Fulbright Media

Fulbright Forum - February 24, 2012 - Jacob Reidhead

admin — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 14:46:21 +0900

This presentation marks the completion of Jacob Reidhead’s MA thesis at the University of Washington wherein he compares the origins of economic reform in Asia’s socialist economies: China, Vietnam, and North Korea. In particular, he will present a comparative framework for reform derived from the historical experience of these three economies and then leverage this framework in order to answer the question of why China and Vietnam have successfully been able to reform but North Korea has not. Implications of these findings for the prospect of reforms in Kim Jong-un’s North Korea will also be discussed. His hope is that those in attendance will actively participate and leave with a more sophisticated and analytically sound understanding of the challenges to economic reform in North Korea.

Biography
Jacob Reidhead first traveled to Korea as a Christian missionary in 1998, in the aftermath of the IMF-Asian Financial Crisis. Following two years of missionary service, he returned again in 2004-2006 as a Korean Flagship Language Initiative fellow and graduate student at Korea University. He has since traveled to North Korea twice, for two weeks as a member of a Eugene Bell delegation in 2006 and for five months as a USNGO food monitor during the 2008-2009 USAID food program. Jacob subsequently entered a Ph.D. program in Sociology at the University of Washington where he is pursuing research on the origins and effects of the post-Cold War transitions of Asia’s socialist economies.

Fulbright Forum - September 16, 2011 - Grace Ha

blog_admin — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 15:00:23 +0900

Haenyeo, Jeju, and the Future of Marine Conservation

On Jeju Island, fisherwomen, known widely today as haenyeo (해녀), have a long-standing tradition of free-diving into the ocean for seafood such as abalone, kelp, seaweed, sea cucumber, turban shell, and octopus. Over the past year, Grace has been researching these women and the Jeju fishing villages, focusing largely on their traditional ecological knowledge and resource management techniques. Grace has been specifically investigating what implications this disappearing way-of-life may have on future marine conservation efforts.

Biography

Graduating from Cornell University with a biology degree in 2010, Grace developed a deep interest in marine biology and environmental conservation during her undergraduate studies. While reading a marine biology textbook (for fun) one summer, she happened upon a small paragraph about haenyeo that piqued her curiosity and consequently led to her Fulbright project on traditional ecological knowledge. In the future, she hopes to earn her doctorate in marine ecology and to become a scientist and teacher working towards a deeper understanding of our ocean ecosystems.

Fulbright Forum Videos

blog_admin — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:59:40 +0900

Miss the Fulbright Forum?

Visit https://vimeo.com/channels/fulbrightforum to see our past forums.

You can also visit www.vimeo.com/fulbrightkorea to see other KAEC videos.

More videos are on the way!

Inga Diederich - Moving towards Stillness - Modern Korean Buddhism through the Eyes of a Twentieth-century Monk - November 19, 2010

Vinnie Flores — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 10:11:36 +0900

Fulbright Forum - November 19, 2010 - Inga Diederich

“Moving towards Stillness - Modern Korean Buddhism through the Eyes of a Twentieth-century Monk"

It is difficult to overstate the influence that Buddhism has had on Korea’s cultural constitution and historical consciousness. Despite the length and complexity of the relationship between religion and nation, however, the history of Buddhism in Korea, as well as the history of Korean Buddhism in the trajectory of broader Buddhist culture, has been little more than a footnote, if that, in most English language texts. Meanwhile Korean sources teem with accounts of a unique brand of Buddhism that has alternately ruled the country and been exiled to the mountains, inspired the cynical and disgusted the idealistic, produced the greatest art and architecture to grace the Korean peninsula and reveled in the Spartan purity of absolute asceticism. Particularly compelling among these sources are the travel journals, from as early as the Silla dynasty, that paint a history of travel to the mountain monasteries in times of personal and national crisis and offer invaluable insights into the intertwined religious, artistic and political development of Korea.

The diary of a twentieth century monk who went by the Buddhist name Hyeonchik (1895-1962) is at once an example of such a composition and a singularly individuated work that humanizes it author, the Buddhist clergy he was a member of, and the Korean nation at large during the most critical junctures of its recent history. Both as an illustration of a literary genre characteristic of Korean religious history and as a unique deviation from the conventional constraints of that type-mold – the latter qualification arguably in reflection of the likewise distinctive developments of his historical milieu – Hyeonchik’s diary presents itself as a singular vehicle for translation and dissemination, particularly to an English-speaking Western world accustomed by its own literary tradition to an affinity for the episodic and the individualistic, but equally compelled by the mysteries of East Asian culture at large and its perceived esoteric religious traditions specifically. By catering to the latter desire for knowledge while offering the former element of accessibility, Hyeonchik offers the English-language world an intoxicating blend of known and unknown via translation.

2011 ETA Program Grantee Barbecue at the U.S. Ambassador's Residence

blog_admin — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:50:33 +0900

Images from the 2011 Barbeque Party hosted by U.S. Ambassador to Korea Kathleen Stephens

Camp Fulbright 2011

blog_admin — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:33:02 +0900

Another Incredible Summer at Camp Fulbright!

This year, Camp Fulbright was held from July 17-30 at Jungwon University in the Goesan-gun area of the Chungbuk province, and hosted over 120 students from all over the country.

Camp Fulbright offeres a comprehensive, yet fun English program for Korean students, and also provides ETA program grantees the opportunity to work with Korean students prior to being sent to their placement schools for their year of teaching in Korea. The program is managed and staffed by some of the best teachers from the ETA program alumni. Also included in the staff are Korean counselors and Junior Counselors--middle and high school students from the U.S. The U.S. students are themselves on a three-week cultural immersion and exchange program during which they learn about Korea and work with the Korean students as peer leaders and team members.

Congratulations to the staff and students for yet another successful summer at Camp Fulbright!

Go Camp Fulbright!

Kicking the Hanmun Habit: The Dynamics of Language and Power in Late-Choson and Korea's Long Hanmun Hangover by Scott Wells - June 24, 2011

admin — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:28:56 +0900

June 24, 2011 - Scott Wells

Summary

The final thirty-five years of the Chosŏn dynasty—from the opening of relations with Japan following the 1876 Treaty of Kanghwa, to Japan’s ultimate annexation of the Korean peninsula in 1910—were marked by rapid, thoroughgoing and often difficult transformations in Korean society. As Koreans encountered Western imperial powers and a rapidly modernizing Japan at the beginning of this period, Korean society slowly began its own process of modernization-cum-Westernization, spurring reappraisals within Korean society of the country’s Sino-centric past and the once-shared knowledge, symbols and practices of the East Asian cosmopolitan order. A major consequence of this reappraisal was the demotion of Literary Sinitic (commonly termed hanmun in Korea today) from its long-held status as the de facto official written standard of state affairs and its removal from the center of the curriculum of state-sponsored education to the periphery in the guise of the newly created classroom subject hanmunkwa.

Helping to bind the region together, the shared use of Literary Sinitic was one of, if not the most defining forms of knowledge, symbol and practice in premodern East Asia. Understanding the demise of Literary Sinitic in Korea will improve our understanding of the disintegration of this formerly vibrant East Asian cosmopolitanism, and help us apprehend the lingering effects and influences exercised by such transcultured practices even after those practices are reimagined and reconfigured to fit new, nationalized frameworks as in the case of hanmunkwa.

Biography

Scott Wells took a B.A. in Korean and Linguistics from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and is finishing his M.A. in Korean Studies at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia. He will begin a PhD at UBC in September. He and his long-suffering wife Lindsay, who has accompanied him to Korea, are parents to a lively three-and-a-half year-old daughter Shelby.

Evan Hall - Discerning Principles of Architecture in Seoul - December 10, 2010

admin — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:03:51 +0900

"Discerning Principles of Architecture in Seoul"

Evan Hall - December 10, 2010

Some might say that there is no job left for the architect here in Seoul. Even the daunting task of designing and creating entire cities has been reduced to a science: no architect needed. Despite this harsh reality, there are a few architects that are visionaries -- architects who are questioning how everything gets built, and making powerful statements with their work. I have chosen seven visionary Korean architecture firms that I believe are changing Korean society for the better. These architects are confronting obstacles in Korean society, and their ideas are starting to spread.

With the inception of Korean New Cities in the 1980's, architects are now facing greater responsibilities to speak out about the importance of good architecture. Along with the Graduate School of Urban Architecture at the Korean National University of Arts, I have extensively researched the growth and spread of Korean New Cities, and have come up with an alternative plan. This alternative plan is based on the analysis of existing Korean urbanity, the conditions of a proposed site for a new city, and the Modernist poet Yi Sang [1910-37]. With this Fulbright Forum, I will present how the Korean visionary architects have influenced my work, and also explain my proposal for a new Korean city in detail.

Aimee Lee - "Spider Paths on the Paper Trail: Contemporary Possibilities for Hanji" - April 24, 2009

Vinnie Flores — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 16:20:48 +0900

Fulbright Forum - April 24, 2009 - Aimee Lee

"Spider Paths on the Paper Trail: Contemporary Possibilities for Hanji"

Hanji, Korean handmade paper, has a history on the peninsula that reaches back over one thousand years. With origins in China, papermaking spread to east to Korea and then Japan, speeding the use of written materials, contributing to literate and artistic cultures, nurturing religious traditions, and becoming part of daily life. Each culture developed similar but distinct methods of making long-fibered, strong paper from the mulberry tree. Through travel to various papermills, interviews with scholars, and study with artisans, Aimee has gained greater insight into the history of hanji, its glory days as the preferred paper in East Asia, and its demise with the rise of industrialization. She now seeks glimpses of its future: its role in conservation, the arts, and everyday life. Aimee will give a brief history of the craft, show photographs and videos of how hanji is made, as well as its presence in the contemporary art world, and use material demonstrations to exhibit related crafts, such as textured paper, twisting and weaving, and natural dyeing.

2009 Symposium: Korean Education in the 21st Century: Reforming Public Education and the University Entrance Exam

Vinnie Flores — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 11:59:41 +0900

Images from the October 23, 2009 Symposium entitled Korean Education in the 21st Century: Reforming Public Education and the University Entrance Exam

http://www.fulbright.or.kr/imgs/album/2009_symposium/index.html

2010 Symposium: Improving Higher Education in Korea

Vinnie Flores — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:34:30 +0900

Images from the October 8, 2010 Symposium entitled Improving Higher Education in Korea

http://www.fulbright.or.kr/imgs/album/2010_Symposium/index.html

60th Anniversary Banquet Photos

Vinnie Flores — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 16:23:45 +0900

Images from the October 9, 2010 gala banquet at the Shilla Hotel in Seoul celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the Fulbright Program in Korea -1
http://www.fulbright.or.kr/imgs/album/60th_banquet1/index.html

Images from the October 9, 2010 gala banquet at the Shilla Hotel in Seoul celebrating the 60th Anniversary of the Fulbright Program in Korea -2
http://www.fulbright.or.kr/imgs/album/60th_banquet2/index.html

Cross-Cultural Visions Art Exhibition, New York

Vinnie Flores — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 12:33:41 +0900

Images from the New York opening of Cross-Cultural Visions, an art exhibit featuring the work of Korean and American alumni held at Gallery Korea from July 7 to July 16, 2010

http://www.fulbright.or.kr/imgs/album/cross-cultural_visions_ny/index.html

Cross-Cultural Visions Art Exhibition, Washington D.C.

Vinnie Flores — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:52:04 +0900

Cross-Cultural Visions, an art exhibit featuring the work of Korean and American alumni of the Fulbright program in Korea, was on display from July 23 to August 6, 2010. This exhibit was made possible by the Korean Embassy in Washington, DC and the KORUS House.

http://www.fulbright.or.kr/imgs/album/cross-cultural_visions_dc/index.html

Ambassador's Reception in Seoul

Vinnie Flores — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 17:48:20 +0900

October 8, 2010 reception in honor of the 60th Anniversary of Fulbright Korea hosted by U.S. Ambassador Kathleen Stephens at her residence in Seoul.

http://www.fulbright.or.kr/imgs/album/ambassadors_reception_seoul/index.html