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Foundation’s New Staff Members Stride into the Future

The Korea Foundation’s most recently added staff members, a group of eight, visited Japan on February 26-28 as part of a work orientation program. During their stay in Japan, the new staff members visited the Foundation’s Tokyo Office, as well as the Japan Foundation, Japan-Korea Cultural Foundation, Waseda University, and the Center for Contemporary Korean Studies of Keio University.



In contrast to the mild weather and blue skies of Korea, we arrived in Tokyo to a rather chilly and rainy reception. As such, the warm welcome from Choi Hyun-soo, Director of the Foundation’s Tokyo Office was all the more pleasant. Though this was our initial contact with Director Choi in person, it felt like I had already known him for sometime, since he was so helpful in making the arrangements for our visit. After a brief stop at our room accommodations, we attended a luncheon hosted by Minister Cho Se-young of the Korean Embassy. Thereafter, we made our way to the Foundation’s Tokyo Office. Located within the Korean Embassy building, the office space where Director Choi and a local employee worked was compact but efficient. We went over the itinerary for our stay and the activities of the Foundation’s Tokyo Office, and then departed for the Japan Foundation.

Japan Foundation
The Japan Foundation, a counterpart organization of the Korea Foundation, was established in 1972, two decades earlier than our Korea Foundation. After listening to Director-General Nishimura’s presentation on his organization, and attending a reception and spending time with the staff members in charge of Korean affairs, I could see that the Japan Foundation and the Korea Foundation were so similar in many ways. Along with implementing similar programs, like cultural exchanges, they both face similar challenges, such as public sector innovation, measuring the impact of Public diplomacy, and the need to minimize overlapping activities with other organizations.
The Japan Foundation operates on a larger scale, in terms of annual budget and working staff, but I felt an immediate rapport with its staff members, because of our many similarities. The time with our new-found friends continued well into the evening amidst a congenial atmosphere.
The following day started with a visit to Waseda University, one of the prestigious universities in Japan. We toured the campus and stopped by to see the Korean collection at the university’s library. In the afternoon, we visited the Japan-Korea Cultural Foundation and Keio University, the partner organizations of the “Joint Research Project on a New Era of Korea-Japan Relations.”



Center for Contemporary Korean Studies
Our visit to the Center for Contemporary Korean Studies was highly instructive. This center was established in February 2009 at Keio University with support from the Korea Foundation. Of note, this represented the first such center dedicated to Korean Studies in the Tokyo area in Japan where some 90 percent of the Korean Studies and language courses of the wor ld are conducted. A majority of the Korea-related research thus far has centered on the humanities areas, including Korean history and language. In contrast, Keio University’s Center for Contemporary Korean Studies will focus its efforts on contemporary issues and matters related to the social sciences.
It was somewhat regretful to learn that the reality of Korean Studies in Japan, the country that is thought to be the closest to Korea, is far less firmly rooted than what you might imagine. However, a presentation and Q&A session at the Center for Contemporary Korean Studies provided considerable encouragement for the efforts of Korea and Japan to realize a cooperative relationship based on a mutual understanding of each other’s country. A lecture on Korea-Japan relations by Professor Okonogi Masao, Director of the Center and also the Japanese chair of the Joint Research Project on a New Era of Korea-Japan Relations, outlined how the relationship between Korea and Japan, which had long been dominated by antagonism and competition, has since advanced to cooperative and partnership relations, as evidenced by the popularity of the Korean Wave in Japan, and a dramatic expansion of bilateral exchanges at the private level. Hopefully, we can further build on this forward momentum.
As the final destination of our stay we stopped off at Yokohama, one of Japan’s three largest cities. After enduring such dreary weather in Tokyo, the clear skies in Yokohama was a welcome sight. In Yokohama, which rapidly developed in the mid 1800s after Japan signed a peace treaty with the United States and opened its ports, we toured the Yokohama Archives of History and the Japan International Cooperation Agency to learn about Japanese migration abroad. The tour gave us an opportunity to reflect upon the culture and capability of Japan, which voluntarily accepted and adapted the influences of foreign cultures.
The three-day visit to Japan provided our group with a valuable opportunity to contemplate about our individual roles as staff members of the Korea Foundation. Finally, I would like to express my most sincere appreciation to Tokyo Office Director Choi Hyun-soo for all his assistance that enabled our stay to be so pleasant and productive.

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