“Enhancing the Soft Power of Korea and Promoting Friendly International Relations and Trust with Various Countries around the World”
President Kim Ghee-whan of
the Korea Foundation

Cultivating experts in Korea with a good knowledge of Korea in various fields and making Korea recognized as ‘a globally attractive country’ would be as important as promoting Korea and Korean culture. We met with President Kim Ghee-whan of the Korea Foundation (KF), a representative public diplomacy institution of Korea which is promoting Korea among international communities, to talk about KF’s top priority projects and 2024 vision.

Greetings, Mr. President! Thank you for granting us an interview. Could you first please tell us a bit more about the Korea Foundation?

The Korea Foundation (hereinafter referred to as "KF"), a representative public diplomacy institution of Korea, is promoting Korea as a globally attractive country among international communities, widening Korea's support base, and enhancing soft power. First, KF created Korea chairs in cooperation with top universities and policy research institutes in various countries across the world, and has been conducting education and research and holding seminars and policy forums. We also have a fellowship program to invite important figures from various countries active in many different fields and cultivate foreign experts in Korea. Since our founding in 1991, we have assigned 156 professorships in Korean studies in 99 universities across 18 countries, and through support for fellowships and scholarships, been cultivating approximately 12,000 experts on Korea who have a good knowledge of Korea in many countries around the world.
We also created a Korea Room in 28 museums around the world, and then recently we have been actively introducing not only Korean traditional arts but also various contemporary contents including modern art and movies with endowed curatorships for Korean art that we created in cooperation with overseas museums. In Korea, we are promoting many different countries’ cultures through art exhibitions and performance activities — utilizing the KF Gallery in Seoul, the KF ASEAN Culture Hall in Busan and International Convention Center Jeju — and holding Public Diplomacy Week events every year, working closely with the diplomatic corps in Korea.

You took over as president of KF in September 2022. Are there any projects you carried out with a special focus since then?

Since I became the president, I reinforced policy forums and university organizations’ education and research exchange projects regarding new security issues, including economic security of international communities, advanced science and technology, and energy and climate change. I’m also actively seeking to promote Korea's public diplomacy as a global hub country respecting common democratic values, such as liberal democracy, human rights, constitutionalism, and mutual trust. In addition, I’m strengthening industry-university-institute cooperation in the field of advanced science and technology, and pursuing customized projects for each major strategic key point such as the USA, Europe, Japan, China, Australia, the Middle East, ASEAN, and Central Asia.
In 2023, celebrating the 70th anniversary of the South Korea-United States alliance, KF held policy forums five times on main topics such as advanced science and technology, economic security, and climate change — and established a fund for Korean studies programs at the Belfer Center of Harvard Kennedy School. We also created the first endowed curatorship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, USA, and promoted several Korean arts special exhibitions partnering with world-renowned museums in North America and Europe. As a result, encouraging news about international diffusion of the Korean Wave driven by Korean arts was spread by the domestic and foreign media. We’re promoting the globally attractive country, Korea, combining with digital technology, targeting domestic and foreign audiences, and also at the KF XR Gallery opened in Seoul in April, and on the public diplomacy curation YouTube channel, ‘7707.’ And, the KF will actively pursue building the foundation for Korean studies and customized industry-university-institute cooperation focusing on areas the KF advances, by actively using networks in Korean studies we have been building with famous overseas universities in North America, Europe, Oceania, and Asia.

Please tell us about the recent growing trend of Korean studies around the world and how the field of Korean studies is subdivided.

According to a recent investigation by KF, as many as 1,514 universities in 106 countries are running Korean studies courses, which are a ten-fold increase in 30 years — up from 151 departments in 32 countries in the early 1990s. As Korea is known as a country that realized democracy and economic success at the same time, and given the huge interest in Korean culture, including the Korean wave, extending to various fields, interest in Korea and Korean studies is also spreading worldwide.
Along with the elevated reputation of Korea, the field of Korean studies is also being diversified. Whereas in the past subjects of Korean studies focused on the humanities and social sciences —including Korean language, history, literature, politics, economy, society and anthropology — attempts are now being actively made to expand the scope of Korean studies as interdisciplinary researches. In this regard, domestic and overseas collaborations have been much more active lately in various fields including the arts, media, STEAM (science, technology, engineering and math), etc.

We’d like to hear your opinion on what fields KF and KSIF can cooperate more closely in the future, and how to achieve this.

KSIs expand the public’s interest in Korea and the Korean language in foreign countries by providing people there with opportunities to learn the Korean language and experience Korean culture. KF, meanwhile, carries out projects aiming to cultivate experts on Korea by offering credit articulated specialization classes and scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students at major foreign universities and running fellowship inviting programs.
It will be helpful in creating mutually meaningful synergies if our two institutions share relevant information and cooperate to help persons learning the Korean language in foreign countries. For example, placing and actively utilizing "KOREANA," a quarterly magazine on Korean culture and published by KF in 11 languages, in KSIs around the world — or actively introducing KSI students to KF’s fellowship programs in which they might be interested would be a good example of materializing actual cooperation later.

Soon, it will be New Year’s Day. In closing, please tell us about KF’s 2024 visions that you have in mind.

In 2024, we will strengthen KF’s global activity base significantly. We’re currently enhancing our programs in New York, London, and Dubai, and closely cooperating with partner institutions. In addition to this, we’re planning to boost cooperation synergy between Korean studies researchers by strengthening Korean studies in North America, Europe, Asia, Oceania, Africa, and the Middle East. We’re also working on a program to support composite public diplomacy linking scholarships, literature, scientific technology, and human exchanges — according to each country’s characteristics, and cooperation solidarity of young convergence-type talents with the international community.
We’ll enhance our public diplomacy, which continues to elevate the reputation of the globally attractive country Korea and interact and cooperate together — expecting that we will keep moving forward to the future with great hope, in cooperation with our domestic and overseas partners, despite difficult global challenges in the international community.