KOREA FOUNDATION

KF President’s New Year Greetings

KF President Lee Geun took part in the “Thanks To” Challenge, a nationwide campaign conveying gratitude and encouragement to the medical personnel at the front lines of the war against COVID-19.

As we welcome the arrival of 2021, we wish each and every reader of the KF Newsletter a new year full of peace and happiness.

The past year was a time of difficulty and perseverance due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than giving up, ordinary citizens, medical personnel, and health authorities all around the world came together in cooperation to overcome. Korea proved itself a model of advanced quarantine and hygiene systems, employing drive-through diagnosis programs and other effective measures, and strived to share its methods and expertise with as many countries as possible.

The KF made its own strenuous endeavors to deal with the pandemic, appointing Dr. Jee Young-mee as the KF special representative for health diplomacy. Dr. Jee is the former director of the Center for Immunology and Pathology at the National Institute of Health, Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As the KF’s special envoy, she worked to share Korea’s efforts to surmount the challenges of COVID-19 and to promote international cooperation in this regard. Notably, in the fall, the KF sent COVID-19 prevention kits and masks to 514 people who had served in Korea as US Peace Corps Volunteers in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of these former volunteers responded with gratitude and a New York Times article from November 20, 2020 about these gift packages remarked upon the KF’s sincerity and values.

As Korea’s representative public diplomacy organization, the KF will celebrate the 30th anniversary of its founding this year. Korea is both a cultural power and a digital powerhouse. Accordingly, the KF is preparing for its next 30 years as a leader of public diplomacy, utilizing digitalized programming to deliver messages of both Korean and universal values. In 2021, the KF will continue to promote Korea’s special charms and merits worldwide in such various fields as Korean studies, arts and culture, international cooperation, people-to-people exchange, and information technology.

During the troubled year of 2020, we faced a string of new challenges. And yet, we have made it through them all. I sincerely wish for easier, healthier days for each and every KF Newsletter reader in the Year of the Ox.

Thank you very much.

Lee Geun
President
The Korea Foundation

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