Future Diplomats in the Making

At a lecture room in the Institute of Foreign Language Studies of Korea University (head: Kim Gi-ho) on the afternoon of January 26, 11 students were engaged in a serious discussion about the president’s New Year’s address which stressed narrowing the socioeconomic divide.

A Dozen Students Take Exclusive Courses Offered by Korea University Annually-

In three different groups, the students made presentations on how to resolve the bipolarization and critiqued the other groups’ presentations.

The contents of the presentations would make you mistake them for Korean graduate school students. But they are American students who will be developed into experts on Korea by the U.S. government.

Their Korean pronunciations were not perfect, but they boasted a good command of Korean vocabulary, comparable to that of Korean college students.

Carefully Devised Program to Nurture Experts on Korea-

They are the second class of the “National Flagship Language Initiative (NFLI),” a fellowship program sponsored by the U.S. Defense Department. They came to Korea to take courses offered by Korea University under the program. The initiative was launched in the wake of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, in an effort to nurture a pool of language qualified professionals for five foreign languages including Korean, Chinese, and Arabic.

The Korean Language & Culture Center run by the Institute of Foreign Language Studies of Korea University has been offering exclusive training courses to these future experts on Korea, commissioned by the U.S. Defense Department since the second half of 2004. Seven students of the first class completed the courses last June after finishing the 1-year program.

The program is very demanding. In the first year of the program, 30~40 American undergraduate graduates who were selected among hundreds of applicants were required to take courses at Hawaii University and University of California, Los Angeles. Among them, students who passed the tests on Korean language proficiency and the capacity to adopt to different cultures were eligible for a 1-year education in Korea.

They take 2-3 undergraduate and graduate courses at Korea University, in addition to media courses, internship programs offered by the National Human Rights Commission and the Korea Institute for National Unification, cultural education about Samool Noli, performance with traditional musical instruments, and tours of industrial facilities.

Two university professors are dedicated to the program. Also, 4-5 assistant teachers help each student. Assistant teachers play a role not only as partners in their study but also as evaluators responsible for reporting students’ performances. The program spends $200,000~300,000 in educating each student for the 2-year program.

Some students from the first class work on the six-party talks.

We Want to Become the U.S. Ambassador to South Korea in 20 Years-

They are required to serve at U.S. government agencies to which they are assigned for two years upon completing the program.

One among the seven students of the first class is working on the six-party talks negotiation team led by Christopher Hill, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Another is waiting for an appointment. The remaining five are scheduled to work at the U.S. government agencies upon their graduation. The government is hopeful that they continue to work for the government agencies, after they finish their required service periods.

Eleven students of the second class who are scheduled to finish the program this June have various ambitions for their future, including becoming the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, an expert on North Korea human rights issue, and U.S.-Korea trade negotiator.

They agreed that they would continue to misunderstand Korea if they didn’t have a chance to learn in Korea. A 24-year-old female student said, “First hand experiences of Korean culture have helped me understand things that I couldn’t from reading English translations.” Another 25-year-old student said, “I used to feel that there was serious anti-American sentiment among Koreans when I learned from media about anti-American protests and controversies surrounding the statue of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the U.S. commander during the Korean War. But personal interactions with Korean people enabled me to realize that it is not the case.”

Some Korean-American students feel uncomfortable about the program, especially with relation to the case of Robert Kim (Kim Chae-gon, 65) who served a jail term in the U.S. for the charges of espionage. A 27-year-old Korean American student spoke his mind that his parents’ advice relieved him. They told him, “You can work for the U.S. government. Just make sure to listen to the voice of conscience in making judgments.”

Jae-Young Kim redfoot@donga.com