Monthly Report IV: May

1. Events within Wilson Center. In May, I managed to attend four sessions within the Center. The first was, “On Behalf of the President: Presidential Spouses and White House Communications”, a book by Dr. Lauren Wright where she shared her findings on the profound impact that first ladies have had in influencing public opinion on presidential policies and the national agenda. The second event I participated in was Professor Thomas Berger’s work-in-progress presentation, “A Sea of Troubles: US Grand Strategy in East Asia and Japan’s Disputes over History and Territory”. The topic was highly interesting considering my passions for East Asia and its history. The third event I went to within the Center was “North Korea’s 7th Party Congress and its Implications” where experts analyzed the recent 7th Party Congress that took place 36 years after the previous Party Congress. The last event I participated in was, “2016 SICAR (Summer Institute for Conducting Archival Research)”, a one-week event, where a group of carefully selected PhD students from all around the world (mostly from the U.S.) convened in order to learn thoroughly about archival research. It was a fantastic opportunity to network with the participating PhD students.


2. Events outside of Wilson Center. During May I attended two events outside of the Center, and it was “Not Just Dust in the Wind: China-Korea Cooperation on Transborder Air Pollution” presented by Dr. Matthew Shapiro at Korean Economic Institute. Dr. Shapiro rather had an unorthodox view (according to Western standards) as to who was to blame for the air pollution in Korea emanating from China. He was vocal in saying that China wasn’t simply to be censured for air pollution in Korea but that Koreans were also largely accountable since the country’s conglomerates had largely committed to FDI in China. The second event I participated in was “GULAG, INC. The Use of Forced Labor in North Korea's Export Industries” which took place in The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK). It was highly interesting to see and hear in-person a high-level North Korean defector talk and reveal exclusive information about the secretive North Korean mining industry.


3. Research progress. Throughout May, I continued using Nexis in order to investigate how U.S. media had been portraying North Korea in their newspaper media after certain symbolic events. While conducting my research, as forecasted in my hypothesis, there seemed to be a deluge of hostile rhetoric and militaristic portrayal of North Korea.


4. Assignment from within Center. There were two main assignments in May. The first was transcription work and the second was helping out with the aforementioned SICAR event.


5. Outside activity. An interesting, valuable experience I had during May was visiting the State Department as a result of networking with someone within the organization. It was interesting to observe how grand the edifice was and unending the pathways and rooms were. Moving on, being a Christian, I decided to visit two Korean churches for the first time in D.C.. The first one was 워싱턴성광교회 (one of the big churches in D.C. and Virginia) and the second was DC2DC (a small church in Foggy Bottom mainly catered for the youth).


Thank you for spending your time to read this and I’ll report to you again next month!
Kyuhyun Park