Monthly Report VI: July

1. Final Presentation. July was definitely the busiest month of my program due to the preparation for my final presentation. Leaving the Center at 1:00AM was common. What really proved to be the most difficult part, though, was assembling six months’ worth of work and condensing it to a PPT presentation that was meant to be twenty minutes long. Fortunately, to my strenuous efforts, however, the presentation resulted in a success and I was thoroughly satisfied. There was a high turnout of people (friends, staff, and guests), ample positive feedback, and last but not least I received numerous ideas for my future research in Korea. All in all, I was delighted to have ended my six-month program in a strong positive manner.

To briefly share the length of my presentation for the purposes of the future incoming KF scholar, I had 21 slides which took me 20 minutes to go through and an extra 10-15 minutes for the Q&A.


2. Events within Wilson Center. Although July was a terribly busy month preparing for the presentation, I still managed to go to two events within the Center. The first was, “Entrepreneurship, Education, and Youth Employment in Côte d’Ivoire,” carried out by a fellow African scholar who underscored the importance of entrepreneurship as to remedying the unemployment rate in Côte d’Ivoire. The second presentation was by a fellow Korea Foundation scholar on, “Korean Reunification from a Psychological Perspective: The Importance and Process of Counseling Therapy for North Korean Adolescents in South Korea,” who highlighted counseling therapy as an important tool in assisting the North Korean adolescents from overcoming their past traumas.


3. Assignment from within Center. There were no new assignments from the Center other than finishing the previously assigned summary of new Korean language s.


4. Outside activity. In July, I had the chance to take a quick break from work by having a picnic lunch with my fellow African and Swiss scholars at McPherson Square Park on a nice weather. On the 4th of July, I was also able to attend the famous annual Independence Day Parade at Constitution Avenue with some of my friends from D.C.


Thank you for reading my progress reports of the past six months. I hope they gave an idea of what sort of work is expected as a Junior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Please contact me at kyuhyunpark1990@yonsei.ac.kr if you have any further questions.

Thank you,
Kyuhyun Park