Days 8 & 9- Fulbright Korea University and Cultural Visits in Daejeon and Jeonju

On Monday morning, we kicked off week two of our Fulbright program. We will spend this week visiting cities and universities outside of the Seoul area, which is Korea’s epicenter. With approximately 1/3 of Korea’s population residing in Seoul and the majority of economic opportunities concentrated there, our second week offers unique perspectives from the rest of the country. On days 8 and 9, we visited two universities, including Woosong University in Daejeon, as well as Jeonju University in Jeonju.

?Woosong University (our first stop), is a private independent university with a student body of about 12,000, including 3,000 international students (about 25% of the total population). One thing that made Woosong unique among some of the other universities we have visited, was its comparatively significant proportion of international students, as well as faculty and staff and its longer-term goal to become 50% international.

In a panel discussion with representatives of the international team at Woosong, we learned about their decision to develop a unique strategy to survive, in a country where they shared that students compete to study in Seoul, rankings are everything, and where the top National Universities receive the highest rankings year over year. One panelist described the strategic decision for Woosong to focus on internationalization as “live or die”. They also described their ability to innovate as a private, independent university, with some degree of greater flexibilities than those of some national/public universities.

We encountered some similar sentiments during our day 9 visit to Jeonju University in the city of Jeonju. The universities we've visited thus far outside of Seoul have shared their need develop creative strategies to survive in a system that does not work in their favor. At Jeonju university, they promote their goal to develop well-rounded students by “fostering creative and practical talents that generate social value”. They also hope to communicate the benefits of the university’s geographical location at the center of the country, as well as at the heart of Korea’s cultural heritage in the city of Jeonju.

The local/regional universities we’ve met with so far have shared some examples of innovative student recruitment approaches they have employed, which include enabling U.S. military service members or their families to use the GI bill to study there; focusing on further development of English-track curriculums for international students, and partnering with private industry to guarantee post-graduation jobs in the region for Korean students (which is also meant to address critical labor force shortages outside of Seoul).

Both days have featured cultural activities in the afternoon. In Daejeon we visited Uam Historical Park, which was home to a Joseon dynasty Confucian scholar named Uam Song Siyeol (1607-1689). The park features traditional buildings of that time period, which have been restored to preserve the cultural heritage of the area. We then departed the city of Daejeon to travel to the city of Jeonju, a small city of about 600,000 most notably known for its rich cultural heritage and also recognized as the birthplace of Bibimbap. We enjoyed spending the evening strolling through the many streets of the traditional Hanok Village, doing some shopping and admiring the architecture. On the afternoon of day 9, we had lots of laughs during our Samul nori and Talchum workshop (traditional Korean percussion music accompanying mask dancing), where we partnered up to perform a dance as the head and tail of a fierce lion costume, as pictured below.

This post wouldn’t be complete without more musings about what we ate—especially because Woosong University is home to one of the leading Culinary Arts programs in the country, combining European and Asian approaches to their curriculum. We were treated to a top-notch Western style lunch in their student-run “Solpine Restaurant” featuring an amuse-bouche, frisée salad, perfectly done steak over a potato puree, and crème br?lée for dessert. Somehow we also made room for dinner in the Bibimbap capital, at a charming restaurant in the historic Hanok Village in Jeonju. It is a good thing that Fulbright’s ambitious itinerary is helping us to get our steps in!

I’ll be reporting next time from our final two stops in Daegu and Busan!