completion of this research and will assist me as I continue my work in the field of multicultural Korean studies. Most notably, the adventure to the Gangneung Danoje Festival has been one of the most fun and outstanding experiences I have had. The Gangneung Danoje Festival was designated Important Intangible Cultural Heritage No. 13 by the Korean Government in 1967 and one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible

Soojin Kim Ritterling Grant Profile Host Field2009: Senior Researcher Dulsori Arts and Culture Music

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Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2005. The first written record of its rituals appears in the 3rd century Chinese record Sanguozhi (Records of Three Kingdoms) by Chenshou (233-297), which describes the rituals and celebrations of the ancient Korean people. One of these was Mucheon, where sacrifices were offered to the god of heaven and people gathered together to drink and dance. The very same festival in current times is the Gangneung Danoje Festival in Gangneung, Gangwon Province.

According to Korean folk scholar Lee Bo-hyung, the Gangneung Danoje Festival h a s b e e n “p a s s e d d o w n in its original form.“ This festival is unique, having a rel igious ritual for the tutelary deities that combined Confucian sacrificial rites and shamanic r i tua ls as well as a non-verbal mask dance drama, the Gwanno Mask Drama. Under the Society for the Preservation of the Gangneung Danoje Festival, three masters in religious rituals , shaman

rituals, and Gwanno Mask Drama have taught and guided succeeding generations to carry on this festival. The Gangneung Danoje involves three main deities: the Mountain God of Daegwalryeong, Kim Yu-shin; the Deity Guksa Seonghwangsin of Daegwalryeong, Beomilguksa; and the Goddess Guksa Yeoseonghwangsin of Daegwalryeong. In 2010, the Gangneung Danoje Festival began with the Sinjubitgi (brewing of the sacred liquor) on May 18 (April 5 by the lunar calendar) at Chilsadang, the ancient government office. Sinju (sacred liquor) is made with rice and malt given by the Mayor of Gangneung. While Confucian officiants mix the ingredients, a shaman officiant performs songs and dance accompanied by the florid rhythms of

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percussion players. On May 28 (April 15 by the lunar calendar), Confucian rituals and shaman rituals were offered along with the sacred liquor to the Mountain God of Daegwalryeong and Guksa Seonghwangsin at their shrines atop Daegwalryeong Mountain. The food and the sacred liquor prepared for the altar were shared by hundreds of participants. After they shared the meal, a sacred tree was taken down by a Confucian officiant accompanied by shamans and musicians, and the observing people decorated branches of the tree with long, colorful pieces of silk fabric with their wishes written down on them. The Confucian officiant carried the sacred tree, followed by all the participants, and began the procession through the narrow, rough mountain road. Finally, the crowd headed down to the city to offer the Bonganje ritual at Guksa Yeoseonghwangsa, located in Gangneung. The sacred tree was enshrined inside of Yeoseonghwangsa. Bonganje is a ritual for enshrining Guksa Seonghwangsin with the Goddess Guksa Yeoseonghwangsin as a wedded couple during the Danoje. After the ritual was offered, ritual food was shared again by hundreds of observers. The events of this day began at 10 a.m. at the top of Daegwalryeong Mountain and concluded at 7 p.m. in the city. Through these two events, I have been touched by the people of Gangneung and their kindness and hospitality in accepting others and sharing their pride in 1,000 years of tradition. It was very special and meaningful beyond my ability to express, a lifetime experience that I would like to share with my colleagues and students in the United States. I am looking forward to the main events of Yeongsinje, Jojeonje, Songsinje, Gwanno Mask Drama, and Gangneung Nongak, as well as other festive events that will be held in Gangneung from June 12 to 19, 2010 (May 1 through May 8 by the lunar calendar).

[ Junior Researchers (U.S. Student) ]



American Alumni

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As a Fulbright grantee in 1973-74, I sat in on Korean literature classes at Seoul National University and Korea University, met writers and publishers, started translating Seo Cheong-ju’s poems, attended hearings in the trials against a group of writers, and went with my father to one of the sessions when Kim Chi-ha was on trial. I obtained a Korean driver’s license and had to pretend not to understand Korean at all when a policeman stopped us past curfew on our way through City Hall Plaza, just one minute from Fulbright House. There were Fulbrighters from Japan who came through, with Ed Wright the affable and informed host. Charlie Goldberg, another Fulbrighter, gave a seminar in one of the rooms on the third floor, a seminar in anthropology for graduate students, which he conducted, to my utter amazement, in Korean for two hours at a stretch. I remember joining the writers and editors associated with the journal Changjak-gwa Bipyeong (창작과 비평, Creation and Criticism), at some of their post-editorial meeting meetings in the evenings. I would mostly sit and listen as they discussed works, writers, and the political and social situation in Korea. One writer they were all critical of was Seo Cheong-ju, whose political views many found worse than offensive. But then the poet Shin Kyeong-nim, author of that astonishing, boldly democratic collection Farmer’s Dance, spoke up to say, “Yes, indeed, Midang Seo Cheong-ju’s political views were objectionable, but his early poems!”

David McCannGrant Profile Host Field1973: Junior Researcher Seoul National University Korean Literature1974: Junior Researcher Korea University Korean Literature

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Shin went on to cite the poem “Self-Portrait” as a poem that remained central to his own sense of the poem as a statement of that principle. I was fortunate to meet a number of poets and writers while I was in Seoul those two years: Pak Mok-wol, Cho T’ae-il, Kim Chi-ha, Kim Ch’un-su, Kim Nam-jo, Pak Chae-sam and, eventually, Seo Cheong-ju. My wife and I visited Seo and his wife over in Gwanak, at their home, and at one point sang a few of Kim Min-gi’s songs with the poet’s son. Many years later, in 2008, I briefly returned to the house with some of the experts who were working on the rehab project to make the house into a memorial for the poet. It was sad to see the state of disrepair into which it had fallen and to recall the visits there. One of the poems in Urban Temple, my collection of sijo poems, recalls the visit:

Midang’s House

At the end there is nothing.Metal gate, hinges broken.

At the end there was hunger.Someone hired cooked meals and cleaned.

At the end, just the two of them;

outside the gate, the old pine.

My memories of the two years are filled with many joyous moments, especially as my wife Ann and I made our way around the city with our three-year-old daughter Kate. I also do realize how privileged I was to be able to meet so many of the teachers, writers, publishers and others whose work engaged the issues of that time. I remember them, their seriousness of purpose, and their joy at the engagement.

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My Fulbright Experiences

I spent two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer teaching English at the Seoul National University College of Education while my wife, Diane, taught English at the College of Education’s attached high school. These were transformative years for us. This is when we became deeply interested in and attached to Korea. We still have a number of good friends who were our colleagues or students. (My colleagues have all retired, and even some of my students have now retired as well.) We remain part of the extended family we lived with in our second PC year and have seen them frequently and recently. Father passed away some time ago, Mother is 95 and going strong, the children have grown up and married, and their children are now married and beginning to have children. During my PC days, I got to know Dr. Edward Wright, who was then Director of Fulbright Korea. When Ed learned that we wanted to stay in Korea for a while longer, he invited me to work for Fulbright as an English teacher, teaching as before at Seoul National University College of Education and adding the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. This continued an already good experience. During these years, I began to develop an interest in Korean politics, to learn what the university students were doing, and to observe the way my colleagues were

Edward J. BakerGrant Profile Host Field1974: Junior Researcher 1975: Junior Researcher

Korea National University Korea National University

Korean StudiesKorean Studies

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pressured to try to keep their students from demonstrating against President Park’s maneuvers to allow himself to run for a third term. During this period, a group of Americans began meeting regularly to prepare a petition to the US government to protest its support of the Park regime. We prepared a petition, and five out of fifty of us signed it as the steering committee of the “Group of 50”: Reverend George Ogle, later deported for political reasons; Herb White, who was teaching labor subjects at SNU (as a Fulbrighter, I believe); Faye Moon, an activist and the wife of the famous Reverend Moon Dong-hwan; me; and someone whose name I can’t recall at the moment. We succeed in getting two meetings with Ambassador Porter, whose main concern was getting a complete name list―which, of course, we didn’t supply. We pointed out that the presence of numerous brand-new Dodge Power Wagon trucks with the USAID shield on their doors, bearing loads of riot police to the campuses, made a mockery of the US Embassy’s claim that the US was neutral. Ambassador Porter resourcefully “solved” this problem. He had the trucks taken into the Yongsan base and repainted as Korean National Police vehicles! Our petition survives in the Suitland Maryland National Archives, and several young Korea scholars have made copies of it. In 1969, Ed Wright offered me a job in the Fulbright Office as counselor to Koreans who wanted to study in the US but were not Fulbright grantees. The office was then located in downtown Seoul (Seosomun) in Fulbright House, where most of the grantees lived on the upper floors. Since we wanted to stay in Korea, I took the job, although I feared that the Korean I had worked hard to learn would be eroded, because everyone in the office spoke excellent English. I was mistaken about the office atmosphere. The staff took me in as a colleague and spoke Korean with me most of the time. In fact, by the spring of 1970 my spoken Korean had probably reached its peak. The big event for Diane and me was the birth at Severence Hospital of our son, Hayden, who is now 41 years old! So my first experience with Fulbright Korea was as an employee rather than as a grantee. During the two years from 1968 to 1970, my interest in Korean domestic politics and the role of the US in Korea really began to grow, starting with the occurrence of the “East Berlin Spy Case” and the movement to oppose amending the constitution.

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Then I went to finish my law degree at Yale, spending one semester under an exchange program with Professor Jerome Cohen’s East Asian Legal Studies at Harvard. Then, instead of practicing law, I decided to become a graduate student at Harvard in Korean history under Professor Edward W. Wagner, the founder of Korean studies at Harvard and in the US. This led me to apply to Fulbright for a doctoral fellowship, which I got. I came back with my wife, Diane, and son, Hayden, to spend two years doing PhD research and living in Fulbright House in Seosomun. This was in 1974, a year and a half after President Park declared Yushin, and I was privileged to be able to have a grant for two years. This was probably the most formative period of my development of a serious interest in Korea. At the very beginning I was interviewed, as I think were all the new grantees, by George Lichtblau, the US Embassy’s Labor Attaché. He warned me in no uncertain terms not to get involved in Korean politics (water off a duck’s back). Stunned, we (the Fulbright grantees) observed the Park regime prosecuting and sentencing to death the poet Kim Chi-ha (of course, this made Mr. Kim one of the most famous Koreans in the world), executing eight convicted defendants in the 인혁당 (People’s Revolutionary Party) case the day after the sentences were confirmed by the Supreme Court, deporting Reverend Ogle for standing up for those men and their family (incidentally, their convictions have been overturned in the last few years), bringing arrestees regularly into the Counter Intelligence Corps (military intelligence) across the street from Fulbright House, and decreeing a series of emergency measures that even included the logical possibility of students being executed for cutting class for political reasons (EM 4). What I’ve just recited is only a fraction of the repressive measures that were being taken. Meanwhile, the US government stood silently by. In the spring of 1975, the KCIA forced advertisers to withdraw their ads from the Dong-A Ilbo, which continued to publish with large blank spaces. Soon, ordinary citizens moved to put in advertisements that supported freedom of expression. The Fulbright grantees placed an ad as well, supporting freedom of expression and signed “16 American friends of Korea,” or words to that effect. After thorough consideration, we decided not to sign our names, fearing that we might endanger Korean colleges.

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For me, at least, the most important event of that spring was a meeting with Kim Dae-jung. He was under house arrest, as he had been since being spared during his kidnapping. Doug Reed, a former Peace Corps Volunteer who was Mr. Kim’s English teacher, asked the Fulbright grantees if we would like to meet Mr. Kim. We all replied in the affirmative, and soon thereafter Doug took us in the middle of the day to Mr. Kim’s house in Donggyo-dong. Although he couldn’t leave his residence, his family could, and outsiders could enter at least part of the time. This meeting had an electrifying effect on me. Thereafter, and until his death in August 2009, I was never out of contact with Mr. Kim. I could go on to discuss the visit of Congressman Donald Fraser, the most active legislator in the human rights area, which later led to me working for his investigative committee, as well as Kim Dae-jung’s exile in the US, including a year at Harvard, and so forth. But this is not the place to write a book. The key Fulbright-related point is that Fulbright Korea enabled me to spend the rest of my life involved in Korean studies and Korean politics. I should add that at the same time, I did get a lot of research done, working with two eminent professors (Kim Yong-sup, late Joseon agricultural history, and Park Byoung-ho, Korean legal history). With Edwin Gragert, I also collected thousands of pages of land records starting with the beginning of the Japanese period. Life goes in unexpected directions, and work on Korean human rights issues and for the Harvard-Yenching Institute prevented me from ever finishing my dissertation. For our family, the high point of this Fulbright grant period was the adoption in June 1975 of five-year-old Meejin (aka Elizabeth), who will turn 41 in September! I am grateful to the Fulbright Korea program for launching me on and enabling me to have a very satisfying life related to Korea, although I’m sure I have not followed the expected path.

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Thank You, Fulbright Korea: The Obvious and the Less Obvious

Some things are obvious: a Fulbright grant gave me an opportunity to fulfill my dream of doing an-thropological field work in Korea and to re turn with graduate training to pursue my curiosity about the Korean female shamans I had encountered a few years previously as a US Peace Corps volunteer.

Receiving a “Fulbright” also gave me an important shot of confidence that I might be able to do field work, write a dissertation, publish a book, and be an anthropologist. The Fulbright community gave me the encouragement to present my earliest professional work to an audience that was interested in all things Korean and ready to give constructive criticism, and it was through the Fulbright network that I published early articles in Korea Journal. I recall the generosity of the Fulbright office when my fellowship ended and I remained in Korea on another grant, organizing my field notes and outlining my dissertation on Fulbright-issue

Laurel KendallGrant Profile Host Field

1975: Junior Researcher Asia Research Center at Korea University Anthropology

▲ Participant observation: Laurel Kendall at a kut in 1978

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furniture, flexing my ideas and learning from my colleagues at Fulbright forums, some of us subsequently joining forces to organize symposia and edit volumes. I also recall many kindnesses on the part of Fulbright staff when I returned to Korea on other projects over the years. Although not at that time “a Fulbrighter,” as an alumna I was always made to feel a part of the Fulbright family―and in Korea, I really needed a family. Some Fulbright associations were quirky and serendipitous, but no less valuable for that. Last spring, while interviewing collectors of shaman paintings in an attempt to put together a history of how they had come to be thought of as art, I spoke with the director of a small private museum outside of Seoul who reminisced about going to flea markets in the 1960s and 1970s in search of (then) inexpensive and wonderful bits of Korean folk art. I had these memories, too. When I asked about other collectors who had been interested in shaman paintings in those early days, one of the people he remembered was “an American man at the Fulbright place.” “You mean a tall American who was crazy about antique furniture?” I asked. “That must have been Dr. Wright.” Affirmative. This small encounter was one more reminder of how the Fulbright world I knew in the 1970s was plugged into a world of Korean scholars, publishers, and passionate amateurs bent on preserving, reviving, and popularizing Korean folk culture, nearly all of whom attended one event or another at Fulbright House. Who would have known at the time that Zozayoung (Cho Ja-yeong), who popularized Korean folk art, would today be commemorated with street tiles down an Insa-dong alleyway? Who would have imagined that the Yangju Byeol Sandae Nori troupe, rescued from near oblivion by Dr. Lee Du-hyeon (Yi Tu-hyŏn), would become the nucleus of an international folk theater festival performed in a geodesic dome theater dedicated to the perpetuation of their art? I recall helping to escort the troupe to a Royal Asiatic Society performance, everyone crammed into Ed Wright’s padded van. It is a small but happy memory. As I begin to look at the culture scene of the 1970s as history, I am profoundly grateful that the Fulbright world allowed me the opportunity to observe a little bit of it first hand.

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As I write today, Harvard is celebrating its 359th commencement. Scattered among the many graduates of the class of 2010 in the arts and sciences at both the undergraduate and graduate levels are a considerable number of young men and women who have studied or even concentrated in some aspect of Koreans studies during the course of their academic career. Their career paths will vary. Some will go into business, others into government, and still others into the arts, but in 2010, as in other years, not a small number will go on to further graduate study centered on Korea. And some will also take their first big step, newly inscribed doctoral degree in hand, in a professional academic career in the field of Korean studies, joining the growing number of scholars who have followed this path since Edward W. Wagner, generally regarded as the founding figure of Korean studies in North America, received his own doctoral degree at Harvard and began his faculty appointment here 42 years ago in 1958. Today’s young scholars of Korean studies can look forward to a bright future. Interest in the field is high, more and more universities have added or are adding Korean studies positions to their faculty, and many of the larger institutions like Harvard have established Korean studies centers within the university community to support students and faculty in the field. Indeed, funding for undergraduate, graduate, and faculty study, research, and publication has never been more abundant, thanks in no small part to the emergence of organizations in South Korea such as the Korea Foundation that have made it their strategic purpose to assist in the development of Korean studies programs abroad.

Carter EckertGrant Profile Host Field1981: Junior Researcher Korea University History

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Such was not always the case. When Ed Wagner began his career in the late 1950s, or even when I started graduate work in Korean history about 20 years later, the interest and infrastructure described above scarcely existed. There were few if any jobs on the horizon, and even if one gritted one’s teeth and determined to forge on in the blind hope that somehow, somewhere, a job opportunity would eventually appear if one could get through the eight or so years of graduate study, there was little in the way of public encouragement and financial support to help one actually get to that point. But there was Fulbright/Korea. And what a difference it made. Without Fulbright support, I, like many if not most of my peers at that time, would most likely have had to abandon the idea of field research, if not continuing as a scholar in the field itself―it was just too expensive without that support. And the support that Fulbright provided was not just financial. Having brought us to Korea and provided us with comfortable housing and a stipend for food and other necessities, the Fulbright office, which in my time was headed by the superb team of Mark Peterson, Fred Carriere, and the legendary Mrs. Shim, was also a welcoming home away from home and a center of valuable information and assistance on everything from pots, pans, and laundry to useful and important contacts in Korean academic, corporate, artistic, and government circles, depending on what one needed and where one wanted to go. More than that: Fulbright/Korea was also an intellectual gathering place, where one could meet and mingle with other scholars of like interests, Korean and non-Korean alike, hear presentations of new research, and even tentatively present one’s own work to a group of people who were really and truly interested in what one was doing. Particularly in those earlier days of Korean studies, it is impossible to underestimate the significance of Fulbright/Korea not only in keeping the field alive but also in laying the basis for the thriving field we see today. Thank you, Fulbright/Korea, and congratulations on 60 years of excellence!

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Development: Economic, Personal…and Chili Peppers

My Fulbright year was spent as a researcher inside the Ministry of Finance. The ministry at the time was at the leading edge driving the industrial policy that was powering Korea rapidly from a simple trade economy to a more multi-layered one, while at the same time trying to cope with the transition from a command economy structure (where they were doing the commanding) to a more generalist policy―one within the background context of Korea’s nascent democratization process at the time. My term was the first time an outsider had been allowed inside the otherwise closed government ministry in such a year-long capacity, and for me, as a development economist and lawyer, it was a truly unique “inside view” of one of the Asian Tigers. The year was a tumultuous one, from being inside the government offices during the weeklong violent protests against former President Chun Doo-hwan, to seeing his dramatic apology and departure to a monastery, to going to Manila when Korea prepaid their last Asian Development Bank loans and switched to creditor country status, to assisting a inter-ministry task force on the control of monetary policy formation (only in Korea would such an otherwise esoteric economic point result in several street demonstrations!). Personally, too, it was a big departure from growing up in the US Midwest, as Gwacheon at the time was a bit remote, and the lifestyle there still very local. To my office colleagues, who were mostly highly proud and nationalistic young

Il Young “William” ByunGrant Profile Host Field

1988: Junior Researcher Korea National University Finance and Law

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bureaucrats in the ministry, it was an intriguing and at times uncomfortable jar to their thinking to engage in daily Socratic debate with a “foreigner” who always seemed to take the devil’s advocate view. While common in US law schools, it was an unheard-of departure from their Confucian training up until that point. For many of them, too, it was one of their first encounters with a Korean-American, who seemed so similar to and yet so different from them, and our mutual curiosity led to very personal and deep friendships over the years. Both parties being of similar ages, these experiences gave us very personal and poignant mirrors into what alternative lives and paths that we may have otherwise led (“If I’d emigrated/stayed, that could have been me”), and such thoughts, if not spoken, were always in our minds in that reflective after-glance. One insight into the unintended consequences of democratization and industrial policy: during the previous year, due to pressure from the US to open Korea’s agricultural markets, the government had encouraged farmers to diversify from staple crops to higher-margin vegetables such as…chili peppers. Well, when the government suggested chili peppers, everyone switched to growing them, and in the following year there was a significant glut of chili peppers. In the farmer’s thinking, since it was the government’s “guidance” that had led them to grow the chili peppers, the government was obliged to buy their excess at support prices. Just as adamantly, the government wanted to introduce free market pricing mechanisms, and it refused. After the usual rounds of demonstrations with massed clashing waves, Molotov cocktails, tear gas, etc., a face-saving compromise was finally adopted whereby some support was provided. But where to put all these additional chili peppers? Some of them went into new overseas aid programs to which Korea was just switching over (from aid recipient to donor), and some South Asian countries may have been a bit puzzled at the sudden donation of mass quantities of chili peppers. The rest somehow ended up in that year’s government cafeteria menus, which were possibly some of the most painfully spicy on record― and which happened to coincide with the remainder of my Fulbright term.

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Flying into Kimpo Airport in the summer of 1996, I realized that my relationship with Korea and with the United States was forever going to change. Although I had been born and raised in Korea (by American parents also born and raised in Korea), thanks to the Fulbright foundation my relationship with Korea was now to become my own. As a graduate student in sociology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, I had initially embarked on a study of family demography, the field in which I took my qualifying exams. But as I approached the idea of writing a dissertation, I realized that my real desire was to explore the experiences of Western missionaries in Korea around the turn of the twentieth century. Although this was in part my own family’s history, it was an issue that perplexed me, particularly as I compared what I knew of that history with the literature on similar encounters. Too often, it seemed, such encounters were seen only from the perspective of how Westerners impacted “the other.” Rarely did scholars consider the ways in which Koreans, and the experience of being in Korea, influenced those Westerners, and I knew, from my own family, that there was nothing “one-sided” about those encounters. Much of my research into the impact of Korea on the missionaries could be conducted with materials in the United States, but I wanted to confer with Korean scholars, to access Korean materials, and, frankly, to think about this encounter in

Elizabeth UnderwoodGrant Profile Host Field1996: Junior Researcher Yonsei University Sociology

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Korea. As a parent and graduate student, however, the prospect of finding a way to do so seemed prohibitive. By funding my research in Korea, Fulbright provided me not only with finances for my research, but, more importantly, with an identity as a serious American scholar, an identity which gave me much-needed confidence to make the best use of the time I had been given for research. In retrospect, particularly in a typically busy semester in my current position of Associate Professor of Sociology at Eastern Kentucky University, the idea of nine full months for self-guided research, plus the opportunities of research assistants and access to scholars at Yonsei University, Seoul National University, and beyond, seems unimaginably luxurious. But as I arrived in Seoul, my “hometown,” I was terrified. How could I best use this gift of time for study? Would I find the materials I needed? Would my language skills be sufficient? And perhaps the biggest question of all: would I be able to write? But being in Korea accompanied by Alison, my then four-year-old daughter, provided me with a fabulous lived connection with my missionary ancestors. They, too, had combined parenting with work in Korea. They, too, had struggled with issues of their child’s cultural identity and a desire to help that child bridge the “cultural divide.” In fact, it was as a parent that I was best able to come to identify with my Korean neighbors and, in turn, with the past. Although this may not be universally true, I have found that in parenthood we are forced to acknowledge the common humanity we all share. What I found in my research was that this was true for many of my ancestors, and other early missionaries in Korea as well. Perhaps the greatest benefit I received from the grant was precisely the opportunity to make my own life for myself with my daughter in that land of my childhood. Had I not had that opportunity, provided by Fulbright, to take my daughter with me, I’m not at all sure that I would have had that insight.

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Fulbright Reflections

It has been ten years since I traveled to Seoul on a Fulbright Junior Research grant. It was my second time back since I was trans-racially adopted in 1976. I was awarded a scholarship as a performance artist to develop my artistic work in relationship to Korean traditions, and I had already made contacts with the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts, where I had done a residency in 1997 during my first visit. My life during my Fulbright was full of turmoil, struggle, and crisis. However, it was also a time of learning, enlightenment, and self-transformation. In 2000, it was still a great effort for overseas adoptees to live in Korea. We had just gotten the right to the gyopo (Overseas Korean) visa, which allowed certain overseas Koreans from the 1.5 generation, second generation, and so on to get special residency status with evidence of Korean ancestry. However, adoptee support organizations based in Korea were quite nascent. G.O.A.’L (Global Overseas Adoptees’ Link), for instance, had just begun officially in 1997. Back in the day, it was tough looking Korean and not speaking any. Without the support of the Underwood family, I do not know how I would have survived my time there. I took language courses at the Korean Language Institute for a few months and

Kate HersGrant Profile Host Field2000: Junior Researcher The National Center for Korean

Traditional Performing ArtsPerformance andVisual Art

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started to try to make work. This was a very complex and awkward point in my life. I was extremely young, I had just graduated from art school, and I had not yet developed my artistic practice out of school. I was trying to be an artist, but I was not sure of what I should be making. I was so overwhelmed just by living and working in Korea. I was in search of a Korean identity―something that I assumed was fixed and “authentic.” I never found that, and rightly so. Later, I realized I had been taken in by stereotypes and clichés about the “Far East”: mysterious, exotic, and raw. Now that I am older and less brainwashed by Western colonialism, Korean identity to me is not so easy to explain; its fluidity, its evasiveness, and its fierceness all make for a complicated mishmash of emotions and relationships. Being adopted had made it even heavier to understand and more difficult to be accepted. At this point, I can see that being Korean can be without boundaries, as any culture should. Otherwise, we become fraught with stereotypes and prejudices, because “as you know, Koreans are just like that.” Thus was born the frightening and damaging model minority myth. I find it much more provocative and empowering to recognize that as Koreans, we cannot be straightforwardly labeled. We have so many different skills, talents, occupations and interests. We hold different political positions, religions, and lifestyles, and as a diasporic people, we live scattered all over the world, holding different passports, languages, and cultures. Nevertheless, where I would not mind being typecast as a Korean is in being extremely multi-dimensional and tolerant of others.

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Deberniere Torrey

Five Years Later: Reflections from the Finish Line

If not for my Fulbright year in Seoul, I would have had to switch courses midway during my doctoral studies. The Department of Comparative Literature at Penn State, where I was starting research on the influence of Western Catholic thought on pre-modern Korean literature, was happy to facilitate my taking supplementary Korea-related courses at other American universities for a semester or two. But what I didn’t learn until later was that the particular courses I needed were not offered anywhere in North America at the time. To continue my intended plan of study, I would need to spend a year in Korea sitting in on university courses. The sponsorship of the Korean Fulbright Commission made this possible. And it did much more by providing everything necessary for the transition to a year in Seoul, and by giving me an affiliation that opened doors. Just a few days after arriving in Seoul in August 2004, I made contact with a number of professors at Sogang University, and I was soon auditing five classes and participating in two study groups to spread my net as wide as possible while I had the time and energy. This gave me the initial exposure I needed to better define my course of study, and by spring I was able to narrow my load down to the two most necessary classes and to commute between Sogang and Yonsei

Grant Profile Host Field2004: Junior Researcher Sogang University

and Yonsei UniversityComparative Literature

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Universities with no administrative hassles. Although I had grown up in Korea , the framework of the Fulbright fellowship allowed me a more professional base of involvement with Korea and better opportunities to connect what I was doing in the US with the Korean academic community. There were many serendipitous meetings with people who pointed me along and expressed support, including one Fulbright colleague who facilitated some of my key contacts. Just the week before I left Korea the following summer, circumstances fell into place for me to meet an important scholar in my field who happened to be visiting Seoul, and who generously agreed to join my dissertation committee as a special member. He had also been a Fulbrighter in Korea many years before, and his show of support, which later proved crucial to the successful completion of my degree, was a continuation of the attitude I found throughout the Fulbright community that year. Indeed, in addition to practical and administrative support, the Fulbright Commission provided a warm and energetic community of fellows. There were many stimulating conversations and events, as well as friendships that have continued to be a source of pleasure. The members of the staff at the Fulbright Commission were truly gracious in their assistance, and knowing there was always somewhere to turn for the solution of practical issues freed me from many worries. After I returned to the States, my studies carried on with a bit less momentum than I had enjoyed during the year in Seoul. But one “interruption” had to do with meeting a kindred spirit who had joined my department while I was in Korea. It must have been destiny, because we not only had adjoining desks, but even shared the same advisor. And this new guy, who wasn’t Korean, even liked squid and octopus! So we courted over my spicy ojingeo and his eggs and octopus, and ended

▲ Nathan and I at my childhood home in Gang-won Province, dressed for a congratulatory party one year after the wedding in the US.

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up getting married at Penn State two years ago. One of my Fulbright fellows made it to the wedding―with all four kids, no less. As of this writing, I’m happy to announce the successful defenses of our dissertations. By the time this is printed, I should be officially finished with my degree. (And there were days when I was convinced I would never finish.) Nathan and I are camped out in Middlebury, Vermont, for the time being while Nathan lectures at the college and I continue with a long-term translation contract that was one of the many things made possible during that year in Seoul with Fulbright. I’m looking forward to applying to positions in Korean culture and literature when we go on the job market in the near future. On a lighter note, here’s something from a newsletter I sent out to friends and family during my Fulbright year. I was describing all the things that were falling into place for my academic salvation:

Another providential trend I’ve noticed is that I frequently acquire a piece of information―person, historical event, etc.―just prior to meeting a scholar who mentions the very thing, which means I can nod confidently and look intelligent, whereas just a couple of days or weeks before I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea. I feel a bit like the hero of a comic adventure who, in the confusion of a mad chase, happens upon an object that turns into just the tool she needs to avert the next catastrophe. I suppose I could think of these cases as “narrow aversions of

ignorance.”

To Fulbright, for helping me stay on the upside of this adventure, and for strengthening my ties to Korea.

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Community, Korea, and Fulbright

My wife and I were excited but also nervous about my coming to Korea on a Fulbright. While I can get by in Korean, my wife only knew a few phrases. How could I concentrate on my studies while helping her adjust to the country and take care of our one-year old son? Our fears turned out to be unfounded. The Fulbright staff kindly helped us transition smoothly into life in Korea, and we enjoyed the friendship of fellow Fulbrighters. Much of my wife’s concern melted away when a Korean friend came to visit, not only bringing gifts for our family (including a lot of toys for our son), but lunch as well! Her lack of Korean proved no obstacle to making friends; she found many at the playground among the mothers who wanted to practice English. I also was fortunate in that through Fulbright, I was able to enter into a community of Korean scholars who helped me greatly with my research. (I hope I was of some use to them, too!) Our time in Fulbright reminded us of the importance of community and of how the kindness of others can ease the manifold difficulties of life. We hope to live out that lesson here in the United States. We still carry warm memories of Korea and the community we found there, and we share them with our friends and family. Once I finish my dissertation and obtain my PhD, I hope to share them with my students as well!

Franklin RauschGrant Profile Host Field2008: Junior Researcher Korea University History and Religion

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I must admit that I was already quite familiar with the Fulbright Building well before I was blessed with the opportunity to become a Fulbright junior researcher (2008-09). In 2001, I went to Korea to study the Korean language at Yonsei University as a Blakemore Foundation fellow. One of the first trips I made with new friends in my class was to Mapo-gu to see a Fulbright Forum. Although Mapo is only a stone’s throw away from the Yonsei campus, we still managed to get lost. Asking for directions with our rudimentary and faltering Korean language skills, my friends and I navigated back and forth along the same side of the street before we were finally able to locate the Fulbright Building. We arrived a few minutes late and took our seats in the sixth floor conference room. Although I was a bit flustered, I was immediately drawn into the talk and captivated with the artwork that was presented. The speaker was the late Andrea Rosenberger (1973-2008)1 , who was a fiber artist conducting research on the effect of historical Korean textiles on contemporary Korean fiber art. My friends and I stayed for the buffet reception, introduced ourselves to Andrea, and ended up meeting several people who shared similar interests in

1 Andrea Beth Rosenberger tragically passed away on October 26, 2008, due to natural causes. She was a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where she received her B.F.A and M.F.A., respectively. Rosenberger, a Korean adoptee, was awarded a Fulbright research grant to Korea to study Korean fiber arts in 2001. She worked at Dell as a senior designer.

Katherine LeeGrant Profile Host Field2008: Junior Researcher Seoul National University Archives Ethnomusicology

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Korean culture and the arts. After that first forum, I was hooked. I signed up to be on the mailing list, and dutifully managed to attend the Fulbright Forums on a regular basis that year. Getting to the building became less of an adventure, and I even settled upon a favorite route: straight out of the Gongdeok subway station, past the restaurant with a giant crab on its façade, and through the alley with the tiny and quiet restaurants populated with the occasional ajeossi. In retrospect, I suppose that I enjoyed attending the forums because it was a chance to learn about new areas of research being explored in Korea and to engage in dialogue about Korea. With my grueling daily schedule of language studies, it was refreshing to be able to hear presentations in my native English and to converse with other graduate students and researchers. And without fail, the impressive spread that was prepared for the reception afterwards always managed to have some morsel of Americana that satisfied any cravings that I may have had for food back home. After I finished the Yonsei Korean language program, I started working full time in Seoul, and I found it more difficult to attend the forums regularly. But after living in Korea for a number of years, I soon found myself befriending quite a few Fulbright grantees through various networks. Later on, some of these friends came to give forum presentations themselves, many of which I made time to attend. When I returned to Korea in 2008 as a researcher and went to the Fulbright building to “check in” for the year, I observed that the area around the Gongdeok rotary had changed significantly. New bakery cafés were now sandwiched into prime locations, and some of the old landmarks, like the giant protruding crab, were no longer to be seen. Knowing how quickly the topography of Seoul changes in the name of progress, I was not surprised, but I was a little saddened not to scan some of the visual cues that had been imprinted upon my memory. And as it turned out, the Fulbright b u i l d i n g i t s e l f u n d e r we n t m a j o r renovations during my research year. The old sandstone face of the building was replaced with a granite exterior. This was a project that took several months, but by the time I was about to leave Korea in late October 2009, the scaffolding had

▲ The Fulbright Korean Studies Dissertation Support Group (FKSDSG) and our last meeting in June 2009

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▲ Fellow Fulbright grantee Aimee Lee and myself with Kenya Casey (Emory University)

disappeared, and the building was restored and looking fresh from its face lift. There was one thing that I came to realize in my last meeting with the staff and Mrs. Shim at the Fulbright office: in the midst of change and the rotating cycles of new and departing grantees and scholars, the staff at the Korean-American Educational Commission have remained a grounding presence in my experiences over the years. They are the ones who are in the office day in and day out, fielding and answering our questions, dealing with our issues, processing our stipends, and overseeing a tremendous amount of paperwork that facilitates our momentary sojourn so that we may be privileged enough to just focus on our research. When I gave my own Fulbright Forum talk in May, I noticed that members of the Korean staff had prepared some of the dishes for the reception; the staff also served food to the attendees and cleaned up afterwards. I was touched by their generosity and their graciousness, especially since the normal hours of the workday had been well exceeded by that late hour. The KAEC staff are the people behind the scenes who ensure that the massive operation that is Fulbright Korea flows smoothly and continues to develop and grow. Many of them have had longstanding ties to Fulbright themselves. They often go unnoticed, because this is how they themselves perhaps prefer it, and because we sometimes forget to remember the anchors of support that remain steadfast in place as we embark on fledgling

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journeys and get caught up with the business and busy-ness of research and life in Korea. With sincere gratitude, I would like to thank all of the staff at the KAEC for their professionalism, their dedication, and their warmth.

[ English Teaching Assistants (ETA) ]



American Alumni

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Fred Yeon

My time as an ETA in Jeju Province was poignant in terms of my understanding of my heritage as well as my connection to the Korean people and culture. While my time teaching at a co-ed commercial high school in a remote corner of Jeju Island was challenging, it was the charisma of my students and the faculty members that yielded the most formative memories that I have from my time in South Korea. I also worked as a Summer Coordinator for the 47 incoming grantees in 2002. Both of these experiences allowed me to embrace challenges in a humbler and more positive way. I am thankful for my time as a Fulbright Scholar.

P.S.: One of the best moments in my life was when I assisted the Brazilian national soccer team when they played on Jeju Island, since I was born and grew up in Brazil. As they would become the Korea/Japan World Cup champions, this was one of those moments that linger with you through life.

Grant Profile Host2001: English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Pyoseon Commercial High School

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How Has Fulbright Korea Impacted Your Life?

As a Fulbrighter in Korea, I found exactly what I was seeking as a young college graduate: a dynamic balance of learning and teaching in an international context. My grant year was a spirited medley of English teaching, Korean study, Taekwondo, volunteering, and interpersonal exchange with community members, and although it left me with hardly any time to myself, it was wonderful. My Fulbright experience shaped me in many ways: it sparked a number of linguistic research ideas, including the line of work I am currently pursuing in my dissertation; it brough t me closer to family I had not seen for years; it made me

much more of a global citizen sensitive to cultural and personal differences; and it showed me how important it is for people of all backgrounds to participate in these sorts of international exchanges. Moreover, I really grew to love the host country. It is no accident that I have been back to Korea almost every year since the end of my grant!

Charles B. ChangGrant Profile Host 2003: English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Jungwon High School

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OH KOREA

What you mean to MEKorea

Distant in mindnear in heart

smiles remind me of the beautiful skiesand cloudy rains

the view could touch you deep insidedo you remember?

small friendsAmerican people, black faces

strange language barely known but understood

I am sitting near a distant pond in Gyeongju

town of ancient wisdomwhen smells of a beachy river

fill my eyes with tears and I think of the difficult lifelong memories

that make m e strongerI wanna cry out to the distanttemples Cry out to my GOD

while listening to the ancestors’ wisdom

JohnDre JenningsGrant Profile Host2004: English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Icheon High School

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If I could I would draw dancing fairies

in the mist of Korea’s tallest mountainas I stood on the peak

and whisperedbeautiful sayings to them

ask them to tell the coming angels of

Joy, Peace and Laughter

I remembered- I rememberedone day one beautiful day

while sitting silently in the mist of the clearest view that one could see

my hair was wild and bushyMy spirit was wild

And the colors were purpleorange and blue

bright bright blueas time traveled

again and again for me I think of some African berries

Oh they taste like the sweetest winehmmm.

Being drunken in this blissis OK just fine

to me and my bodycause I am happyno more sad songs

love stories gone wrong

only the light of my grandmother’s whispers

caught in this reality of a dream I am

Oh Korea Morning Calmyou are my haven away from the hells I face in the parallels of a strangeness

I have never knownYou are truly a blessing.....

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Aimee Jachym

Korean Kids & Orphanage Outreach Mission (“KKOOM” or “꿈”)

Korean Kids & Orphanage Outreach Mission (“KKOOM” or “꿈”), a U.S. 501(c)

(3) nonprofit organization, was founded in September 2007 by Fulbright Korea ETA alumnae Aimee Jachym (2004), Erika Senneseth (2004), Lauren Derebey (2005), Colleen Kohashi (2005), Leanne Stein (2005), and Robin Kim (2006), all of whom taught at secondary schools in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, and volunteered at Samsungwon, the orphanage there, during their ETA grant years. KKOOM is an all-volunteer endeavor that exists to improve and enrich the lives of orphans and other children living in orphanages and group homes in South Korea through first hand engagement with donors, volunteers, orphanage staff, and children. KKOOM is funded overwhelmingly by individual donors, many of whom are connected to the Fulbright Korea program. Before KKOOM was founded, the “Gumi ETAs” hosted ad hoc fundraising campaigns around the Christmas holiday in 2004, 2005, and 2006, delivering clothing, toys, umbrellas, and school supplies over that three-year span. The Gumi ETAs also launched the first ever “spring parties” at Samsungwon in the spring of 2006 with a legendary spaghetti dinner. The staff and kids at Samsungwon still talk about how delicious Colleen’s “special spaghetti sauce” was. The first spring party was an important step of “cultural exchange”―it was the first time foreigners (non-Koreans) were ever allowed to cook in the Samsungwon kitchen! Before that, local volunteer teams had come by to prepare gimbap and other Korean foods for the kids, but the kids had never had a hearty, genuine American-style spaghetti

Grant Profile Host2004: English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Gumi High School

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dinner. We have since found out that there may have been a “secret backup plan” to feed the kids dinner that night in the event that our efforts fell short. That plan, however, has never been revealed, and we have cooked several meals for the kids since then, including tacos, hamburgers, and several styles of spaghetti. Also made legendary at that first party was the American-sized ice cream sundae. We bought large tubs of ice cream, toppings and chocolate sauce and sugar-infused the kids for hours. It was an overnight sensation, and now there are very few KKOOM events that don’t involve ice cream. With that said, we should note that KKOOM does readily supply toothbrushes on at least an annual basis, and we do offset those calories with high-energy activities. One of the things that has been most rewarding for us as Fulbright alumnae running KKOOM is the constant connection and interconnection we have been able to maintain with Korea and Fulbright Korea, despite our inability to travel there frequently. For instance, the Samsungwon orphanage staff are well acquainted with the “한미교육위원단” and call all of the Fulbright ETA volunteers by their full title, “한미교육위원단 원어민 선생님”―which is impressive, given that many ETAs’ schools do not refer to ETAs by the correct name. Many KKOOM volunteers and supporters have also served as ETA Orientation Coordinators (13 in three years), so the inter-relations between KKOOM and Fulbright Korea are somewhat inseparable, even to the point that the orphanage staff ask about Summer Orientation planning and when the new ETAs will come to Samsungwon. We’ve also now seen KKOOM grow to the point where it is being cited in application materials as a reason why people want to come to Korea on Fulbright ETA grants. Around the Internet, you can find blog posts about and videos of our annual holiday party, which is an overnight affair where we invite volunteers―many of whom are Fulbright ETAs and junior researchers―to come and host an all-day party, complete with pictures with Santa, a gingerbread house-making contest, and individual gifts for all. Another point of pride for KKOOM is that we have expanded beyond Gumi and now support orphanages in several other cities, including Seoul, Daegu, Deoksan, Seogwipo, and Seosan. We have been able to do so by partnering with volunteers and identifying specific needs that the children and orphanages have. As a matter of policy, KKOOM does not give money directly to orphanages or orphanage staff; rather, it uses its funds to purchase goods, via its volunteers,

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directly for the children at the orphanages. To date , more than 50 Fulbright Korea alumni have been involved in KKOOM-sponsored events and projects at orphanages throughout Korea. Volunteers in Korea can now apply for K K O O M “vo l u n t e e r - l e d project” funding through an application process we launched in the winter of 2008. KKOOM hopes to continue expanding its network of volunteers and trusted orphanage contacts so that it can replicate the very specialized work it does at Samsungwon at other orphanages throughout Korea. Finally, the most exciting news for KKOOM is that we are in the midst of launching an International Education Program, which will connect kids at Korean orphanages directly with native-English speaking tutors and teachers in America via Internet video conferencing. KKOOM plans to develop and implement its own curriculum, which will be taught by trained volunteers and delivered to the kids via a KKOOM-provided computer―this is a great testament to the true globalization of our world and the kind of change Korea has undergone in the 60 years of Fulbright Korea history. In addition to the English education component, KKOOM also plans to provide an opportunity for orphans to visit the US on a short-term KKOOM-led study tour. Initial seed money has been secured, and those plans are under development. Since its inception, other ETA alumnae―Kimberly Cheong (2007), Jessica Lee (2007), Joan Lee (2007), Amber Rydberg (2007), and Laura Tschop (2007-08)―have also served on the KKOOM board of directors. The KKOOM board members of past and present, all proud ETA alumnae, currently live throughout the US and Mexico and serve in their communities in such capacities as lawyer, vice principal, foreign service officer, university administrator, teacher, grad student, and future doctor. To learn more, please visit www.kkoom.org.

▲ Joan Lee, Erika Senneseth, Laura Tschop, Kimberly Cheong, Aimee Jachym, Leanne Stein

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Alexis Stratton

My experience as an English Teaching Assistant with Fulbright Korea was a profound one that continues to have an impact on my life years after my grant period ended. Not only did my work at Yeosu Jungang Girls’ High School, Camp Fulbright, and the ETA Orientation Program reconfirm my intense desire to teach (as well as give me teaching experience that has been invaluable in my career), but the cultural knowledge and understanding I gained during my time in Korea also vastly changed and expanded my worldview as well as my interests. I’m currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing, and the time I spent in Korea has given me plenty to write about―particularly regarding cultural differences and similarities, philosophies, and so on. At the same time, I feel I am better able to master the academic challenges brought on by my literary studies, particularly when trying to understand multiple perspectives, differing views on gender, class, culture, race, etc., and the theories and literature that I read and discuss in my courses. Additionally, the teaching and pedagogical training I received helped prepare me for my work as a teaching assistant and, in the future (or so I hope), as a professor. Furthermore, there are a number of (smaller) things I would not be doing right now were it not for my time in Korea. For example, I’m currently taking Taekwondo at a dojang right here in Columbia, SC; I regularly visit the Korean market and have, over the years, experimented with Korean cooking (sharing it

Grant Profile Host 2006: English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Jungang Girls’ High School

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with friends, of course); I’ve learned Korean and have had Korean friends and conversation partners who have enriched and are enriching my life; and, for better or worse, I have a constant and intense desire to return to Korea whenever possible (I hope that’s in the cards for my future). Korea continues to fascinate and elude me, and I’m grateful I’ve had the opportunity to experience Asian culture, grow close to my homestay family and coworkers, and teach classrooms full of giggling/sleeping/attentive/cell phone-using students. Although I’ve tried here, it’s almost impossible to put into words the vast and lasting impact that my life in Korea has had on me. There are the obvious, tangible effects, but I think it’s the intangible ones that will stay with me the longest―the opening up of a world and a place that was (and yet sometimes still is) far beyond me, the memories and changes that have left a mark on so much of what I do and who I am.

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Sara Shin

My Reflection

Going to South Korea through the Fulbright program was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. It wasn’t always easy living with a Korean family and working with Koreans, but I grew tremendously from the experience. I learned more about myself, and I also learned how to work closely with people from a different cultural background. Although I was born in the States, I’m ethnically Korean and my parents are from Korea, and so I have always been interested in Asia, and specifically North Korea. During my stint in South Korea, I was able to travel around Asia, and I even peeked into North Korea while standing in a boat on the Yalu River, which separates China and North Korea. My time spent in and around Korea reaffirmed my desire to do work related to that part of the world. I firmly believe in the mission of the Fulbright program―to better relations between the United States and other countries by using education as a tool. Having participated in the Fulbright program in Korea, I can attest to the value of providing Americans with the opportunity to be exposed to different cultures. Both the Fulbright participants and natives of the host country learn to work and live harmoniously with each other despite their different backgrounds and

Grant Profile Host2006: English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Cheonan Dujeong Elementary School

and Cheonan Yonggok Elementary School

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lifestyles. A unique aspect of the Fulbright program that makes it stand out among other teaching programs in Korea is that Fulbright ETAs are not assigned a rigorous teaching schedule, but are instead encouraged to engage in activities beyond the classroom and serve as cultural ambassadors for the United States. In the process, Fulbright fellows are able to learn more about the host country and engage in new and enlightening experiences. Specifically in Korea, the Korean-American Educational Commission prepares Fulbright participants well for their year in Korea by being a constant resource for all things Korean, recommending everything from good Korean language programs to must-eat Korean foods. In the same way that more communication and interaction tend to draw people closer, greater exposure can bring countries together. The more Americans and Koreans learn about each other through mutually beneficial cross-cultural programs like Fulbright, the better the relations between these countries will be. At this point in history, as countries become more interdependent and globally minded, we must make an even greater effort to invest in such relationship-building programs if we hope for a world in which nations are more committed to thriving together than bringing each other down.

▲ Sara Shin with fellow Elementary ETAs participate in a winter language program 2006

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Michelle Lee Jones

My ETA grant with Fulbright Korea has helped make what once felt like a pipe dream of pursuing graduate studies in Korean history into a concrete goal that I will accomplish step by step. I was happy to be placed in Gwangju, since I was able to learn more about the uprisings of May 18, 1980, and had numerous opportunities to improve my knowledge of Korean history. Despite my eagerness to study and live in Korea, I remember being very nervous about living with a host family for a year. Ultimately, this was one of the most important and special experiences made available to me by Fulbright. My host family really helped me see Korean culture from a perspective that I couldn’t have experienced if I had lived on my own. I learned about family traditions, care for the elderly, women’s issues, generational gaps, the 386 generation, youth culture, and more. I bonded emotionally with my host family and was able to share Korea with my American family and America with my Korean family. Years later, I am still a monthly pen pal to my host brothers, and I hope that by the time they are in college, I will be in graduate school in Korea! At ETA orientation, I was able to meet amazing peers and increase my awareness of global educational inequities during a project in Burma that I helped start with friends Margaret Mahoney and Anurag Gupta. ETAs from the Fulbright Korea classes of 2006 to 2009 volunteered time during the winter break to train teachers in Burma, bring resources to libraries, and raise funds for special projects to improve a school. We also shared our project at the Gwangju International

Grant Profile Host2006: English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Hannam Middle School

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Center and at international fairs. Being able to contribute to a school in Burma only made us more passionate about our work in Korea and the impact ETAs can have on education worldwide. I still maintain a close relationship with Korean and American friends made during my grant, and we’re all using our Fulbright network to motivate one another and pursue the goals we set during our grant. I am so proud of the ETA class of 2006-07 and the strides we’ve made in the past few years to take what we learned in Korea and apply it to our careers.

▲ Michelle Lee Jones first weekend with her homestay family

▲ This was taken in my 2nd year in Korea when my mother came to visit me. It was so special sharing my love of Korea with my mom, and spending time with both mother figures who encouraged me to accomplish my goals during the grant.

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Everything I needed to know I learned teaching in South Korea. My two years living in Galsan, South Korea, taught me a lot about how to be a successful teacher. Teaching every student in my school reminded me of the importance of having different expectations for different students and knowing how to put this into practice effectively. I learned how to differentiate for different grade levels and class personalities. I realized it’s okay not to have all the answers. Over the course of two years, I learned how to reuse and perfect lessons so that they were executed the way I wanted them to be the first time. Often, the most significant learning took place outside of the classroom walls. Even a moment can be meaningful. Kindness from strangers in a new place makes that place seem a little more like home. Now, as an elementary school teacher in the United States, I often think back to my teaching experience in South Korea. I am so grateful to the school staff, the teachers, and, most importantly, the students. They gave me a unique experience with another culture’s education system. I will forever be indebted to them for teaching me how to teach.

Laura TschopGrant Profile Host

2007: English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Galsan Elementary School

▲ Galsan Elementary School, Decemeber 2008, Kindergarten students learn about winter holidays and pose for a picture.

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I was fortunate enough to spend two very different years in Korea through Fulbright: one as an ETA and another as the Executive Assistant at the KAEC offices. People will sometimes ask me which year was “better,” expecting me to choose either the busy city life in Seoul or the more quiet pace of Jeju, but each year presented its own challenges and offered its own rewards. Working with energetic and earnest students, knowing and loving a Korean homestay family, learning the inter-workings of the Fulbright Scholarship Program and basic diplomacy, befriending Korean and American grantees, professors, students, teachers and coworkers―all of these made me reconsider my career track as a mathematics teacher in the US. I never thought I would become interested in international relations or foreign languages, but here I am today, hoping to start a career in international education or continue working for government sponsored exchanges like Fulbright. The program in Korea established new interests, goals, and friendships, and I am forever thankful.

Nicole GuarinoGrant Profile Host

2007: English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Ara Middle School

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Laura Johnson

I find that Americans’ awareness of Korea is peripheral at best. Most people know that we fought in the Korean War, and that North Korea has been a “bad news” kind of place for decades. Sadly, that’s where it ends. I’ll admit that I did not know much beyond that when I first arrived in Chuncheon in July 2007. I spent a year gathering experiences and stories. I traveled, spent time really getting to know my students and co-teachers, and taught myself to commit to the moment. As I told my Korean family and friends about my life back home, I was always mentally recording...and editing...and writing. I was learning too much

and discovering too many things to let anything be forgotten. I did a great deal of actual writing while in Korea, but now that I’m back in Colorado I find that I prefer telling stories aloud. My studies were in English, specifically linguistics and creative writing, but when I left college I still didn’t know how to tell a story so as to bring people the truth of the experience. Now I tell stories about Korea every day, and they feel true and real. Korea is in my blood now. I hope that those who hear me speak can better understand South Korea, the vibrant, fierce little country that I still consider a home.

Grant Profile Host2007: English Teaching Assistant (ETA)

Yeongcheon Girls’ High School

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Kenny Loui

Being an ETA, Making a Difference

The Purpose of the Fulbright ETA

What is the purpose of the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant? I think that is a question that most―if not all―new ETAs find themselves asking after the end of their first semester, if not sooner. I did, at least, after my own first month of teaching… According to the Korean-American Educational Commission (KAEC), the role of the ETA is as follows:

Your role as an ETA is to teach conversational English as a native English-speaking teacher in a Korean…school. However straightforward this may seem, your role as a teacher is a great deal more dynamic and complex…. You are also a co-worker, a friend, a consultant, an expert, a novice, and, of course, a cultural

ambassador. (ETA Teaching Manual 2008, pp. 8-9)

In brief, the purpose of the ETA is to teach conversational English to Korean students. But unlike native English-speaking teachers from other programs, the Fulbright ETA is also expected to play the dual role of English teacher and “cultural ambassador.” So what happens when an ETA begins to question his or her role―specifically, the validity and value of his or her role―as an ETA? I can’t speak for other ETAs, but in my own case, doubts about my “effectiveness” as an ETA have stemmed primarily from students’ initial attitudes and behavior.

Grant Profile Host2008: English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Youngil High School

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I had many expectations―both good and bad―prior to my arrival in Korea. But for the most part, I naïvely thought that most of my students would be very well-behaved and attentive in class, and that I would encounter few behavioral problems, if any. My first time walking into the classroom, however, I was greeted by several sleeping students and others chatting amongst themselves―even as I was trying to introduce myself! Of course, this experience is not representative of all my classes, but it still serves as an illustration of how reality can significantly differ from one’s preconceptions.

My Reasons for Becoming an ETA

In the months prior to graduation, I had a few options from which to choose, including the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship, a fellowship for Korean language study, and a full-time job offer from the FBI. Needless to say, deciding among the three was difficult, and after much thought and deliberation I chose both to take a break from studying and to turn down what was, for all intents and purposes, my “dream job” in order to accept the Fulbright grant. As an ETA at a Korean high school, I hoped to satisfy my desire of making a direct and positive impact on the lives of others sooner rather than later. But after a semester spent dealing with sleeping and rowdy students, I began to have doubts as to whether I was making any difference at all.

Class 1-3: Redemption

With regard to student misbehavior, the overall situation began to improve slightly during the spring semester due to a variety of factors―including, but not limited to, altering the way I conducted my lessons (learning from mistakes made during my first semester) and bonding more with my students. On that note, I would like to briefly mention the students of Class 1-3, whom I taught during my second and final semester at Youngil High School. Class 1-3 could be considered my lowest-level class in terms of English proficiency, as well as the highest in terms of disorderly conduct―at least initially. I’m still not quite sure how to explain it, but during the course of the semester, Class 1-3’s behavior improved for the better―improved, in fact, to the point of becoming the most well-behaved class of all the ones I taught during my grant year. As I mentioned before, their English level was not as high as that of the other

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classes. But what Class 1-3 students lacked in English proficiency, they made up for in diligence, and because of that, I did everything I could to ensure that their motivation levels remained high―chatting with them in and outside of the classroom, encouraging them to “keep up the good work,” and urging them to continue to “do your best.”

The Student-ETA Relationship

Each ETA has a different philosophy and approach to fostering relationships with his or her students. In determining the type of relationship I wanted to have with my own, I evaluated my dual role as an ETA―namely, as a teacher and as a cultural ambassador―and ultimately decided to emphasize my role as a cultural ambassador. Although I had only 16 class hours to teach each week, I found myself doing a lot of “overtime” work: my typical workday was 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., and I occasionally stayed until 10 p.m. on certain days. Youngil High School essentially became my life for one year. For better or worse, I was and always have been a workaholic, but being a workaholic was not my only reason for staying at school so long each day. I also wanted to talk with and get to know my students better (even the “troublemakers”), and the only time to do that was during the breaks in between classes, as well as during lunch and dinner. I genuinely enjoyed the time I spent with my students outside of the classroom―learning about their interests, motivations, and dreams, and relating to them on a one-on-one level. I also did what I could to liven up their long days of seemingly endless study by walking the hallways during the breaks, chatting and telling jokes. In brief, my students’ welfare was my number one priority.

Endgame: Did I Make a Difference?

All in all, my year as an ETA was an enriching experience, to say the least. I had the chance to serve in a mentor role for several students, helping them discover their dreams and develop plans to pursue those dreams. I also helped students prepare for essay and speech contests and, in so doing, improved (hopefully!) their confidence with English. In my lesson plans, I worked hard to emphasize community service and volunteerism as well. During my final month of teaching, I had students give presentations on “global

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issue” topics of their choice, ranging from school violence to global warming. My objective was to get students to think about the important issues and problems facing their communities, both at the local and international level. One student’s presentation, in particular, I will never forget―not because of the amount of effort she put into researching her topic or practicing her speech, but because of the way she concluded it. At the end of her presentation, Jo Sun-hee, a student from Class 1-6, told her classmates, “It is our responsibility to save our world.” A few other students’ presentations, in which they used their particular global issue to discuss their dreams and aspirations for the future, had messages as insightful and as moving as Sun-hee’s, which touched my heart:

• Lee Kwan-hun (Class 1-2), whose dream is to someday become the Korean Minister of Education, criticized Korea’s education system and its emphasis on “studying as the only way to success,” and noted that although “earning lots of money and getting a good job is the goal of most students…success in this world should be [defined as] having kindness and humanity.”

• An Young-joo (Class 2-7), who wants to become a doctor, shared with the class her desire to help others regardless of their socioeconomic status: “It makes my heart hurt to see some doctors cure only patients who have money.”

• Bae Ji-eun (Class 2-5) wants to be a pharmacist so she can “help many sick people.” She doesn’t want only to “give medicine to people,” but also to “share [their] sorrows and joys.”

• Jo Ye-eun (Class 2-2) said that she would like to work with UNICEF some day so that she can “help poor children and give them visions.” She ended her presentation by saying, “I think helping others is the most important thing in

our lives.”

I concluded my teaching year with a final goodbye to the faculty and students in the school auditorium (plus a very elaborate surprise party from Class 1-3―complete with cake, balloons, confetti, and a “farewell/thank you” speech presented by the students). That day put to rest any doubts in my mind about whether I had made the right decision in choosing to become an ETA. I left Youngil High School realizing that I actually had made a difference in these students’ lives. That being said, I still wonder whether it was I who had the greatest impact on my students, or they on me.

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Jane Lee

ONE

I vividly remember my first week at Cheonan Ssangyong High School. Each day for five days, I impatiently waited in the gyomusil (teacher’s room) to walk into each of the 12 new classrooms filled with 40 new faces. It was like I was child again, waiting to open a gift under the Christmas tree. I was enthusiastic and eager to meet the students. That Wednesday morning, as I slid open the door to Class 1-8, I was immediately greeted with applause and one very loud student blaring the words “Hello, Jelly!” That was my first encounter with Kim Min. Kim Min always yelled in class. It was the same frequency whether he was asking to use the restroom or telling me that my dress was too yellow and that it made me look like a banana. His dream was to be a professional rock singer, and he was notorious at school for experimenting with his hairstyle. At the end of each lesson, I usually commented on how his hair looked even crazier that week than the last. I went so far as to have pictures of cartoon characters ready on my desktop to display to the class. All the students found our rapport very amusing. I used this as an opportunity for the students to practice their English, holding weekly debates on who looked worse, Kim Min or Jelly. One Friday afternoon, Kim Min’s homeroom teacher, Mr. Jang, approached me during the cleaning break to tell me about Kim Min’s disappearance. Unbeknownst

Grant Profile Host2008: English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Cheonan Ssangyong High School

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to me, he had been gone for two whole days. The homeroom teacher and Kim Min’s parents were at a loss. Neither party knew what he was doing or where he was sleeping. It was at that moment that my role as a teacher became merged with the role of guardian. I felt an obligation to protect and provide security for this student. I didn’t know how, but I knew that I needed to find Kim Min. Luckily, he did not know I had his number, and he picked up my phone call that afternoon. I casually asked him to hang out with me on Saturday, bribing him with pizza and a visit to the noraebang. He reluctantly agreed. Kim Min, his best friend Han Bin and I met at noon in the Mr. Pizza across from Yawoori Mall. For four hours, we discussed everything from 2NE1’s newest song to Mr. Jang’s baldness to family life. I shared some of my experiences growing up in New York, and the boys shared stories about their lives in Cheonan. They both felt immense pressure from their parents over school, grades, and future goals. Kim Min expressed his desire to quit school, move to Seoul, and become a rock star. I assured him that whatever profession he pursued, he would need at least a high school degree, and that English was a very useful skill to have in the music industry. It was through this conversation that I was further convinced of my role as a guide to help Kim Min find his way. He trusted me. By the time we finished our trip to the noraebang, it was about 6 p.m. and the sun had begun to set. As their guardian for the day, I asked the boys when they would be heading home. Kim Min got very upset at the question and stormed off to the nearest pool hall. I didn’t immediately chase after him. Knowing well that he would not listen to words, I needed to show him through action. So I acted on a simple fact that had I learned through Fulbright: the way to a Korean’s heart is through rice and kimchi. I went to my favorite bokkeumbap restaurant to order takeout. I took the food back to the pool hall. Inside, I held out the bag to Kim Min and said that even if he wasn’t going to go home that night, he should take care to eat well. I added that it would be nice to see him on Monday. As I handed him the takeout bag, I saw Kim Min’s eyes watering. I felt hope. On Monday morning, I gathered my things from my desk to head to class. As I made my way out of the gyomusil, I saw Kim Min and his father walk toward the office. As I was about to turn to corner, Kim Min stopped and, for the first time, bowed and called me “Teacher.” The day I was leaving for America, I received a text message promising that he would stay in school and graduate. We have

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remained in contact since my departure. Kim Min writes to tell me about his newest hairstyle or the newest teacher he supposedly hates. I recently received an e-mail saying that he would be interested in going to college. Next winter, I will go back to Cheonan to watch Kim Min graduate from Cheonan Ssangyong High School. I went into my Fulbright teaching year with one goal: to impact one student’s life. This one is Kim Min.

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Brian Wylie

Is the experience of a Fulbright ETA free of difficulty? Certainly not. In between making new friends at Orientation, meeting the Korean family in whose home you will be living for a year , and working with students and teachers who are as eager to learn about you as you are about them, there are challenges―challenges inherent to living in another

country, to not sharing a language or understanding the nuances of a different culture, to being a part of a new, Korean family and to feeling disconnected from your own back home. But sometimes a funny thing happens, right when you are otherwise overwhelmed with the misunderstanding and being misunderstood. It starts with being reminded, maybe through an e-mail or a phone call, or while simply daydreaming, of something from home that makes you wish you were back there. Hopefully, you then have a brief moment of clarity, when you accept that it is okay to miss those things and to be overwhelmed at times, because you know that you will return home sometime soon. But most importantly, you also realize that you will likely never have another opportunity like this, and neither will most

Grant Profile Host2009: Elementary English Teaching Assistant (EETA)

Cheonan Ssangjeong Elementary School

▲ Family picture on Geoje Island

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of the people you’ve met or will meet in your life. So you resolve to try again to be an adopted Korean son, daughter, sister, or brother, to have the patience that you should with cute, if rambunctious, seven- to twelve-year-olds, and even to eat kimchi for breakfast―and you end up learning something, just as I have, not only about Korea, but also about yourself. And that makes all the challenge worth it. And, in the words of one very wise Executive Director, if you can survive the challenge of living with a Korean family for a year, then you can survive just about anything!

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David Libardoni

When we think of the relationship between the US and Korea, we tend to focus on the big picture―our military alliance, economic partnership, and mutual interest in a secure, prosperous East Asia region. But what Fulbright has done for six decades, and will hopefully continue to do for dozens more, is to strengthen our relationship on a much smaller yet no less important scale. Fulbright is about people, plain and simple. The exchange of ideas that happens every day between American citizens and Korean nationals, teachers and students, and researchers and scholars contributes to a deeper understanding of each other and each other’s culture. What we share are stories, values, interests, dreams, and passions, some with similar characteristics and some that are vastly different. The interactions are face-to-face, giving us the chance to find common ground, appreciate our

Grant Profile Host2009: English Teaching Assistant (ETA)

Geumsung Middle School

▲ My Taekwondo class in Naju▲ ETAs at a Kia Tigers baseball game

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differences, and ultimately shape a much more human perspective on what America and Korea represent. As Americans living and learning in Korea, we are challenged to be cultural ambassadors, a title that carries much weight but not a clear job description. We must embody something greater than ourselves yet still stay true to our individuality. It is a delicate balance, and as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant I faced this challenge every day in and outside of my classroom. When I look back on my Fulbright experience and my time in Korea, I remember the people I met the most and the understanding we achieved together. That is my relationship with Korea, and it is my hope that those I formed close bonds with along the way will have the same relationship with the United States.

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Elizabeth So

I’m an Eonni

One hot day in mid-August, after six weeks of a busy and demanding orientation, my fellow ETAs and I gathered for our homestay announcements at the Fulbright Building in Seoul. During this time, the 70 ETAs were in a room, sitting in rows of desks arranged as though for a standardized test, and the general nervousness was also like that experienced before a test. The small space made it difficult for our orientation coordinators to distribute the thin, long strips of paper with details of our year-long abode, and each time I saw an OC filing sideways down my row, my heart fluttered at the thought of the homestay revelation. I felt a little bit like an eager puppy at the pound, awaiting adoption: “Oooh, please pick me, pick me! Please put me with a nice family, with kids!” I did receive my slip soon enough and skimmed across the different phrases and codes. My family information included: “Girl (9), Elementary School 2nd grader. Girl (9), Elementary School 2nd grader.“ Was this a typo, a slip of the Ctrl+P keys, or did I really have the awesome luck of being placed with twin little sisters? One of my goals for my program year was to experience jeong, the Korean concept of a deep bonded relationship that English words cannot adequately

Grant Profile Host2009: Elementary English Teaching Assistant (EETA) Seowonju Elementary School

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explain. After months of living with one another, I know my host sisters will always be dongsaengs (younger sisters) to me. I know that for many years to come, I will miss the twins and the spontaneous dance parties we performed with cell phone ring tones; hearing them call out “Eonni, eonni!” as soon as they got home from ballet academy, eager to show me their new dance moves; being chastised for my hatred for jjajangmyeon; and always counting on them to explain facets of Korean life and answering questions about my home country. Perhaps I realized the depth of our bond when I heard that one hostsister, having been told to select an English name for her hagwon (private educational institute), decided to choose my name. The Fulbright experience of living and growing and teaching and l e a r n i n g h a s b e e n b e s t illustrated by my interactions with my two host sisters. How better could I learn about Korea than from young children? My host parents would often tell me, “We are so lucky to have you live with us,” to which I would always reply, “No, I am truly the lucky one!”

▲ Elizabeth So with her homestay sisters at their home in Wonju

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Carolyn Straub

희 망 [Hui:mang]

희망. It means “hope.” This may sound clichéd or overly dramatic, but it is true. Coming to Korea has given me hope for a different life. The person who arrived in Korea is not the same person who is leaving Korea. The life I expected to lead when I arrived, that plan, has been ripped apart and thrown out. What living in Korea has taught me is how to embrace the world outside my comfort zone and treat each day as an opportunity for discovery. I remember the first time that I stepped inside a real Korean middle school classroom. Thirty-five students stared back at me expectantly. There was cheering, there was yelling, there was a lot of attention―and I was scared. Having come from years of debate and public speaking training, I wasn’t expecting stage fright! But there it was: fear. Learning to teach at my school was a lesson in acting: how do I pretend that I am confident and ready to take charge? Even when leaving the classroom, I had a new family at home to meet, learn about, and interact with. At first it was exhausting―working so hard at school to entertain and engage the students, and then working hard at home to be the perfect guest. But despite the work, both have been incredibly rewarding. It’s been nearly one year since I came to Korea, and while I am infinitely more comfortable than I was, I am still confronted daily with new and interesting

Grant Profile Host2009: English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Oh Sung Middle School

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situations. Just last week, I was walking to class, and when I arrived there were no students. Little did I know at the time, but apparently all of the classrooms had changed that week! Then there was my taxi ride to the train station yesterday―I guess my blonde hair makes me a bit conspicuous, and my driver decided that it would be fun to practice English on the ride over. While this sounds harmless, we almost got into two wrecks! I have stories about learning to brave the bidet, getting lost in Seoul, sharing my iPod with strangers on the bus, and discovering favorite haunts. Every day I live in Korea is an adventure full of surprises and spontaneity. No day goes by without something unusual and fun happening. Although I came to Korea with a plan for the future mapped out, I am leaving with a blank page. While looking down at a blank page would have scared me before, it excites me now. I do not know what my life will be like when I return to the States, but I hope to bring back a lifestyle that embraces the unknown and the uncomfortable, because for me, a life without surprises and adventures is no life for me. And so thank you, Korea, for giving me 희망 by opening up a world of possibility.

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Sarabeth Craig

During my first lesson of the semester, I instructed my new students not to call me “Teacher.” If an American high schooler yelled “Teacher!” to get my attention, it would sound rude, I explained. I realized it was the opposite situation in Korea, where calling a teacher by their name without the formal “Teacher” title after it would be very disrespectful, but I couldn’t help the fact that it hurt my ears to be called “Teacher”! “Just call me Sarabeth,” I said, assuring them that this really was my preference. As the year progressed, some students called me by my name, but the majority could not get past their Korean instincts and inevitably threw up their hands and called out, “Teacher! How do you spell...?” To my surprise, the title grew on me. After watching students interact with other teachers, I subconsciously began to understand the implications of being called “Teacher.” In Korean culture, where everyone is referred to according to their relationship with the speaker―an older brother or sister, an aunt or uncle, senior or junior―being called “Teacher” is an honor. Eventually, I stopped correcting students who called me “Teacher,” and I began to take it as a compliment. In fact, it made me smile. When they called me “Teacher” in Korean, I felt even more flattered. I couldn’t be more different from them―white skin, blonde hair, perfect English, and a childhood experience dramatically

Grant Profile Host2009: English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Gumi High School

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different from theirs. But when they called me “Teacher,” I felt that they saw past those differences and respected me―perhaps even looked up to me. In so many ways, I respected my high school students as much as they respected me. As a high school student in America, I would never have dreamed of spending more than six hours at school, sacrificing swim team, gymnastics, piano lessons and painting, all so that I could study a second language required for acceptance to a good university. I have been inspired by them to sacrifice for my own dreams, to pursue my goals with fervor, and to not be afraid of giving more than is required. The approximately 900 students I have taught and learned from during my 2009 grant year in South Korea have also given me a deep appreciation for my life up until now. Simply because I speak English, I have been handed opportunities my students only dream of. Never once have I taken an English ability test to prove my written or conversational capacity. Never once have I thanked my teachers for teaching me to read and write in English, perhaps the most important language in the world today. My early days teaching in Korea left me full of pity for my students, watching their agonizingly long days of studying that will not reduce the stress of their inevitably competitive future. Building relationships with my students taught me this was the wrong attitude. They don’t feel sorry for themselves; they just look ahead determinedly. Never in my life have I encountered students like these.

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Ironically, never in my life did I think I would enjoy the role of “Teacher,” either. My experiences have led me to consider pursuing education in my future, a future that seems to have infinitely more doors now than it did before I arrived in South Korea. The doors were always there, but I needed my hard-working students to call me “Teacher” about 1,000 times before I realized it. This powerful title will always be special to me, an imprint on my life that cannot be erased.

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Sarah Slagle

It’s Like They’re Cheering Me On

I was standing alone in the shaded concrete jungle that is the Daejeon train station when I really got to thinking about what I was doing and how I got here. I thought to myself, “How am I here? Where am I going?” In literal terms, I was going to Gwangju to celebrate another Fulbrighter’s birthday at a Kia Tigers game. But in that moment, I was focused on the bigger picture. I was casually going by myself to a city about two hours by train from my neighborhood, in a country whose language first appeared to me as pictures and scribbles of men with hats (the “ㅎ,” of course). When I first started, I felt like “Annyeonghasimnikka (안녕하십니까)” was the longest word possible―and it only meant “Hello.” Yet ten months into my year as a Fulbright ETA grantee in Korea, my trip to Gwangju was as easy as walking down the street to the supermarket. When I first got to my placement, I felt uncharacteristically anxious about traveling by myself. During college, I had traveled solo in Europe and loved it―the freedom of choosing where to go and what to do is great. But what I didn’t realize until arriving in Korea is that I had relied heavily on linguistic similarities and a decent knowledge of European history and geography. Although there is “Konglish” to help newcomers get by, many words like “room,” “reservation,” and “ticket” are not guessable. If you don’t know, then you just don’t know, and that is

Grant Profile Host2009: Elementary English Teaching Assistant (EETA) Hanbat Elementary School

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frustrating. I felt like I couldn’t be a fully independent person in the beginning. Two things helped change this. First, my Korean language skills shot up to a level where I didn’t have to charade my way through daily life. I learned the words for getting one ticket for a specific time on a certain day, and so on. I also figured out how to make a motel reservation over the phone or in person. If I go into a restaurant, I know enough food names to choose the thing that I really want to eat rather than one of the “not eel” options. All of these communication improvements have added monumentally to my happiness. The second thing was somewhat unexpected, yet really appreciated. The Koreans I meet seem to be cheering me on. Yesterday I was at a school dinner, and while I was pouring water for some older teachers, Hwang Teacher commented that I acted like a Korean. Other times, I get told that I use chopsticks well and speak Korean really well. Whether these things are true or not is beside the point. The Fulbright Korea ETA orientation taught me how to get on the good side of Koreans, and it’s paying off. Even the middle-aged cashier at Daejeon Station smiled respectfully at me when I checked the price with her: “오천원요?”. Having this two-way flow of respect has encouraged me to have deeper relationships with people I meet in Korea, and also to seek out Koreans who have moved to the US when I go home. I now feel at ease around Korean people, and I do my best to allow them to feel more comfortable around me as a foreigner. And while I can’t expect to transform relations between Koreans and Americans completely, I do feel that my role as a Fulbright ETA has allowed me to impact perceptions of “the other” on both sides. This was most made clear to me when my parents visited this spring and put their travel photos on their Facebook pages. People who originally didn’t know Korea from Japan were discussing everything from bibimbap to the new, electronic touch maps in the Seoul subway.

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Sarah Walker

Teacher, On Call

Korean students say and do outrageous things. Girls almost pass out from overexertion after watching a Justin Bieber music video. Boys offer mementos of their own gray hairs, plucked just a moment before by their obliging friends. I once had a student explain that because American troops successfully completed the Incheon water landing, I am an invader, and thus owe him reparations of continuous chocolate. But these things do not only happen inside my classroom or during the school day. This is the essence of my Fulbright experience: I am a teacher constantly and willingly on call. I came to Korea as an academic, ready to share my knowledge and be the best cultural ambassador in Fulbright Korea history. But what I hadn’t planned on was what would become my enthusiasm for the most straightforward goal of the ETA program: to shape the lives of my students and allow them to shape my life in return. I hang out with them when I’m not on duty because I have learned that the best teaching experiences come from granting students a monopoly on my time. In early November, I wanted to spend more time with my students, and so I voluntarily instituted office hours once a week during evening self-study. Many studentsat first all boys―came and went, but a certain group of five to seven boys became a loyal gang. We played Bananagrams, had dance-offs, and arm-wrestled. Once, I lost a bet and had to free-hug the first student I saw in the hallway, who

Grant Profile Host2009: English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Yeongheung High School

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happened to be a nervous first grade boy. “Teacher, why…?” he began. Instead of explaining in Korean, my office hours boys only laughed. When girls started coming, my classroom also became a place where hearts were broken, and I took on the night job of romance counselor. I know these boys were using this time as an excuse to avoid self-study. But their English conversational ability became something to behold as they “avoided” studying. And I gained a posse. The first snow of the winter started on a Wednesday night two days before the end of the fall semester. Around 11 p.m., I received a text message from one of my office hours boys. “Are you seeing?” it read. “This is first snow!” The message left me feeling euphoric, both because of the snow and because he knew to send it, even at that hour. There was poetry to it that got to me a split second before the content did: “Are you seeing? This is first snow!” His second-language grammar belonged in an e.e. cummings poem. The next day at school was a day of barely contained ecstasy for my students, who rushed outside between periods, and during periods, to throw snow at each other with their bare hands and classroom dustpans. I promised one student a snowball fight at lunchtime. First he told me that he couldn’t in good conscience throw snow at a teacher―and then he shoved snow in my mouth. After our fight, both of us drenched in wet snow, he bought me a can of coffee and showed me how to rub it against my face for warmth. “Teacher, today was funny. Thank you,” he said, with a degree of brevity not easily faked in a second language. When I went back into the teachers’ room, my stringy hair and muddy pant legs garnered more than a few curious looks. Other teachers sleep during their lunch breaks. I live every hour, every day as a teacher―a role for which Fulbright trained me well. Nothing makes me giddier than when my students ask if we can go to Mr. Pizza on an evening off from self-study―if I foot the bill, of course. There’s never been a better day off than when I came to school anyway on physical test day and watched my kids sprint and push-up and sit-and-reach their way to glory. At such times, I find myself bowled over by love for them. The moment I realized that my students were the best thing about my Fulbright year, twenty hours of teaching a week hardly seemed fair. What was I supposed to do with the rest of my time?

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Rachael Maureen Williams

A New Kind of Family

I had no expectations upon arriving in Korea. I knew very little about the country beyond what I had learned from basic study of the Korean War. Apart from the alphabet, hangeul, I didn’t know the language, and I had never tasted Korean food. To the amazement of my fellow ETAs, I had never heard of the K-pop sensation Rain, and I had never watched the beloved Korean drama “Boys over Flowers.” I have no family history here, and I know few Korean-Americans. However, because of an innate desire to travel and challenge myself with new experiences, I decided to come to Korea as a Fulbright ETA. My new life in Korea began on July 5, 2009. I arrived in Seoul with 70 other Americans who shared my job title of English Teaching Assistant (ETA). Although we would be together for the next six weeks, we would eventually separate and travel to different parts of the country, teach in different schools, and live with different families. Over eleven months have gone by since that separation, and in that time I have shared many stories with my colleagues. From sharing, I have learned several things about my life in Korea so far: 1) middle school girls are probably the most difficult students to teach conversational English to; 2) the members of my host family are very caring and generous people, and I am lucky to

Grant Profile Host2009: English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Jeong Myung Girls’ High School

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have them; and 3) living as a foreigner in Korea is very difficult, but the experience is even more rewarding. As a foreigner, I face many challenges each day. I am constantly reminded that I don’t belong in this country. I have red hair and blue-green eyes, and at 141 cm, my height is overwhelmingly regarded as above average. Beyond the physical attributes that set me apart from the homogeneous Korean population, I can only speak very basic Korean. Although I can usually understand what is happening and being said around me, I cannot express my own opinions or desires. Thankfully, I live with a family whose members want to speak English and share their culture with me. My Korean family has included me in everything that they do: birthday parties, family outings, Chuseok, and other family activities. I am very lucky that at the end of the day, I can go home to people who have grown to understand me. Since my time with Mr. Kim, Mrs. Jang, and their family, I have become grateful for the hospitality they have provided to me. I am always included in family events, and when I have been sick, they have taken care of me as though I were one of their own children. My host family understands American culture, and so they know that I need to have personal space and freedom to do things independently. The balance between family and personal time is what I appreciate most. In America, independence is important to every individual. Because my host family can recognize this, it has allowed me to grow closer to them during the time that we do get to spend together. When we spend time with their extended family I feel a sense of kinship that reminds me of my family at home. Although my host family is very different from my family in America, their care and understanding have me regarding them less as my host family and more as my Korean family. I think that the homestay experience is one of the most important factors of my experience here in Korea. I have been very happy with my new family, which has made my overall experience here more positive. On days when teaching is difficult, I can tell my host mother about it. When something good happens to me, I always want to share it with them. I have missed my American family very much, but because they couldn’t be here with me, I am grateful that I have a Korean family who can.

[ Short Grant Program Participants ]



American Alumni

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It was early spring of 1984. I remember the phone call as if it were yesterday. A student aide came to my classroom and told me that someone from Washington, DC, was on the phone and asked if I could take the call. I knew immediately that it was the Fulbright Commission and that I had been accepted for a summer Fulbright Grant. I left my third hour class to go to the social studies office. The Fulbright representative and I had a long conversation about the grant. No, I had not been accepted to India, the country for which I had applied; however, I had been accepted to the South Korea program and was urged to accept the tremendous opportunity. I did so on the spot, knowing that grants of this nature were extremely rare for public high school educators. Being a recipient of a Fulbright Grant gave me a sense of accomplishment and professional validation. My association with the Fulbright Commission and all the experiences and knowledge that came with the grant added to my degree in anthropology and my teaching experiences at the high school and community college levels, changing my teaching forever. Of course, the experience in South Korea was incredible. From Busan to Panmunjeom, from Seoul to Jeju, from the anthropological study of the Korean culture and society to the economic insights of this emerging power, the seven-week Fulbright program was highly organized and insightful. Especially enlightening was the high-powered access to Korean economists, educators, historians, and political and religious leaders. It was an educational experience of the highest level, and over the next fifteen years I passed on my knowledge and experiences to thousands of students.

Gary J. Kaasa Grant Profile

1984: Summer Seminar Grantee

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The summer program in Korea was not the only Fulbright experience that altered my life and teaching career. Below is an account of career alterations brought on as a ripple effect from the Fulbright grant:

• Because of my Korean ex-periences, I began teaching economics and Advanced Placement Economics rather than history.

• For several years, I served on the panel to select Fulbright grantees in Arizona.

• Through Fulbright contacts, I was elected to serve on the Arizona Council for the Social Studies.

• With contacts made through the Council for the Social Studies, I was offered the oppor tun i ty to ed i t and develop a curriculum for a book, produced by the Arizona Historical Society, on the Arizona State Constitution.

• Because of my Fulbright and Council experiences, I was selected to serve as part-time Social Studies Coordinator for the 1,000-teacher school district in which I taught.

• I was able to visit Japan because airfare to another Asian country was part of the Fulbright summer program to Korea.

• In 1987, I led a team of school district educators to Japan as part of an educational tour made up of teachers and curriculum specialists from the western United States.

• The South Korea program was my first overseas travel and the beginning of many overseas travels, including trips to China and Tibet. Asia continues to have an allure for me. I am visiting Mongolia this summer.

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• Upon retiring from teaching ten years ago, I established a political consulting firm that has advised many of the most influential political leaders and organizations in the state. I believe the experiences and background resulting

from the Fulbright Grant provided a strong foundation for this opportunity.

When evaluating the success of the Fulbright program, there should be a consideration not only of the academic knowledge of the host country gained, but also of the positive influence it has on the professional growth of the individuals involved. For me, that was an essential part of the experience.

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Having gained unimaginable experiences meeting great and distinguished people through the Fulbright Travel Abroad Program, ten years later I became a principal advisor to then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung in 1998, while he was meeting with President Bill Clinton during the Korean economic turmoil known as the “IMF Crisis,” as well as the Se Ri Pak period. After the Presidential meeting, President Kim Dae-jung sent an aide to convey a message to me: “This was the best Presidential meeting I have ever had in my life. This was because of your advice.” I was born in Japan and educated there and in the USA, and Fulbright was a great learning experience for me.

Kyong-Mal Kim Grant Profile

1988: Summer Seminar Grantee

AlumniReminiscences:Reflections on 60 years of


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Alumni Reminiscences

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