After completing my year of field research abroad in Korea, I returned to Cambridge during this past summer of 2021, and thanks to the generosity of the Korea Institute, I was able to begin the process of writing the dissertation chapters based on the sources I was able to gather while in Korea.

My dissertation topic is broadly on modern Korean political and intellectual history from liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945 to the end of the Park Chung Hee dictatorship in 1979; specifically, I examine the content of both state-produced and public discourses and...

My doctoral research interests are in blindness and technology in South Korea. I was wondering whether and how the emphasis on technological innovation in Korean society and policy leads to improve the data accessibility and living convenience of people with disabilities, specifically blind people. I hope to examine in what aspects and why blind people experience difficulties in daily life.

Thanks to the 2021 KI Graduate Summer Research Grant program, I could begin my preliminary research with learning braille. This summer, I learned braille not only through a ‘traditional way...

These Korea Institute undergraduate and graduate student awards are generously supported by the Min Young-Chul Memorial Fund, Sunshik Min Endowment for the Advancement of Korean Literature Fund, Modern Korean Economy and Society (Sanhak) Endowment Fund, SBS Endowment Fund, SBS Foundation Research Fund and anonymous donors at the Korea Institute, Harvard University.

For summer 2021, all student study and research opportunities supported by the Korea Institute were conducted remotely due to Covid-19 and travel restrictions, except as noted.
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Going to Korea having read more than a few million printed words about the country was truly a journey bringing imagined foregone reality in constant clash with an excitingly energizing present. Such an experience on a personal level is perhaps comparable to a K-pop fan’s pilgrimage to Korea, “knowing” the country only too well through watching those hundreds of hours of K-drama and pop music videos. My first extended visit to Korea could have left me with much post-hyper-energy fatigue and disorientation due to the rich mental clashes between the imagined and the real. But thanks to the...